SOCI 338 Syllabus Spring 2010

Prostitution and Social Control Greggor Mattson
SOCI 338 Syllabus * Spring 210 King 341, MWF 1:30pm
Prostitution is a site of easy truths and inevitable conflict because of cultural ambiguities about
sexuality, gender, ethnicity and citizenship. We probe these intersecting meanings by reviewing
the wide range of empirical meanings attributed to prostitution and the ways modern forces have
transformed them, especially the state. Taking cues from Michel Foucault, we analyze why
recent legal solutions cannot fulfill expectations and discuss how the social control of
prostitution might actually cause it.
The course is a core course in Law and Society (LAWS) and Gender, Sexuality and Feminist
Studies (GSFS), is writing intensive (WR) and fulfills the cultural diversity requirement (CD).
Required Texts:
Wardlow, Holly. 2006. Wayward Women: Sexuality and Agency in a New Guinea Society. 1st
ed. University of California Press.
Weitzer, Ron. 2009. Sex For Sale: Prostitution, Pornography, and the Sex Industry. 2nd ed.
Routledge.
Agustin, Laura Maria. 2007. Sex at the Margins: Migration, Labour Markets and the Rescue
Industry. London: Zed Books.
Bernstein, Elizabeth. 2007. Temporarily Yours: Intimacy, Authenticity, and the Commerce of
Sex. University of Chicago Press.
Brennan, Denise. 2004. What's Love Got to Do With It?: Transnational Desires and Sex Tourism
in the Dominican Republic. Duke University Press.
Padilla, Mark. 2007. Caribbean Pleasure Industry: Tourism, Sexuality, and AIDS in the
Dominican Republic. 1st ed. University Of Chicago Press.
Contact info
greggor.mattson@oberlin.edu
Mailbox on my door, King 305c
Office hours: Mon 2:30-3:30pm; Wed 10am-11am; by appointment
Assessment
Participation in discussion: 20
Reading memos 40 (do 8, I will drop the lowest score)
Documentary review 10
Final Paper 30
Participation (in 6 easy steps)
• Read the texts before class and take notes on them
• Bring the texts and your notes to class
• Come to class on time every time
• Actively participate in discussions
• Open laptops only in the front rows
• Be respectful to others

Your on-time attendance is essential to your ability to participate. If you miss, get notes from a
colleague and come to office hours with questions about the material you missed. Provide
documentation at least two weeks before absences for approved College events.
My goals for you are to learn
• how cultural ambiguities make prostitution a ready site of truth and cultural conflict
• how processes of modernity transformed prostitution, especially via the state
• a wide range of meanings attributed to prostitution
• why none of the new policy solutions can fulfill their expectations
Reading Memos
Submit reading memos before the class. You are responsible for turning in reading 2-3 pages of reading
memos each week for the first half of the course. Note: everyone must do a reading memo for week 2 of
the course. Reading memos consist of two parts: a succinct summary of the argument and evidence in
that week’s readings and your reactions to them. Reactions can take the form of evaluations of the
arguments, methodological considerations, ties to other pieces we have read, personal reflections, or
questions for discussion.
One way to think about them is to imagine you are a reviewer of a book containing only that week’s
readings or that you’re explaining them to an interested friend. What are they about? Why are they
important? What is missing in them?
Submit the readings electronically before the class period for which the readings were due. There
are no late memos and no extensions.
Reading Tips
Read the lecture headings – they tell you the purpose of the reading. Skim each of the texts in 5
minutes. Notice section headings, bold words, or highlighted quotations to get the story the
author is telling. When you read the whole thing, you’ll know where the argument is going.
Movie Review
OhioLink gives us access to a huge collection of documentaries about prostitution that you can watch for
free. Since I can’t see everything, 10% of your grade will be to write a short (2-page) review of one
documentary or two commercial release films, how they fit in to our readings, and what you learned
from them. After you receive comments, upload your documentary to a site of reviews and send me the
link.
Final Paper
Use your memos as the building blocks to synthesize the readings from the class as evidence for
an argument about prostitution in the Dominican Republic. Your final paper is an 8-10 page
scholarly review of the Brennan and Padilla books. A scholarly review takes a position on the
texts, analyzing them from a point of view. You may choose any of the themes from the class to
construct your thesis – gender, sexuality, power, money, cultural difference, citizenship, political
economy, race, etc.
Late Assignments

Late assignments will lose one letter grade for each day late – this includes not turning in a hard
copy at the beginning of class. Excused lateness must come from a Class Dean.
Honor Code: http://www.oberlin.edu/students/links-life/honorcode.html
Sign the honor code on each assignment—it is your reminder to know the boundaries of cheating
(not doing your own work) plagiarism (taking credit for someone else’s work) and fabrication
(making up sources, quotations or observations). Refer to the honor code and/or talk to me if you
have concerns or are feeling so pressed that cheating seems attractive.
Disability Accommodations
If you are a student with a disability, make sure you’ve registered with the Office of Disability
Services (Peters G-27/28 x55588) to develop a plan to meet your academic needs. Bring their
recommendations to me at least two weeks before any due date or exam.
Grading rubric
Papers will be graded as follows:
Thesis sentence: 20 (UNDERLINED, answers how or why question appropriate to
essay length. Yes, you get points for underlining it.)
Organization 20 (ideas grouped in paragraphs, evidence for main points)
Sources 30 (synthesizes a variety of texts, in-text citations in APA format)
On time 10 (printed copy hand-delivered by beginning of class, all or nothing)
Insight 10 (creativity, connections between texts, use of language, sparkle)
Conventions 10 (stapled, grammar, 1” margins, spelling, punctuated, 12-pt. font)
Sources & Citations (APA format)
You need not make a works cited for course readings but you must cite them properly in the text
in APA format. Wikipedia is not an academic source, but may lead you to primary sources.
Paraphrasing primary sources (preferred):
Media in the 1950s catered to the rising middle class, giving a misleading impression of
America’s families (Coontz 1990, p. 31).
Direct quotations (use sparingly) must be introduced:
Stephanie Coontz cites the enduring power of the media for creating a new American
tradition during the baby boom: “The happy, homogenous families that we ‘remember’
from the 1950s were… a result of the media’s denial of diversity” (1990, p. 31).

Syllabus
Readings are due to be read by the date on which they are listed. Only a small portion of the
FILMS listed will be shown in class; I list them for you to get into the spirit of the class on your
own time, if you like (by putting them on your Netflix queue or watching them for free in the
Media Resource Center, for instance).
WEEK 1: THE LAY OF THE LAND: THE MEANINGS OF PROSTITUTION (Feb 8-12)
1: First Day: Terms, Terms and Turns
http://video.nytimes.com/video/2006/12/18/opinion/1194817092163/heartbreak-and-hope.html
2: Read these three accounts of contemporary prostitution. Based on these very different
experiences, what can we say about the category “prostitution”?
Bourgois, Philippe, and Jeffrey Schonberg. 2009. Righteous Dopefiend. 1st ed. University
of California Press.
Barbara. 1993. “It's a Pleasure Doing Business with You.” Social Text 37:11-22.
Sapphire. 1987. “New York City Tonight.” Pp. 125-130 in Sex Work: Writings By
Women in the Sex Industry. Cleis Press: San Francisco.
EXTRA: Bourgois, Philippe, and Eloise Dunlap. 1993. “Exorcising sex-for-crack: An ethnographic
perspective from Harlem.” Pp. 97-132 in Crack Pipe As Pimp: An Ethnographic Investigation of
Sex-For-Crack Exchanges. New York: Lexington.
MOVIE: Pretty Woman (1991), Lilya-4-Ever (2002)
3: The media and migrant prostitution, then and now. Read these two journalistic accounts
separated by a century. What is similar, what is different? In other words: has the situation for
poor women stayed the same? The public appetite for stories of destitution? Both? And/or
something else?
Read from “The Violation of Virgins” in The Maiden Tribute of Modern Babylon:
http://www.attackingthedevil.co.uk/pmg/tribute/mt1.php (Stead, 1885)
Kristof, Nicholas D. 2004. “Girls For Sale.” The New York Times, January 17
Kristof, Nicholas D. 2004. “Bargaining For Freedom.” The New York Times, January 21
Kristof, Nicholas D. 2004. “Going Home, With Hope.” The New York Times, January 24
Kristof, Nicholas D. 2004. “Loss of Innocence.” The New York Times, January 28
Kristof, Nicholas D. 2004. “Stopping The Traffickers.” The New York Times, January 31
Kristof, Nicholas D. 2005. “Back to the Brothel.” The New York Times, January 22
Kristof, Nicholas D. 2005. “Leaving the Brothel Behind.” New York Times, January 19
MOVIE: Call + Response (2005), Taxi Driver (1976)
WEEK 2: FEMINIST DEBATES AND LEGAL STRATEGIES (Feb 15-19)
1: Prostitution debates fundamentally changed when prostitutes began organizing in the 1970s,
speaking for themselves and This coincided with larger feminist debates about the meanings of
gender, femininity, and sexuality that changed laws and public culture.

Alexander, Pricilla. 1987. “Prostitution: A Difficult Issue for Feminists.” Pp. 184-214 in
Sex Work: Writings By Women in the Sex Industry. Cleis Press: San Francisco.
“Sex Worker Self Advocacy,” Chapkis, Wendy. 1997. Live Sex Acts. New York:
Routledge.
“Wynter, Sarah. 1987. “WHISPER: Women Hurt in Systems of Prostitution Engaged in
Revolt.” Pp. 266-270 in Sex Work: Writings By Women in the Sex Industry. Cleis
Press: San Francisco.
MOVIES: Live Nude Girls Unite! (2000), A Drug Called Pornography (2000), India Cabaret (1986)
2: Compare these two very different analyses of the meanings of prostitution. What larger social
forces do these theorists invoke to explain prostitution? Which do you find more convincing –
why/why not?
“Prostitution of Sexuality,” in Barry, Kathleen. 1995. The Prostitution of Sexuality: The
Global Exploitation of Women. New York: New York University Press.
Pheterson, Gail. 1993. “The Whore Stigma: Female Dishonor and Male Unworthiness.”
Social Text 37:39-64.
3: What is the relationship between the legal regimes discussed by Weitzer and the feminist
debates we have been reading?
Weitzer, Ronald John. 2009. “Sex Work: Paradigms and Policies.” Pp. 1-45 in Sex for
Sale: Prostitution, Pornography, and the Sex Industry, 2nd Ed. New York:
Routledge.
Rubin, Gayle. 1975. “The Traffic in Women: Notes on the 'Political Economy' of Sex.”
Pp. 157-210 in Toward an Anthropology of Women. New York: Monthly Review
Press.
WEEK 3: PROSTITUTION AND TRADITIONAL SOCIETIES (Feb 22-26)
1: What aspects of prostitution are culturally bound? What does sexual commerce look like in a
country where the meanings of money, markets, legal regulation, and the state are very different
from our own?
Wardlow Wayward Women: “Introduction” (pp. 1-42; 105-29), “Tari is a Jelas Place,”
and “Body and Agency Among Huli Women.”
EXTRA: “The World’s Oldest Profession” Whelehan, Patricia. 2001. An Anthropological Perspective on
Prostitution. Lewiston, NY: Edwin Mellen Press.
MOVIE: Prisoners of a White God (2008), The Courtesans of Bombay (1983)
2: Women in traditional exchange, women as modern individuals

Wardlow, “I am Not the Daughter of a Pig,” “Becoming a Pasinja Meri,” and “Passenger
Women and Sexuality.”
MOVIE: Prostitution Behind the Veil (2005)
3: In what ways do modern conceptions of prostitution reproduce deep-seated cultural dualities?
How is this similar or different to the New Guinean society analyzed by Wardlow?
Wardlow, “Conclusion.”
Ortner, Sherry B. 1974. “Is Female to Male as Nature is to Culture?.” Pp. 67-87 in
Woman, Culture, and Society. Palo Alto, CA: Stanford University Press.
MOVIE: At Stake (2008)
WEEK 4: MODERNITY AND THE STATE (Mar 1-5)
1: The rise of the social and the rise of the state: what are the implications for women, for the
public sphere, and policing?
“The Rise of the Social--and of 'Prostitution',” Agustin, Laura Maria. 2007. Sex at the
Margins: Migration, Labour Markets and the Rescue Industry. London: Zed.
Mattson, Greggor. 2008. “Governing Loose Women”
2: Foucault and governmentality
selection of “Introduction” to Foucault, Michel. 2000. Power: Essential Works of
Foucault, 1954-1984, Volume III. edited by James D. Faubion, Paul Rabinow, and
Colin Gordon. New Press.
Foucault, Michel. 2000. “Governmentality.” Pp. 201-222 in Power: Essential works of
Foucault 1954-1984. New York: The New Press.
3: Paris, or How Prostitutes Are Like Sewers and Brothels Are Like Prisons
Corbin
Foucault
EXTRAS: Emile Zola’s Nana (1880), Theodore Dreiser’s Sister Carrie (1900)
MOVIE: Moulin Rouge (2001)
WEEK 5: MODERNITY AND THE STATE (Mar 8-12)
1: The extension of the state is one way to understand colonialism. In what ways is prostitution
intrinsically racialized? What are the implications for these historical accounts for the women in
Wardlow’s book?
“Prostitution, Race and Empire” and “White Women’s Sexuality in Colonial Settings,”
from Levine, Philippa. 2003. Prostitution, Race, and Politics: Policing Venereal
Disease in the British Empire. New York: Routledge.

2: This article completes our discussion of the relationship between prostitution and modernity:
the rise of the state and legal authority, the separation of sexuality from gender, and the rise of a
middle-class public culture.
Gilfoyle, Timothy J. 1999. “Prostitutes in History: From Parables of Pornography to
Metaphors of Modernity.” The American Historical Review 104:117-141.
3: Temporarily Yours
Bernstein, “Sexual Commerce in Postindustrial Culture,” and “Remapping the Boundaries of
‘Vice’”
WEEK 6: AMERICAN SOLUTIONS TO PROSTITUTION (Mar 15-19)
1: What does Luker mean when she says social reform is double-edged? In what ways does her
analysis recall Emma Goldman’s critiques?
Goldman, Emma. 1917. “The Traffic in Women.” Pp. 177-194 in Anarchism and Other
Essays. New York: Dover Publications, Inc.
http://www.gutenberg.org/files/2162/2162-h/2162-h.htm#traffic
Luker, Kristin. 1998. “Sex, Social Hygiene, and the State: The Double-Edged Sword of
Social Reform.” Theory and Society 27:601-634.
2: Nevada: Global Anomaly
Hausbeck, Kathryn and Barbara G. Brents. 2009. “Nevada’s Legal Brothels.” Pp. 255-
282 in Sex for Sale.
WEEK 7: PROSTITUTION AND MODERN LIFE (Mar 22-26)
1: Prostitution and race
Bernstein, “Modern Prostitution and Its Remnants”
“The Setting,” “Sex, Race, Manhood and Womanhood,” from Milner, Richard B., and
Christine Milner. 1972. Black Players: The Secret World of Black Pimps. New
York: Bantam Books.
2: Bernstein, “The Privatization of Public Women,” “Desire, Demand and the Commerce of
Sex”
3: “The State, Sexuality and the Market”
Bernstein, “Sexuality Debates and Pleasure Wars”
WEEK 8: WEEK EIGHT SPRING BREAK
WEEK 9: CASE STUDY: DOMINICAN REPUBLIC via PADILLA (Apr 8-12)
1: Global vs. Local Cultural Politics

Global Sexual Spaces and Their Hierarchies, “Looking for Life in the Dominican
Pleasure Industry,” and “Shifting Cultural Politics of Sexual Identity in Santo
Domingo”
MOVIE: How Stella Got Her Groove Back (1998)
2: Individuality & Agency vs. Tradition & Family: In what ways does Padilla’s story complicate
the free/forced distinction in lay understandings of prostituion?
“Familial Discretions, Unveiling the Other Side of Sex Work” and “Love, Finance, and
Authenticity in Gay Sex Tourism.”
3: How does Padilla’s political economy of risk contrast with a notion of risk grounded in
individual choices and responsibility? What are the implications for AIDS interventions at the
local level? The global?
“AIDS, the ‘Bisexual Bridge,’ and the Political Economy of Risk in the Dominical Republic.”
WEEK 10: CASE STUDY: DOMINICAN REPUBLIC via BRENNAN (Apr 15-19)
1: Global vs. Local Cultural Politics: In what ways is the situation in Sosúa similar or different
than in Padilla’s book? In what ways does gender impact the power dynamics in transnational
prostitution?
“Sosúa: A Transnational Town,” “Imagining and Experiencing Sosúa,” and “Performing
Love.”
2: The Sex Trade
“Sosúa’s Sex Workers: Their Families and Working Life,” “Advancement Strategies in
Sosúa’s Sex Trade.”
3: Plan Accomplished
“Transnational Disappointments,” and “Conclusion: Changes in Sex Workers’ Lives,
Sosúa, and Its Sex Trade
WEEK 11: TROUBLE WITH TRAFFICKING Apr 22-26)
1: 1
Agustin Chapters 1, 3
Weitzer, Ronald, and Melissa Ditmore. 2009. “Sex Trafficking: Facts and Fictions.” Pp.
325-351 in Sex for Sale.
MOVIE: Sex Slave$ (2005)
2: 2
Agustin Chapters 6-7
U.S State Department

3: 3
Mattson, “The Trouble With Trafficking.”
WEEK 12: THE U.S. WAR ON TRAFFICKING (May 1-5)
1: DeStefano Chapters 1-6
2: DeStefano Chapters 7-10
3: DeStefano Chapters11-13
WEEK 13: LOOSE ENDS (May 15-19)
1: What about kids?
Montgomery, Heather. 2003. “Children, Prostitution, and Identity: A Case Study from a
Tourist Resort in Thailand.” Pp. 139-150 in Global Sex Workers: Rights,
Resistance, and Redefinition. New York: Routledge.
Zuilhof, Wim. 1999. “Sex for Money between Men and Boys in the Netherlands:
Implications for HIV Prevention.” Pp. 23-40 in Men Who Sell Sex: International
Perspectives on Male Prostitution and HIV/AIDS. Philadelphia: Temple
University Press.
MOVIE: Born Into Brothels (2004), Pretty Baby (1978)
2: Ethics and ideology
“Compromising Positions,” Chapkis, Wendy. 1997. Live Sex Acts. New York: Routledge.
3: 3 Last Thoughts