Sun, Sex, and Gold: Tourism and Sex Work in the Caribbean / Edition 1

by Kamala Kempadoo, Jessica Tomiko Anders, Christel Antonius-Smits, Amalia L. Cabezas University of California,, Shirley Campbell

Overview

With tourism accounting for approximately thirty percent of the Caribbean's GDP and twenty-four percent of employment, a link between the sex trade and the tourism industry has gained recent attention. Shifts in global production, an increase of disposable income for pleasure and recreation, and a desire by North Americans and Europeans for an experience of 'exotic' cultures, are often claimed to be the cause. This volume explores the connections between the global economy and sex work, focusing on the experiences and views of women, men, and children who sell sex. Apart from attention to sex tourism in Cuba, the Dominican Republic, Barbados, and Jamaica, the book also examines sex work in the gold mining industry in the hinterlands of Suriname and Guyana, and in the entertainment sector in Belize and the Dutch Antilles. It presents new insights into the Caribbean sex trade and provides proposals and strategies for addressing the situation in the twenty-first century.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780847695171
Publisher:	Rowman & Littlefield Publishers, Inc.
Publication date:	10/27/1999
Edition description:	New Edition
Pages:	368
Product dimensions:	6.06(w) x 9.04(h) x 1.09(d)

About the Author

Kamala Kempadoo is a sociologist and assistant professor of women's studies at the University of Colorado-Boulder. She directed a regional Caribbean research project on tourism and the sex trade, and is editor of Global Sex Workers: Rights, Resistance and Redefinition.

Table of Contents

Part 1 Introduction Chapter 2 Continuities and Change: Five Centuries of Prositution in the Caribbean Part 3 Tourism, Globalization and "The Exotic" Chapter 4 Fantasy Islands: Exploring the Demand for Sex Tourism Chapter 5 Globalization, Tourism and the International Sex Trade Chapter 6 Back to the Future? Women, Race, and Tourism in Cuba Part 7 The Hustle and Struggle Sector Chapter 8 Women's Work is Never Done: Sex Tourism in Sosúa, the Dominican Republic Chapter 9 "Come to Jamaica and Feel All Right": Tourism and the Sex Trade Chapter 10 Bleak Pasts, Bleak Futures: Life Paths of Thirteen Young Prostitutes in Cartagena, Colombia Chapter 11 Tourism-Oriented Prostitution in Barbados: The Case of the Beach Boy and the White Female Tourist Chapter 12 Tourism and the Sex Trade in St. Maarten and Curaçao, the Netherlands Antilles Chapter 13 The Muchachas of Orange Walk Town, Belize Chapter 14 Sex and Gold: Exploring the Link Between Small-Scale Gold Mining and the Commercial Sex in the Rainforest of Suriname Part 15 Strategies for the Twenty-First Century Chapter 16 "Givin' Lil Bit Fuh Lil Bit": Sex Work and Sex Workers in Guyana Chapter 17 For the Children: International Policies and Law on Sex Tourism Chapter 18 A Human Rights Perspective on the Sex Trade in the Caribbean and Beyond Chapter 19 Bibliography

Editorial Reviews

A pathbreaking critical examination of sex tourism in the Caribbean. .. casts the Caribbean sex trade within global contexts of inequality and power that reveals as much about our own desires and distorted concepts of gender, sexuality, and race as about the sex workers themselves.

Helen Safa

An important new contribution to on-going debates about the sources and meanings of sex work globally.. .. Most notedly, presents new research on relatively underexplored territory: The presence of women as sex (and romance) tourists, and men as sex workers.

Deborah Brock

We hear male tourists' fantasies about desire and control, we hear women from Cuba, Jamaica, Guyana, Curacao and the Dominican Republic strategize, hope, and detail abuses they endure.. .. A smart, nuanced look at how globalization is being racially sexualized.

Cynthia Enloe

In this fascinating and compelling collection, tourism and sex work are presented, almost, as slave narratives of the current era.. .. In these accounts emerge snippets of the possibilities contained in sexualized and racialized encounters for the reconfiguration of power.

Percy C. Hintzen

By taking on the Caribbean, Sun Sex, and Gold forces North Americans to look more closely at the ubiquitous selling of brown women’s bodies in the promotion of those islands as the ultimate pleasure spot for tired, repressed Americans. . . . Original ethnographic studies of sex-workers and their clients, with plenty of eye-opening quotes from workers and clients themselves. . . . Contains urgent and thought-provoking material that deserves a wide audience.

The Progressive - Sonia Shaw

An intriguing and insightful contribution to international and Caribbean feminist scholarship and political economy. Sun, Sex, and Gold goes to the root of some of the most fundamental and highly complex intersections of international capitalism and sexual intimacy and identity. . . . A major contribution toward understanding ourselves as gendered and sexual beings in the context of our colonial and post(neo)-colonial reality.

Centre for Gender and Development Studies

An intriguing and insightful contribution to international and Caribbean feminist scholarship and political economy. Sun, Sex, and Gold goes to the root of some of the most fundamental and highly complex intersections of international capitalism and sexual intimacy and identity. . . . A major contribution toward understanding ourselves as gendered and sexual beings in the context of our colonial and post(neo)-colonial reality.

Rhoda Reddock

By taking on the Caribbean, Sun Sex, and Gold forces North Americans to look more closely at the ubiquitous selling of brown women’s bodies in the promotion of those islands as the ultimate pleasure spot for tired, repressed Americans. . . . Original ethnographic studies of sex-workers and their clients, with plenty of eye-opening quotes from workers and clients themselves. . . . Contains urgent and thought-provoking material that deserves a wide audience.
— Sonia Shaw

The Progressive