Sex workers in the world system

Regarding the debate a few weeks back on the alleged differences between the 
experience of working as a prostitute in the core (where some recent feminists 
have theorized a defense of prostitutes as part of liberation from patriarchal 
ideology of sexuality) and the periphery (where it is characterized by more 
coercive, slave-like conditions) I found the recent book Global Sex Workers 
(eds. Kamala Kempadoo and Jo Doezema) very illuminating.  The work rejects the 
forced/free distinction, arguing that it is the creation of middle class 
feminists in the west, looking for someone to rescue.  Composed largely of 
documents produced by or in collaboration with prostitute's rights 
organizations throughout the world (as well as some ethnographic and 
theoretical work), the text suggests that sex work be conceptualized more or 
less like any other industry in the world system.  In other words, there are 
conditions that suck and are almost unbelievably exploitative, but this is also 
true of!
 textiles, mining etc.  Prostitu

tion differs from many industries because a: it is often illegal, thus forcing 
workers into egregious relationships to protect themselves from the state, and 
b:  compensation is better than virtually any concrete alternative available to 
these workers. By the way, the forced/free distinction has been used by not a 
few governments to legitimize persecution of all prostitutes who are patently 
not being 'forced'--presumably they are just morally depraved, not worthy of 
sympathy, the opposite of innocence violated, etc.

Steven Sherman
Greensboro College