Book review: Dirty Dancing? An Ethnography of Lap-Dancing
| Author | Laura Connelly |
| DOI | 10.1177/1748895812474880 |
| Published date | 01 July 2013 |
| Date | 01 July 2013 |
| Subject Matter | Book reviews |
358 Criminology & Criminal Justice 13(3)
speak only to the particularities of the prevailing conditions. The most abstract may be of
high general relevance but will tend to be vacuous. In terms they do not use, Cartwright
and Hardie favour portable ‘middle range’ programme theories.
Cartwright and Hardie’s book is deceptively difficult in some places and deceptively
easy in others. The deceptively difficult passages are mostly to be found in a few pages
in Chapter I.B. This is where the core arguments central to the book are laid out formally,
sometimes using notation that will be unfamiliar to many readers. But don’t be put off by
this or by the somewhat unusual way in which the books sections are represented (I.A.1
to V.B.6 before the Conclusion). The authors wish formally and rigorously to establish
the secure foundations for their arguments before moving on to examples and a more
intuitively accessible presentation of their position. Cartwright and Hardie are commit-
ted to producing a coherent volume with a series of closely related arguments that follow
from their premises. This book advocates careful argument in the conduct of evidence-
based policy and exemplifies that in its own pages. This means that at some points they
state what appears to be obvious (the deceptively easy part), but they can only do so once
they have adduced formally the grounds for the conclusions drawn.
A few of the many examples used in this book relate specifically to crime and criminal
justice. Nevertheless all of it is relevant. One of the authors is a distinguished philoso-
pher of physics and of economics, the other a sometime economics don who subse-
quently pursued a career in business before returning to academe – neither is a specialist
in crime. This book deserves to be widely read and used by researchers, policy-makers
and practitioners in our field, which is at serious risk of being misled through crass appli-
cations of findings from supposedly rigorous research.
Reference
Mackie JL (1965) Causes and conditions. American Philosophical Quarterly 2(4): 245–264.
Rachela Colosi
Dirty Dancing? An Ethnography of Lap-Dancing, Routledge: London, 2012; 194 pp.:
9780415627641, £24.95 (pbk), 9781843928171, £80 (hbk)
Reviewed by: Laura Connelly, University of Leeds, UK
Despite forming a visible, diverse and proliferate part of the night-time economy in the
UK, erotic dance – and the commercialization of sex more generally – remains a conten-
tious issue which divides the public, campaign groups and feminist scholarly discourses.
While it is unhelpful to view debates coalescing around the sex industry as straightfor-
wardly dichotomous, a split in attitudes is nonetheless present, in which those who view
commoditized sex as the epitome of patriarchy sit in contrast to those who consider lap-
dancing to be a legitimate form of work. Although in Dirty Dancing? Rachela Colosi
refrains from offering an extensive discussion of feminist moral discourses, she reflects
an implicit ideology that recognizes the omnipresence of gender inequality but at the
same time, acknowledges that sex and the sex industry can empower women, thus pro-
viding a way to overcome their subordination.
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