1.

Record Nr.

UNINA9910554217603321

Autore

Thusi I. India

Titolo

Policing Bodies : Law, Sex Work, and Desire in Johannesburg / / I. India Thusi

Pubbl/distr/stampa

Stanford, CA : , : Stanford University Press, , [2021]

©2021

ISBN

1-5036-2975-9

Edizione

[1st ed.]

Descrizione fisica

1 online resource (240 p.)

Disciplina

306.74096822/15

Soggetti

Human rights - South Africa

Law enforcement - South Africa - Johannesburg

Prostitution - Law and legislation - South Africa

Prostitution - South Africa - Johannesburg

Sex workers - Legal status, laws, etc - South Africa

LAW / Gender & the Law

Lingua di pubblicazione

Inglese

Formato

Materiale a stampa

Livello bibliografico

Monografia

Sommario/riassunto

Sex work occupies a legally gray space in Johannesburg, South Africa, and police attitudes towards it are inconsistent and largely unregulated. As I. India Thusi argues in Policing Bodies, this results in both room for negotiation that can benefit sex workers and also extreme precarity in which the security police officers provide can be offered and taken away at a moment's notice. Sex work straddles the line between formal and informal. Attitudes about beauty and subjective value are manifest in formal tasks, including police activities, which are often conducted in a seemingly ad hoc manner. However, high-level organizational directives intended to regulate police obligations and duties toward sex workers also influence police action and tilt the exercise of discretion to the formal. In this liminal space, this book considers how sex work is policed and how it should be policed. Challenging discourses about sexuality and gender that inform its regulation, Thusi exposes the limitations of dominant feminist arguments regarding the legal treatment of sex work. This in-depth, historically informed



ethnography illustrates the tension between enforcing a country's laws and protecting citizens' human rights.