How Modern Governments Made Prostitution a Social Problem: Creating a Responsible Prostitute Population

Abstract

This book presents an original and significant contribution to the study of female and male prostitution. It challenges common assumptions about prostitution embedded in scholarly and public discourses, especially the idea that the prostitute is an affront to private respectability and public order. Drawing upon Michel Foucault's genealogical method, the author uses historical and contemporary materials to document the ways in which female and male prostitution have been constructed, contrived and imagined as 'social problems' over the course of two centuries. The author argues that the social control of prostitution does not merely entail 'repressive' mechanisms, but involves the empowerment of prostitutes. Ultimately the book argues that a two tier strategy of governance emerged in late modernity which regulated prostitution by creating a ‘responsible’ prostitute population. The work is, at once, technically astute to satisfy the specialist, and so well executed it will be accessible to the informed non-specialist reader. This work will provide a standard reference and model for future research in this and related fields of enquiry. It will be of particular importance for a wide audience of international scholars, students and policy makers engaged in the study of crime and deviance, feminist, gender and women's studies, reproductive health, and queer politics and theory. It will also appeal beyond the academy in relation to law, policing, public policy, sexual health and social welfare.