Book Review: The Subject of Prostitution: Sex Work, Law and Social Theory (original) (raw)
2017, Social & Legal Studies
Jane Scoular's book is a tour de force. It is the book those in the field of sexual regulation and the law have been waiting for to reignite and redirect a stagnated debate. Scoular's principle objective is to intervene in contemporary prostitution politics, which privileges law as the solution to the 'problem' of prostitution. The subject of the legal regulation of prostitution has received considerable academic and public policy attention. It is striking, however, that little has been written about how law matters in contemporary sex work. Against a backdrop of unprecedented legal reform across national and international contexts that purport to 'protect' sex workers and criminalize those who purchase their sexual services, Jane Scoular's recent book provides a ground breaking and in-depth analysis of the modern subject of prostitution. Drawing on post-structural approaches to the 'subject' and in particular Michel Foucault's theory of governmentality, Scoular concentrates on how law plays a constitutive role in how prostitution emerges as a 'problem' of governance. Over the course of six chapters, she pursues 'a genealogy of the modern subject of prostitution' to trace and analyse changes in how law works in social relations. And ultimately how this impacts on prostitution as a social practice. Scoular attempts to unsettle law from its hegemonic position in prostitution politics in specific epochs and develop the 'first post-structural account of both the sociopolitical subject of prostitution and of law' (p. 17). Scoular argues by understanding law as embedded in social relations we can shift our focus beyond 'what law says it does' to 'what it actually does' in the context of prostitution regulation (p. 19). Scoular begins her genealogy of the subject of prostitution and law in Chapters 2 and 3 when she examines the historical, political and ideological terrain in which prostitution becomes a 'social' problem in the Victorian era. One of the strengths of this book is Scoular's close and critical analysis of the key role law plays in making prostitution the object of governmentality. In this regard, she highlights how the Contagious Diseases Acts 1866 and 1869 illuminate not only how law constitutes the subject of prostitution but also a much wider system of social control. Scoular demonstrates how the language of governmentality, with its emphasis on creating 'populations' to be governed, not only transforms legal power into mechanisms of governmentality but also makes prostitution a distinct legal category and inscribes a disciplinary regime on prostitutes' bodies. She recognizes also the strategic possibilities prostitution as a problem of governance creates
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