Contestations and contradictions: feminist research on structures and institutions governing sex work in India

ABSTRACT

Taking exception to the persistent and recurrent exceptionalism of sex work within discourses on anti-trafficking, global health, brahmanical patriarchy and Indian nationalism, this special section comprises four articles. Originally conceived as part of a panel for a spring conference scheduled for summer 2020, the articles emerged in the aftermath of the COVID-19 pandemic and include research by Dr Gowri Vijayakumar, Dr Vibhuti Ramachandran, Dr Mirna Guha, and Dr Kimberly Walters. Through an analysis of the historical and contemporaneous experiences of marginalised cis women (dis)engaged in selling sex across diverse contexts, these articles deploy a range of conceptual and methodological approaches to interrogate longstanding institutional efforts to surveil, target and govern their bodies. In doing so, together, they delineate and challenge the enduring legacy of a long history of moral and public health panics that have framed the lives of people who sell sex in India since colonial times. This addresses structural and epistemic violence visited upon sex workers and strengthens ongoing efforts to forward an alternative, intersectional feminist reading of sex work in India.

KEYWORDS:

• Sex work
• anti-trafficking
• global health
• brahmanical patriarchy
• India
• institutions
• structures
• feminist research

Acknowledgements

The editors thank Gowri Vijayakumar and Vibhuti Ramachandran for their patient support and collegial spirit throughout the prolonged process of bringing this special section to fruition as well as their exciting theoretical contributions to feminist research included here. They also thank the probing intellectual engagement contributed by nine anonymous reviewers who pushed each of the pieces here to evolve and advance. Lastly, they pay special thanks to John Zavos who shepherded this project past many hazards and saw it to completion with kind consideration.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Notes

1 This letter was signed by several of the researchers whose work is featured in this special section.

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Mirna Guha

Mirna Guha is a political sociologist and intersectional scholar. Her research specialisms include gender violence, gender inequalities and social (in)justice. She is Senior Lecturer in Sociology at Anglia Ruskin University and has a PhD in International Development from the University of East Anglia. Dr Guha’s doctoral research examined everyday violence in the lives of marginalised women selling sex in India. She is currently leading an impact evaluation of a regionally pioneering domestic abuse service provision for Asian women in East England and is passionate about amplifying the voices of marginalised women to inform sustainable anti-violence interventions and policymaking globally.

Kimberly Walters

Kimberly Walters is associate professor of International Studies at California State University, Long Beach. Her research has been funded by the National Science Foundation, the Chicago Center for HIV Elimination and the University of Chicago, Delhi Center. She has written in openDemocracy, Signs, Anthropological Quarterly, Economic & Political Weekly, AIDS Care, and in an edited volume, Opting Out: Women Messing with Marriage Around the World (2023). She is currently preparing a book manuscript tentatively entitled, Rescued from Rights: Sex Work and the Humanitarian State in India.