| Physical description |
xii, 139 pages : illustrations ; 24 cm. |
| Series |
Asian Studies Association of Australia Women in Asia series ; 49. |
|
ASAA women in Asia series ; 49.
|
| Bibliography |
Includes bibliographical references and index. |
| Contents |
Introduction 1 -- Situating desire, duty, and debt 2 -- Critiquing 'development' 6 -- Public policy as an avenue of historical inquiry 7 -- Western versus culturally nuanced feminism 10 -- Sources 11 -- Chapters in this book 12 -- Notes 13 -- 1 Sexual contracts 18 -- Role of the individual in mainland Southeast Asia 18 -- Role of Buddhism in defining individual rights and responsibilities 19 -- Sexual contracts and discourses of self 21 -- Defining sexual contracts 24 -- Notes 26 -- 2 Presumptive permanence 28 -- 'ranks' of marriage 30 -- Colonial-era codification 33 -- Triple standards 35 -- Legacies of colonial failure 49 -- Notes 50 -- 3 'Other' women 56 -- Relative rights in the pre-colonial period 56 -- Colonial confusion 61 -- Cultural continuance 64 -- Notes 66 -- 4 Slavery and sexual labour 69 -- Slavery prior to c. 1800 69 -- Attempting abolition 76 -- Notes 84 -- 5 Diligent daughters 88 -- Debt bondage to c. 1800 89 -- Colonial (failed) interventions 92 -- Abolition of slavery 95 -- Eradication of 'slavery' - but not of debt bondage 96 -- Notes 98 -- 6 Geographies of desire, duty, and debt 101 -- Commodification of sex 101 -- Women as vectors 104 -- Traffic panic 112 -- Notes 115. |
| Summary |
"This book brings an important new perspective to the study of sex trafficking by considering the different types of social contracts which existed in the past that had sexual labour or activity as an inherent component. It outlines the nature of these social institutions - marriage, temporary marriage, debt bondage and slavery - which were recognised in local law, carried no stigma and endured for long periods. It discusses how labour pledged in return for a loan of cash or as a result of a punishment dictated by the state often included sexual labour, and how this could take the form of servicing the master of the house, or his guests, or foreign travellers, who paid the person who held the debt for the privilege, and how even wives of different ranks, temporary or permanent, and children, were pledged as sureties for loans. The book, which covers the modern states of Myanmar, Thailand, Laos, Cambodia and Vietnam, argues that cultural norms are not static, that sexual contracts are more complicated than simply "marriage" or "prostitution", and that as trafficking for sexual purposes increases those engaging in humanitarian intervention would do well to understand better the historical underpinnings of cultural understandings of familial and contractual obligations"-- |
| Subject |
Human trafficking -- Southeast Asia.
|
|
Sex -- Economic aspects -- Southeast Asia -- History.
|
|
Sex -- Social aspects -- Southeast Asia -- History.
|
| ISBN |
9781138683075 |
|
9781315544731 |
|
