An Interdisciplinary History of Prostitution

This project involves an interdisciplinary historical analysis of the sex trade. It approaches prostitution from a multi-layered perspective that integrates subaltern history, social geography and economic sociology to situate the shifts of the trade on a double axial system: time and space; and socio-political and economic dimensions. As such, the envisaged research will introduce an unconventional and challenging methodology to the historical field and to the history of prostitution in particular. We will study the trajectories of local and foreign subaltern persons active in the sex industry by means of a qualitative and quantitative analysis of the influx dynamics, career changes and contextual factors that influenced their (freedom of) movement into or within the sex industry. It will thus focus on the organization of the trade in urban and (semi)peripheral landscapes, its entanglements with other (licit and illicit) economic activities and the dialectical relationship between the hegemonic center and those situated outside or at the margins of mainstream society.