Gringo Gulch : sex, tourism, and social mobility in Costa Rica / Megan Rivers-Moore.

Format:

Book

Author/Creator:

Rivers-Moore, Megan, author.

Language:

English

Subjects (All):

Prostitution--Costa Rica--San José.

Prostitution.

Prostitutes--Costa Rica--San José--Social conditions.

Prostitutes.

Sex tourism--Costa Rica--San José.

Sex tourism.

Neoliberalism--Social aspects--Costa Rica--San José.

Neoliberalism.

Transnationalism--Social aspects--Costa Rica--San José.

Transnationalism.

Social aspects.

Social conditions.

Costa Rica.

Costa Rica--San José.

Physical Description:

x, 230 pages ; 24 cm

Place of Publication:

Chicago ; London : The University of Chicago Press, 2016.

Summary:

The story of sex tourism in the Gringo Gulch neighborhood of San Jose, Costa Rica, could be easily cost as the exploitation of poor local women by privileged North American men -men who are in a position to take advantage of the vast geopolitical inequalities that make Latin American women info suppliers of low-cost sexual labor. But in Gringo Gulch, Megan Rivers-Moore tells a more nuanced story. Rivers-Moore situates her ethnography at the intersections of gender, race, class, and national dimensions in the sex industry. Instead of casting sex workers as hapless victims and sex tourists as neoimperiolist racists, she reveals each group as involved in a complicated process of class mobility that must be situated within the sale and purchase of leisure and sex. These interactions operate within an almost entirely unregulated but highly competitive market beyond the reach of the state -bringing a distinctly neoliberal cost to the market. Book jacket.

Contents:

Introduction The commerce of sex in Costa Rica

Sex, class, and consumption Almighty gringos and the relational economy of sex tourism

Selling sex, selling care: affective labor in the tourism sector

Motherhood, consumption, and the purchase of respectability

Regulating sex in the age of neoliberalism The state and the sex industry

Good for the state, bad for the nation: race, space, and migration

Conclusion: getting ahead in Gringo Gulch.

Notes:

Includes bibliographical references and index.

ISBN:

9780226373386

022637338X

9780226373416

022637341X

OCLC:

927619698