Labours in Vice or Virtue? Neo‐liberalism, Sexual Commerce, and the Case of Indian Bar Dancing
| Author | Prabha Kotiswaran |
| Date | 01 March 2010 |
| Published date | 01 March 2010 |
| DOI | http://doi.org/10.1111/j.1467-6478.2010.00497.x |
JOURNAL OF LAW AND SOCIETY
VOLUME 37, NUMBER 1, MARCH 2010
ISSN: 0263-323X, pp. 105±24
Labours in Vice or Virtue? Neo-liberalism, Sexual
Commerce, and the Case of Indian Bar Dancing
Prabha Kotiswaran*
Of late, the Indian state has adopted an abolitionist stance towards sex
work and bar dancing. This article argues that although in the Indian
state of Maharashtra, the judicial overturning of the ban against bar
dancing has been celebrated by feminists as a triumph of women's
right to livelihood over patriarchal demands of women's sexual
morality, the judgment is predicated on a sharp distinction between
morally `good' and `bad' female labour, namely, bar dancing and sex
work. This is ironic given their striking sociological similarities and
the stigmatization and levels of state abuse inflicted against both. The
article considers the usefulness of the totalizing logic of neo-liberalism
for explaining the increased judicial and feminist tolerance for bar
dancing. The article argues that prospects for redistributive law reform
for all sexual workers are dim unless the arbitrary legal distinctions
drawn between markets in female sexual labour are overcome.
INTRODUCTION
Feminist scholars have grown increasingly dissatisfied with the state of the
sex work debates, confined as it has been to the highly polarized positions
between abolitionist radical feminists and sex work advocates. Of late,
however, instead of striking the more familiar conciliatory middle ground
between the two positions, feminist ethnographers of sex markets have
started to outline the rapid changes in the economy of sexual commerce
which extends well beyond transactional sex work and without necessarily
105
ß2010 The Author. Journal Compilation ß2010 Cardiff University Law School. Published by Blackwell Publishing Ltd,
9600 Garsington Road, Oxford OX4 2DQ, UK and 350 Main Street, Malden, MA 02148, USA
*School of Oriental and African Studies, University of London, Thornhaugh
Street, Russell Square, London WC1H 0XG, England
pk5@soas.ac.uk
The author wishes to thank Jane Scoular, Teela Sanders, and Srimati Basu for their
generous feedback on her article. Many thanks to Arundhati Katju and Chinmayee
Chandra for their excellent research assistance.
implicating genital contact.
1
This, they argue, is a defining feature of late
capitalism in the West, which has had effects on sex and sexuality more
generally, including, they claim, the pornographication of culture, more
liberal and egalitarian sexual attitudes, an acceptance of fleeting temporary
relationships, an increasing commodification of intimacy and the heightened
sexualization of work.
2
Moreover, studies of the micro-political economies
of sex work reveal the various registers on which such changes have
occurred, including the narrowing status differential between sex workers
and their customers and the recreational ethic that informs the perceptions of
both sex workers and their customers of the sex work transaction itself.
3
Even conventional forms of sex work conducted in brothels have not been
spared such transformation. As Brents and Hausbeck demonstrate, legalized
brothels in Nevada now use more mainstream business forms to market
expanded skilled services and individualized touristic experiences to a broad
range of audiences rather than rationalized sex acts.
4
Feminists have thus documented shifts in the sex industry from modern
industrial prostitution to post-industrial sexual commerce which, they argue,
find their parallels in larger societal changes in the family form and the
political economy.
5
For other feminists, however, an understanding of
contemporary sexual commerce is located in an explicitly cultural study with
a desire to `leave behind' the conventional terms of the feminist discourse on
sex work, as obfuscating and unable to appreciate the nuances of
contemporary sex work.
6
While feminists have characterized this very turn
to the cultural as constitutive of neo-liberal ideology,
7
I would suggest that a
nuanced cultural appreciation of sexual commerce need not preclude
feminist considerations of coercion and exploitation. In fact, I would argue
that a materialist feminist approach is germane to the consideration of
markets for sexual labour such as bar dancing. Moreover, there is every
indication that female sexual workers in the Indian context themselves
deploy the language of workers' rights. Under these circumstances, a post-
colonial materialist feminist approach to female labour becomes not only
desirable but politically essential.
106
1L.Singer, Erotic Welfare: Sexual Theory and Politics in the Age of Epidemic,eds. J.
Butler and M. MacGrogan (1993).
2B.G. Brents and K. Hausbeck, `Marketing Sex: US Legal Brothels and Late
Capitalist Consumption' (2007) 10 Sexualities 425±39, at 426; Brents and Sanders
in this volume, pp. 40±60.
3E.Bernstein, Temporarily Yours: Intimacy, Authenticity, and the Commerce of Sex
(2007).
4Brents and Hausbeck, op. cit., n. 2, pp. 433, 435.
5Bernstein, op. cit., n. 3.
6L.AgustõÂn, `Introduction to the Cultural Study of Commercial Sex' (2007) 10
Sexualities 403±7.
7R.Hennessy, Profit and Pleasure: Sexual Identities in Late Capitalism (2000).
ß2010 The Author. Journal Compilation ß2010 Cardiff University Law School
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