Ways of Talking about Prostitutes and Prostitution

Abstract

This chapter examines the academic discourse on prostitutes and prostitution with a view to understanding how it is that various explanations make the type of sense about women’s involvement in prostitution that they do, and as a means of setting the scene for the empirical investigation that follows in Part II. It deconstructs existing explanations in order to reveal the conceptual demarcations drawn and not drawn that form the basis upon which particular types of question can be asked about prostitutes and specific answers can be given.