The world of prostitution in late imperial Austria / Nancy M. Wingfield.

Format:

Book

Author/Creator:

Wingfield, Nancy M. (Nancy Meriwether), author.

Language:

English

Subjects (All):

Prostitution--Austria--History--20th century.

Prostitution.

Trials (Prostitution)--Austria--History--20th century.

Trials (Prostitution).

Prostitution--Government policy--Austria--History--20th century.

Sexually transmitted diseases--Austria--History--20th century.

Sexually transmitted diseases.

History.

Prostitution--Government policy.

Austria--History--1867-1918.

Austria.

Physical Description:

xv, 272 pages : illustrations, maps ; 25 cm

Edition:

First edition.

Place of Publication:

Oxford ; New York, NY : Oxford University Press, 2017.

Summary:

This study of prostitution addresses issues of female agency and experience, as well as contemporary fears about sexual coercion and the forced movement of girls/women, and police surveillance. Rather than treating prostitutes solely as victims or problems to be solved, as so often has been the case in much of the literature, Nancy M. Wingfield seeks to find the historical subjects behind fin-de-siecle constructions of prostitutes, to restore agency to the women who participated in commercial sex, illuminate their quotidian experiences, and to place these women, some of whom made a rational economic decision to sell their bodies, in the larger social context of late imperial Austria. Wingfield investigates the interactions of both registered and clandestine prostitutes with the vice police and other supervisory agents, including physicians and court officials, as well as with the inhabitants of these women's world, including brothel clients and madams, and pimps, rather than focusing top-down on the state-constructed apparatus of surveillance. Close reading of a broad range of primary and secondary sources shows that some prostitutes in late imperial Austria took control over their own fates, at least as much as other working-class women, in the last decades before the end of the Monarchy. And after 1918, bureaucratic transition did not necessarily parallel political transition.

Contents:

1 The Riehl Trial 17

2 Reforming Prostitution in Post-Riehl Vienna 47

3 Peripheries: Regulating Prostitution in the Provinces 79

4 Brothel Life: Tolerated Prostitutes, their Clients, the Madams, and the Vice Police 110

5 Clandestine Prostitutes: Women of the Streets, their Pimps, the Vice Police, and the Public 137

6 The Trafficking Panic in Late Imperial Austria 171

7 Morals and Morale during the Great War 209.

Notes:

Includes bibliographical references and index.

ISBN:

0198801653

9780198801658

OCLC:

971532702