Intimate Economies

This book illustrates how intimate workers in different socio-cultural contexts negotiate the commercial uses of their sexuality, identity, affect, and bodies, thereby often defying inequality, impoverishment, and resource depletion in their regions. The studies shed light on the multi-faceted experiences of subjects involved in intimate economies, oscillating between personal empowerment and agency, as well as the required subjection to the demands of the current market regime, entailing participation in precarious employment, often involving bodily risk, economic exploitation and stigmatization. The contributions demonstrate the interrelatedness of market intimacy, family economies, and transnational care arrangements, and thereby challenge Western notions of the subject and the free market.

Situates embodied commerce and intimate labor within the geographic, temporal, and cultural context of the global economy Draws on debates on "immaterial labor" to address the theoretical and moral questions of choice, consent and desire to participate in markets Presents the work of top anthropologists who engage in an analytical conversation about different kinds of physically intimate labor

Autorentext
Susanne Hofmann is currently guest professor at the Institute for Migration Research and Intercultural Studies (IMIS) at the University of Osnabrück. Her research explores training schemes on human trafficking prevention in Brazil and Mexico.
Adi Moreno is a research fellow at the Haifa Feminist Institute. Her research interests involve family practices, assisted reproduction markets and non-normative forms of parenting in the Israeli LGBT community.

Inhalt
Introduction: Global Intimate Economies - Discontents and Debates.- Part I: Commodifying Affects, Emotions and Selves.- 1 The Authentic Cybertariat? Commodifying Feeling, Accents and Cultural Identities in the Global South.- 2 Regulating Sexy Subjects: The Case of Brazilian Fashion Retail and its Affective Workforce.- 3 Emotional Labor and Ethical Practice: Professionalism Among Sex Workers in Tijuana.- Part II: Sexualized Bodies on the Market.- 4 A Feast of Men: Sexuality, Kinship and Predation in the Practices of Female Prostitution in Downtown Porto Alegre.- 5 Neoliberalism, Oil Wealth and Migrant Sex Work in the Chadian City of N'Djamena.- 6 The Use of life-enabling Practices Among waria: Vulnerability, Subsistence and Identity in Contemporary Yogyakarta.- Part III: Global Reproductive Commerce.- 7 Gestational Labors: Care Politics and Surrogates' Struggle.- 8 Surrogate Mothers and Gay Fathers: Navigating the Commercial Surrogacy Arrangement in India.- 9 Families on the Market Front.