[URBANTH-L]CFP: Sexing Travel: Intimacy and Subjectivity in Women's International Tourism

[Angela Jancius]

Call for papers for book:

Sexing Travel: Intimacy and Subjectivity in Women's International Tourism

Edited by Susan Frohlick and Jessica Jacobs
Abstracts accepted until January 15, 2008
Full chapters due by July 1, 2008
2009 publication target date

We are seeking ethnographically informed papers that focus on the multiple 
dimensions of women's participation in sexual and intimate relationships 
with local men or women in international tourist destinations, to be 
included in an edited volume on transnational/cultural intimacy and sexual 
subjectivity in women's travel. We are currently looking into various 
channels for publication, and are aiming for eight contributors.

Scholarship on 'ethno-sexual relations' (Nagel, 2003) between tourists and 
locals is growing and reflects, in our view, the expansion of sex tourism in 
late capitalism from a predominantly masculine terrain (tied into ideas 
around the modern subject) and historical practice to a global phenomenon 
that includes the gendered consumption practices of First World women shaped 
by some women's increasing economic power and mobility. Most work to date 
draws almost exclusively upon a political-economic framework that refers to 
"female sex tourists" or "romance tourists", whose parameters are defined by 
women's similarity (or difference) to male sex tourists. As well as 
sustaining the male subject at the center of the conceptualization of female 
sex tourism, we feel these approaches ignore the complex sensorial and 
emotional dimensions of women's inter-racial, transcultural sexual and 
intimate relationships with local people in largely Southern and Third World 
countries. They also miss the opportunity to comment on the role these 
encounters play in new subject formations and transnational relationships.

We encourage papers that open up the current narrow focus of debate and do 
not simply reproduce the argument that First World female tourists are 
exploiting their white feminine privilege by taking sex from young men on 
the beaches of the Gambia (or Barbados, Bali, Indonesia, etc) in exchange 
for money, goods or other less tangible benefits. We are particularly 
interested in papers with a strong empirical grounding, based on fieldwork 
and ethnographic methodology or historical approaches, that consider the 
diverse international tourist spaces and multifaceted contexts in which 
these relationships occur. We especially welcome papers that, as a 
collection, are multi-disciplinary (e.g. anthropology, geography, sociology, 
women's and gender studies, cultural and media studies, tourist studies, 
history), examine a range of destinations and landscapes, and deal with a 
variety of nationalities and ethnicities. Please send an abstract of between 
300 and 500 words before January 15, 2008 to Dr. Susan Frohlick 
<frohlick at cc.umanitoba.ca> and Dr. Jessica Jacobs 
<jessica.jacobs at blueyonder.co.uk>. Full papers of approximately 7, 000 to 8, 
000 words will be expected by April 1, 2008.

Dr. Susan Frohlick
Associate Professor, Anthropology
University of Manitoba
435 Fletcher Argue
Winnipeg, MB Canada
(204) 474-7872