What kind of work is sex work?: Examining sex work on a continuum of everyday labour practice and lived experience

性工作是什么样的工作？：通过日常劳动实践和生活经验的连续体来审视性工作

• 批准号: 2570435
• 金额: --
• 依托单位: University of Warwick
• 依托单位国家: 英国
• 项目类别: Studentship
• 财政年份: 2021
• 资助国家: 英国
• 起止时间: 2021 至 无数据
• 项目状态: 未结题
• 来源: https://gtr.ukri.org/projects?ref=studentship-2570435
• 关键词: What; kind; work; sex; Examining

Sex work has been defined as inherently exploitative. Historic and contemporary debates have reduced sex work to the logic of victimhood, often conflating prostitution with violence and trafficking instead of engaging with economic factors that present sex work as legitimate work - or even a viable alternative to other forms of structural exploitation and social inequalities. In contrast, this PhD research focuses on the nexus of sex / work / sex work, situating sex work on a continuum of everyday labour practice and identifying points of interconnectedness with other work, livelihoods and lived experience.Economic instability in the United Kingdom - austerity and labour markets affected by the COVID-19 pandemic, costs of living, debt, and the gig economy - make these themes timely. Sex work in its differential forms may increasingly appeal, as both a financial and ontological solution to an already precarious life. My research attends to both online and offline, rural and urban populations.Driven by the question 'what kind of work is sex work?', I engage with workers as complex subjects, with desires and duties overlapping personal and working lives. An increasing proportion of sex workers in the UK do not make a living exclusively in the sex industry but incorporate sexual labour into a portfolio of occupations. The categories of 'sex worker' and 'non-sex worker' cannot be neatly delineated, and it is recognised that the work of sex work shares attributes with other job roles.Considering the extent to which subjects feel they were already doing the work of sex work before entering the industry, I ask how contemporary constructions of sex/uality and intimacy are both informed by and formative of sex work. The labour of casual dating apps and social media influencer marketing are starting points, troubling understandings of 'authentic' work, love and sex, as well as limits between the relational and the transactional. Theories of subjectivation play a key role, examining how contemporary financial subjects are formed as sex workers, as opposed to assuming a role or being coerced into the industry.Sex work research faces a methodological impasse: saturated by empirical and statistical approaches, research often reduces the complex lifeworlds of sex workers to criminal or public health interest. This delegitimises situated knowledges, not to mention humanities and visual arts as productive disciplines in sex work research. I put forward an innovative case for expanding methods in sex work research through Back and Puwar's (2012) lens of live sociology. Live methods have the capacity to capture and produce affects, reactions, sensory and embodied experience. They align with my intention to facilitate participation and collaboration with sex / workers. Three methods will be developed:1. Participant-based writing and visual workshops.2. A collaborative online content platform.3. Semi-structured interviews with participants.Workshops offer a generative mode of knowledge production, capturing points at which subjective narratives overlap. Multiple methods of recruitment will form 2-3 focus groups: one of independent sex workers, another of non-sex workers. This factors in sub-groups including client-focused service providers, flexibilised and salaried workers. Initial workshops will be semi-structured, starting with conceptual questions such as 'when does work begin and end?' and setting a writing task. In secondary workshops, photovoice is considered as a qualitative method forming insights into lived experience, inviting consented participants to document their lives through photography and moving image. I aim for this research to contest social and political discourses which valorise cognitive labour beyond bodies and affects within capitalist production, meanwhile failing to concede exploitative labour practices beyond commercial sex. I also seek to expand interdisciplinary methodologies in sex work research.

性工作被定义为本质上具有剥削性。历史和当代的辩论将性工作简化为受害者的逻辑，往往将卖淫与暴力和贩运混为一谈，而不是将性工作视为合法工作的经济因素，甚至是其他形式的结构性剥削和社会不平等的可行替代品。相比之下，本博士研究的重点是性/工作/性工作之间的关系，将性工作置于日常劳动实践的连续体中，并确定与其他工作、生计和生活经验的相互联系点。英国的经济不稳定-紧缩政策和受COVID-19大流行影响的劳动力市场，生活成本，债务和零工经济-使这些主题变得及时。不同形式的性工作可能越来越有吸引力，因为这既是一种经济上的解决方案，也是一种本体论上的解决方案，可以解决已经岌岌可危的生活。我的研究涉及线上和线下，农村和城市人口。我把员工当作复杂的对象，他们的愿望和职责与个人生活和工作生活重叠。在联合王国，越来越多的性工作者并不完全以性产业为生，而是将性劳动纳入一系列职业。“性工作者”和“非性工作者”的类别不能整齐地划定，它被认为是性工作的工作与其他工作角色的属性，考虑到在何种程度上的主题觉得他们已经做的工作性工作之前进入行业，我问如何当代的性/性和亲密的建设都通知和性工作的形成。休闲约会应用程序和社交媒体影响者营销的劳动是起点，令人不安的是对“真实”工作，爱情和性的理解，以及关系和交易之间的限制。主体化理论起着关键的作用，研究当代金融主体如何形成为性工作者，而不是承担一个角色或被迫进入行业。性工作研究面临着方法论的僵局：经验和统计方法饱和，研究往往将性工作者复杂的生活世界简化为犯罪或公共健康利益。这使情境知识失去了合法性，更不用说人文和视觉艺术作为性工作研究的生产学科了。我通过Back和Puwar（2012）的现场社会学透镜提出了一个创新的案例，以扩展性工作研究的方法。活的方法有能力捕捉和产生影响，反应，感官和具体的经验。它们与我促进性/工作者参与和合作的意图一致。将开发三种方法：1。基于初学者的写作和视觉研讨会。2.一个协作的在线内容平台。3.对参与者的半结构化访谈。研讨会提供了一种知识生产的生成模式，捕捉主观叙述重叠的点。多种招募方法将形成2 - 3个重点小组：一个是独立的性工作者，另一个是非性工作者。这一因素包括以客户为中心的服务提供者、灵活工作者和受薪工人。最初的研讨会将是半结构化的，从概念性问题开始，如"工作开始和结束的时间？"并设置一个写作任务。在次级讲习班中，photovoice被认为是一种定性方法，形成对生活经验的见解，邀请同意的参与者通过摄影和移动图像记录他们的生活。我的这项研究旨在质疑社会和政治话语，这些话语强调身体之外的认知劳动和资本主义生产范围内的影响，同时未能承认商业性行为之外的剥削性劳动行为。我还寻求扩大性工作研究的跨学科方法。