Social networks : the making of female migrant sex workers in post-socialist China
Abstract/Contents
- Abstract
- While estimates vary dramatically, roughly 6 to 10 million women are working in the sex trade (Fu and Choy 2010). This dissertation examines the role of social networks in making and remaking female sex worker communities (xiaojie) as the sex trade, involving migration, has become an increasingly common means of livelihood in post-socialist China. Drawing on theories of social relations as well as studies of gendered migration in anthropology and relevant fields, I specifically explore the complex social mechanisms through which migrant sex workers make and remake their lives with attention to their daily interactions, multiple discourses, and negotiated practices. This study draws on fieldwork I conducted for twenty-six months between 2006 and 2009, primarily in a red-light neighborhood in Haikou, the capital city of the southernmost province of Hainan. As I became a part of the mobile women's networks, my research naturally extended beyond the geographic boundaries of the neighborhood into multiple sites, from urban red-light neighborhoods to suburban brothels, from observations of sex workers' business activities to public health interventions, from discussions with their neighbors to holidays with their families. It is a unique and important characteristic of my study that I interacted not only with sex workers, but also with various social actors embedded in their networks (i.e., family members, urban neighbors, boyfriends, colleagues, madams, and clients). This is a research method that allows for a fuller understanding of the inter-relationships and mutual perceptions among sex workers and those around them. The central argument of my dissertation develops out of this fieldwork. Much to my surprise, I discovered that, rather than being socially isolated, the sex workers have strong social connections, and their social networks mold this community and, by extension, restructure its cultural ideologies and social structures. I learned that, the women shape, and are shaped by, their social networks and that these networks are interwoven with gender and class to form their values, aspirations, and practices, and, by extension, their suffering (e.g., STIs), subjectivity, and lived experiences. Interestingly, the social networks make it possible for migrant women in the sex trade to cross what otherwise might appear to us to be fixed social boundaries (e.g. boundaries between "prostitute" and "general public," and between relations of commodified intimacy and genuine emotional connection). While these women have strong agency, realize upper social mobility, and change social association (guanxi) patterns, they concurrently suffer emotionally and physically, and social networks play a critical role in the process as 21st China goes through dramatic transformations.
Description
| Type of resource | text |
|---|---|
| Form | electronic; electronic resource; remote |
| Extent | 1 online resource. |
| Publication date | 2014 |
| Issuance | monographic |
| Language | English |
Creators/Contributors
| Associated with | Yu, Yeon Jung |
|---|---|
| Associated with | Stanford University, Department of Anthropology. |
| Primary advisor | Jones, James Holland |
| Primary advisor | Luhrmann, T. M. (Tanya M.), 1959- |
| Thesis advisor | Jones, James Holland |
| Thesis advisor | Luhrmann, T. M. (Tanya M.), 1959- |
| Thesis advisor | Bird, Rebecca (Rebecca Bliege) |
| Thesis advisor | Kohrman, Matthew, 1964- |
| Thesis advisor | McCarty, Christopher, 1958- |
| Advisor | Bird, Rebecca (Rebecca Bliege) |
| Advisor | Kohrman, Matthew, 1964- |
| Advisor | McCarty, Christopher, 1958- |
Subjects
| Genre | Theses |
|---|
Bibliographic information
| Statement of responsibility | Yeon Jung Yu. |
|---|---|
| Note | Submitted to the Department of Anthropology. |
| Thesis | Thesis (Ph.D.)--Stanford University, 2014. |
| Location | electronic resource |
Access conditions
- Copyright
- © 2014 by Yeon Jung Yu
- License
- This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution Non Commercial 3.0 Unported license (CC BY-NC).
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