If Sex Work is Work, What Kind of Work Is It?

Seminar Abstract

What can sex work tell us about contemporary capitalism and the organisation of work? 

In this presentation, the dramatic changes to the sex industry that have occurred in the last twenty years are read as symptomatic of shifts in labour-capital relations, the social relations of technology and construction of gender.

One key argument is that sex, specifically commercial sex, is usefully and necessarily understood in politically and social terms as reproductive labour. 

While the commodification of sex is not a recent occurrence, a significant amount of reproductive labour is now structured by the market and the wage relation.

To this end, this presentation considers resistance among sex workers and their demands for labour rights and legal reforms that provide insights into wider strategies of dissent and transformation of gender and class in Britain today.

Booking

This is a free seminar. We encourage you to bring your friends, colleagues and classmates along.

Speaker bio

Dr Camille Barbagallo is a Post Doctorate Research Fellow at Leeds University Business School.

Camille's research, situated within the sociology of work and drawing from gender and race studies, explores how reproduction of labour-power is valued, what it cost and who pays the bill.

Engaging specifically with Marxist feminist theories of social reproduction, Camille's research examines the specific ways that gender and race are implicated in processes of reproductive labour.

Her research interests include;

• Labour
• Womens work
• Social reproduction
• Neoliberal subjectivities

Camille was awarded the Sociological Review Fellowship (2017 - 2018) and has taught at Hobart and William Smith Colleges in the USA and Goldsmiths College as well as the University of East London.