Prostitution and Beyond is an edited volume that discusses a spectrum of issues that are pertinent to sex workers in India. These issues have been dealt with on various research platforms before. By collectively presenting these diverse research conclusions, this volume explores the broader interconnectivity of issues that affect women in prostitution. Its objective is to reach a wider audience consisting of both women who are initiated, and those as yet uninitiated into prostitution. This volume takes on the responsibility of countering the negativity that has come to be indelibly associated with any mention of sex workers. This is reflected in the construction of the sections and the choice of papers, group discussions, interviews and commentaries included in this volume. Throughout its four sections of feminist discourse, ethnographic studies, socio-economic legal-health frameworks and cultural reflections, this book draws on the experiences of academicians, activists, researchers and scholars with varied backgrounds.

Producing the Spectacle of Kamathipura: The Politics of Red Light Visibility in Mumbai1

Producing the Spectacle of Kamathipura: The Politics of Red Light Visibility in Mumbai1

Producing the spectacle of Kamathipura: The politics of red light visibility in Mumbai
SvatiP.Shah

…[I]maging (and imagining) of specific spaces associated with sex work is a crucial means by which the (contested) identity of the female street prostitute as the ‘Other’ is produced and maintained’ (Hubbard, 1998).

In this article I examine the ways in which the iconicity of prostitution in the city of Mumbai is inflected by narratives of danger and moral decline, through public health and journalistic representations of one of the city's longest-standing red light areas, Kamathipura. In pulling apart this iconicity, I interrogate the idea that the experience of doing sex work here eclipses the importance of any other work or ...

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