Body/Sex/Work: Intimate, embodied and sexualised labour

(Paperback)

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Body/Sex/Work focuses on the intimate, embodied and sexualised labour that occurs within body work and sex work. Bringing together an internationally renowned group of academics, it explores, empirically and theoretically, labour processes, workplace relations, regulation and resistance in some of the many work sites that make up the body work and sex work sectors. The book makes a key contribution to research recognising the embodiment of labour and the body, reframing the key questions in critical studies of work and employment. Key Benefits: - The first book that draws together the sub-disciplines of body work and sex work - Written by leading international experts - Contains cutting edge empirical research on contemporary topics Body/Sex/Work is an ideal companion for upper level undergraduate and postgraduate students of labour and organisation studies, body studies, gender, and sexuality. It will also appeal to researchers and lecturers in these fields.

Reviews

'This is an important book which makes a much needed contribution to the sociology of work as it draws together sex-work and body-work conceptually. In doing so it carefully reflects the intimate, embodied and sexualised labour of these two modes of work, through examples ranging from erotic dance, hairdressing, the care of residents in nursing homes, to phone sex workers.' - Dr. Rachela Colosi, University of Lincoln, UK 'This book is a thought-provoking and timely contribution to important debates on the lived experience and management of the body at work. The authors of the various chapters in Body/Sex/Work explore this relationship in a variety of fascinating yet relatively neglected workplace settings, offering significant insights that should be of considerable interest to students and researchers within a range of social science disciplines.' - Dr. Melissa Tyler, Reader in Management, University of Essex, UK 'This book makes two key contributions. By using the lens of employment and employment relations to study body work, it throws light on how this work is socially organized, for example in terms of commodification and space for resistance. And its insights into this form of labour advance our wider understanding of the varieties of work and employment in modern economies.' - Paul Edwards, Professor of Employment Relations and Head of the Department of Management, University of Birmingham, UK

Author Bio

CAROL WOLKOWITZis a Reader in the Sociology Department, University of Warwick, UK. After mooting the concept of body work in an article in Work, Employment and Society (2002), her book Bodies at Work was published in 2006. In 2007-9 she led an ESRC-funded research seminar series on 'Body Work: Critical Issues, Future Agendas' (co-organised with Julia Twigg and Rachel Cohen), which led to a special issue of Sociology of Health and Illness on 'Body Work in Health and Social Care' (2011) and other publications on the relation between embodiment and paid work, including, with Chris Warhurst, an article in another Palgrave volume in this series, Working Life: Renewing Labour Process Analysis. Her other books include the co-authored Glossary of Feminist Theory (Arnold, 2000) and two books on home-based work. She is currently researching the development of the body work landscape of South Florida for an article in a Special Section of Sociological Research Online on Visualising Work and Labour, co-edited with Phil Mizen. RACHEL LARA COHEN is Lecturer in Sociology in the University of Surrey, UK. Her interests are in the sociology of work and employment, especially 'non-standard work', including mobile work, self-employment and homeworking. She has published from her PhD research on the working lives of hairdressers in a range of peer-reviewed journals, as well as contributing a chapter to a previous volume in this series, Work Less, Live More. Her current research explores the working lives of car mechanics and accountants. She has co-edited a special issue of The Sociology of Health and Illness on 'body work' and contributed an article, which explored the labour process consequences of body work. She also co-edited an issue of The International Journal of Social Research Methodology on feminism and quantitative methods. She was co-organiser of an ESRC Seminar Series on Body Work, and of a 2011 conference on this theme. She is on the editorial board of Work, Employment and Society. TEELA SANDERSis Reader in Sociology of Crime and Deviance in the School of Sociology & Social Policy, University of Leeds, UK. Her current research interests are in the areas of regulating behaviours and she has conducted extensive research in the sex industry. Currently working on an ESRC follow-on funding EKT project on Sex Entertainment Venues. Her published books are Sex Work. A Risky Business (Willan Press, 2005), Paying for Pleasure: Men Who Buy Sex (Willan Press, 2008) and Prostitution: Sex Work, Policy and Practice (with M. O'Neill J. and J. Pitcher)(Sage, 2009). She is currently writing up an ESRC project on lap dancing in a co-authored book Flexible Workers: Labour, Regulation and Mobility in Lap Dancing (Routledge, 2012). She has been involved in several editing projects: recently with Kate Hardy and Sarah Kingston, an edited collection from a postgraduate conference New Sociologies of Sex Work (Ashgate, 2010) and Sex and Disability: Access, Identity and Policy (Disability Press, 2010) with Russell Shuttleworth. In 2009 she edited a special issue for Journal of Law and Society with Jane Scoular on regulation, sex work and neoliberalism. KATE HARDYis a Researcher at the Centre for Interdisciplinary Gender Studies, School of Sociology, University of Leeds, UK. She is currently working on an interdisciplinary project on aesthetic surgery. She is the author of journal articles on sex worker trade unionisation in Argentina, lap dancing, feminist methodology and geographies of sex work and co-editor of the edited collection Sociologies of Sex Work (Ashgate, 2010). She has recently worked with Teela Sanders on a large scale project funded by the ESRC on the lap dancing industry and is co-author with Sanders of the forthcoming book Flexible Workers: Regulation, Labour and Mobility in Lap Dancing (Routledge, 2013). Her academic interests include issues surrounding gender and political economy, sex work, trade union organising, atypical and informal work, women's movements, the body, gender, agency and resistance.