Book Review: Dangerous Sex Invisible Labour: Sex Work and the Law in India
| Author | Sameena Dalwai |
| Published date | 01 June 2014 |
| Date | 01 June 2014 |
| DOI | http://doi.org/10.1177/0964663914523201d |
| Subject Matter | Book Reviews |
In addition, there is the tricky question of state consent. A state becomes a PRSP state
because it agrees to become one. It is the state that adopts legal reform that brings its
domestic legislation in compliance with IFI expectations. In the traditional view, it is
through the exercise of sovereignty that the state chooses to comply with international
soft law norms and converts them into binding domestic law. Taking into account the
reality of the power relationships between the IFIs and low-income countries, such a tra-
ditional analysis, is clearly overly formalistic. Could the truth, however, not be on the
middle ground, and result in alternative hypothesis: compliance with the PRSP frame-
work results from the interplay between rules set and aggressively promoted at the global
level and conscious choices by domestic legislators that may or may not take the right to
development of the individuals and groups within their jurisdiction seriously.
This book will be of interest to advanced readers in law, political science and devel-
opment studies.
KOEN DE FEYTER
University of Antwerp, Belgium
PRABHA KOTISWARAN,Dangerous Sex Invisible Labour: Sex Workand the Law in India.Princeton,NJ:
Princeton University Press, 2011, pp. 312, ISBN 9780691142517, £19.95 (pbk).
Prabha Kotiswaran’s book takes forward her thesis on distributional effects of law, mar-
ket and social normativity on the sex industry by working through the political economy
and legal ethnography of sex work. It makes a case for decriminalisation and empower-
ment that develops from her earlier articles about the effects of criminalisation of sex
work (Kotiswaran, 2008); and an argument for redistributive law reform for all sexual
workers (Kotiswaran, 2010).
The book offers a materialist feminist understanding of sex work – Indian sex work
in particular – while enhancing the understanding of the sex work in third world coun-
tries, in general. The author does this through field work and primary data collection in
Tirupati, a temple town in South India, and Sonagachi, the famous red-light district of
Calcutta. Emanating from and weaving together Marxism and feminism, her material-
ist feminist account examines the economic and material conditions of women’s lives
and labour.
The book is an important addition to the writings on sex work as it problematizes the
‘global sex panic’ (p. 8) around the ‘third world sex worker’ by focusing on the agency of
the women in sex work. Kotiswaran brings to her readers varied images from the brothels
and presents sex workers in their everyday circumstances: cutting fish and vegetables,
watching TV, doing embroidery, learning to speak English, berating their children, pray-
ing to photos of Gods as well as participating in the sex workers rallies and arguing in
meetings. These images starkly contrast with the ailing, enslaved, trafficked third-world
sex worker.
Book Reviews 285
To continue reading
Request your trial