Prostitution and the Ends of Empire

Scale, Governmentalities, and Interwar India

Nonfiction, Social & Cultural Studies, Social Science, Human Geography, History, Asian, India, Gender Studies
Cover of the book Prostitution and the Ends of Empire by Stephen Legg, Duke University Press
View on Amazon View on AbeBooks View on Kobo View on B.Depository View on eBay View on Walmart
Author: Stephen Legg ISBN: 9780822376170
Publisher: Duke University Press Publication: September 19, 2014
Imprint: Duke University Press Books Language: English
Author: Stephen Legg
ISBN: 9780822376170
Publisher: Duke University Press
Publication: September 19, 2014
Imprint: Duke University Press Books
Language: English

Officially confined to red-light districts, brothels in British India were tolerated until the 1920s. Yet, by this time, prostitution reform campaigns led by Indian, imperial, and international bodies were combining the social scientific insights of sexology and hygiene with the moral condemnations of sexual slavery and human trafficking. These reformers identified the brothel as exacerbating rather than containing "corrupting prostitutes" and the threat of venereal diseases, and therefore encouraged the suppression of brothels rather than their urban segregation. In this book, Stephen Legg tracks the complex spatial politics surrounding brothels in the interwar period at multiple scales, including the local, regional, national, imperial, and global. Campaigns and state policies against brothels did not just operate at different scales but made scales themselves, forging new urban, provincial, colonial, and international formations. In so doing, they also remade the boundary between the state and the social, through which the prostitute was, Legg concludes, "civilly abandoned."

View on Amazon View on AbeBooks View on Kobo View on B.Depository View on eBay View on Walmart

Officially confined to red-light districts, brothels in British India were tolerated until the 1920s. Yet, by this time, prostitution reform campaigns led by Indian, imperial, and international bodies were combining the social scientific insights of sexology and hygiene with the moral condemnations of sexual slavery and human trafficking. These reformers identified the brothel as exacerbating rather than containing "corrupting prostitutes" and the threat of venereal diseases, and therefore encouraged the suppression of brothels rather than their urban segregation. In this book, Stephen Legg tracks the complex spatial politics surrounding brothels in the interwar period at multiple scales, including the local, regional, national, imperial, and global. Campaigns and state policies against brothels did not just operate at different scales but made scales themselves, forging new urban, provincial, colonial, and international formations. In so doing, they also remade the boundary between the state and the social, through which the prostitute was, Legg concludes, "civilly abandoned."

More books from Duke University Press

Cover of the book Telling to Live by Stephen Legg
Cover of the book Territories of the Soul by Stephen Legg
Cover of the book In the Aftermath of Genocide by Stephen Legg
Cover of the book One Night on TV Is Worth Weeks at the Paramount by Stephen Legg
Cover of the book The Promise of Happiness by Stephen Legg
Cover of the book The Poetics of Political Thinking by Stephen Legg
Cover of the book Memory and the Impact of Political Transformation in Public Space by Stephen Legg
Cover of the book Cinematic Prophylaxis by Stephen Legg
Cover of the book Nostalgia for the Modern by Stephen Legg
Cover of the book Jazz Among the Discourses by Stephen Legg
Cover of the book Jazz Cosmopolitanism in Accra by Stephen Legg
Cover of the book German Women for Empire, 1884-1945 by Stephen Legg
Cover of the book Joyce's Book of Memory by Stephen Legg
Cover of the book Markedness Theory by Stephen Legg
Cover of the book My Life with Things by Stephen Legg
We use our own "cookies" and third party cookies to improve services and to see statistical information. By using this website, you agree to our Privacy Policy