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"This is an ambitious book - highly readable, compelling, and original. Bernstein's claim is that the character and organization of sex work has shifted. Whereas the signature form of sex work used to be the nonwhite streetwalker working in largely marginal neighborhoods, today, she reveals, sex work is largely private, relying heavily on the Internet, and provided by someone that is as often white and middle-class as nonwhite and poor." - Steven Seidman, author of Beyond the Closet"
Product Description
Despite increased economic opportunities for women, sexual commerce has not only thrived in the Western world, it has diversified along technological, spatial, and social lines. For example, contemporary sex workers often meet their clinets through the Internet, offering new kinds of encounters that are a far cry from the quick and impersonal contacts that we normally associate with prostitution. For "Temporarily Yours", sociologist Elizabeth Bernstein walked the streets and went behind closed doors, interviewing sex workers, their clients, and the government officials who regulate the business. Along the way, she discovered a significant transformation that is occurring in the urban sex trade. Many middle-class johns are now seeking to fulfill fantasies of intimacy and affection - to purchase an authentic interaction that is gratifying emotionally, not just physically. Drawing on innovative research in San Francisco, Stockholm, and Amsterdam, Bernstein paints a provocative picture of the current state of global sexual commerce and its relationship to a burgeoning consumer culture.
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11 of 12 people found the following review helpful
Understanding a Not-So-Underground Trade
30 Nov 2008
Format:Paperback
Elizabeth Bernstein's ethnography *Temporarily Yours* is arguably the most illuminating account of the domestic sex trade to be published in the last decade. In it Bernstein shows how large-scale transformations to the U.S. political economy have affected prostitution work in urban areas. Her argument is that a large segment of sex work in America has "gone indoors" as the country's economy has shifted from an industrial to a postindustrial structure. With more and more people working in the service economy and thinking of paid sex not as a stigmatized vice but as a flexible, leisurely activity that fits nicely into their schedules, the world of prostitution has expanded beyond its streetwalking stereotype to include Internet-savvy, upwardly mobile, high-end escorts.
Bernstein's book is especially relevant given the media's fascination with the lives of escorts over the past year, ever since Eliot Spitzer was fingered in a federal prostitution ring bust. Now we have brothel prostitutes on *Tyra*, Showtime's *Secret Diary of a Call Girl*, and a host of news programs on the subject (Bernstein was featured in MSNBC's *Dirty Money*).
Before you get caught up in the hype, though, I urge you to read *Temporarily Yours*. Bernstein's even-handed analysis avoids sensationalizing the work of escorts by showing how what they do is part and parcel of well-established social structures and economic practices. In addition, excerpts from her interviews with prostitutes and johns illuminate the very real, even mundane, decisions that go into purchasing and selling sex. Bernstein's genius as an ethnographer lies in her ability to present her subjects in a way that makes us see their struggles as our own: caring for a dependent or wanting to succeed in running a small business; finding an intimate companion during a busy work week or enjoying safe, no-strings attached sex.
In addition to these highlights, *Temporarily Yours* includes a fascinating chapter on prostitution and the law in the United States and Europe, as well as a section critiquing so-called "John Schools" (where johns are penalized for purchasing sex and made to sit through a traffic school-type reeducation program) in San Francisco. All in all, then, Bernstein's study is smart, comprehensive, and endlessly generative of new questions and ideas. In its broadest interpretation, *Temporarily Yours* uses the domestic sex trade to offer up a mirror to our own conceptions of love, pleasure, risk, and work in our postindustrial age.
Bernstein's book is especially relevant given the media's fascination with the lives of escorts over the past year, ever since Eliot Spitzer was fingered in a federal prostitution ring bust. Now we have brothel prostitutes on *Tyra*, Showtime's *Secret Diary of a Call Girl*, and a host of news programs on the subject (Bernstein was featured in MSNBC's *Dirty Money*).
Before you get caught up in the hype, though, I urge you to read *Temporarily Yours*. Bernstein's even-handed analysis avoids sensationalizing the work of escorts by showing how what they do is part and parcel of well-established social structures and economic practices. In addition, excerpts from her interviews with prostitutes and johns illuminate the very real, even mundane, decisions that go into purchasing and selling sex. Bernstein's genius as an ethnographer lies in her ability to present her subjects in a way that makes us see their struggles as our own: caring for a dependent or wanting to succeed in running a small business; finding an intimate companion during a busy work week or enjoying safe, no-strings attached sex.
In addition to these highlights, *Temporarily Yours* includes a fascinating chapter on prostitution and the law in the United States and Europe, as well as a section critiquing so-called "John Schools" (where johns are penalized for purchasing sex and made to sit through a traffic school-type reeducation program) in San Francisco. All in all, then, Bernstein's study is smart, comprehensive, and endlessly generative of new questions and ideas. In its broadest interpretation, *Temporarily Yours* uses the domestic sex trade to offer up a mirror to our own conceptions of love, pleasure, risk, and work in our postindustrial age.
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