[URBANTH-L]Book Release

[Yasmina Katsulis]

Sex Work and the City
The Social Geography of Health and Safety in Tijuana, Mexico
By Yasmina Katsulis

A gateway at the U.S.-Mexico border, Tijuana is a complex urban center
with a sizeable population of sex workers. An in-depth case study of the
trade, Sex Work and the City is the first major ethnographic publication
on contemporary prostitution in this locale, providing a detailed
analysis of how sex workers' experiences and practices are shaped by
policing and regulation.

Contextualizing her research within the realm of occupational risk,
Yasmina Katsulis examines the experiences of a diverse range of sex
workers in the region and explores the implications of prostitution,
particularly regarding the spheres of class hierarchies, public health,
and other broad social effects. Based on eighteen months of intensive
fieldwork and nearly 400 interviews with sex workers, customers, city
officials, police, local health providers, and advocates, Sex Work and
the City describes the arenas of power and the potential for
disenfranchisement created by municipal laws designed to regulate the
trade. Providing a detailed analysis of this subculture's significance
within Tijuana and its implications for debates over legalization of
"vice" elsewhere in the world, Katsulis draws on powerful narratives as
workers describe the risks of their world, ranging from HIV/AIDS and
rape (by police or customers) to depression, work-related stress, drug
and alcohol addiction, and social stigma. Insightful and compelling, Sex
Work and the City captures the lives (and deaths) of a population whose
industry has broad implications for contemporary society at large.

YASMINA KATSULIS is Assistant Professor of Women's and Gender Studies
at Arizona State University in Tempe. A medical anthropologist with
postdoctoral training at Yale's Center for Interdisciplinary Research on
AIDS, she has garnered research support from the National Institutes of
Health and the National Science Foundation.

Inter-America Series
Duncan Earle, Howard Campbell, and John Peterson, series editors

January 2009
196 pp., 16 b&w photos
ISBN 978-0-292-71886-9, $50.00, hardcover
www.utexas.edu/utpress/books/katsex.html
Order through the above link or by calling 1-800-252-3206



Dr. Yasmina Katsulis
Assistant Professor, Women and Gender Studies Program
Honors Faculty and Faculty Honors Advisor
Arizona State University
PO Box 874902
Tempe AZ 85287-4902
(480) 727-6354 (office)
(480) 965-2357 (fax)
(480) 677-9461 (cell)