Un-demonizing the Dirty Girl : Sex Work and Intimate Relationships in Urban China

Conventional wisdom has it that relationships between sex workers and their clients are based entirely on direct exchanges of sexual favours and money. The proposed study will consider whether sex workers and their clients can generate intimate relationships that go beyond pecuniary transactions. It will examine emotional labour of sex workers, their quest for cultural capital and technologies of embodiment, and the connection between money and intimacy. Emotional labour is the commodification of private emotions, intended to be sold for a profit in a capitalist economy. Technologies of embodiment refer to the processes by which women produce, transform or manipulate their bodies through particular kinds of body-related work that signify beauty and make their bodies look more attractive and appealing. Intimacy is the personal relations within which the interactions are built on knowledge and attention that are not widely available to third parties, and if the knowledge and attention are made widely available, they would likely endanger the social status of one of them. Building on these sociological concepts, the proposed study will ethnographically analyse both sides of the female sex worker/client relationship in karaoke lounges and bars in Dongguan, southern China, comparing the low-end sector (such as streetwalkers) with the high-end sector (such as women working in upscale hotels) of the industry. The hypothesis of the study is that as a result of social changes, the relationships shared between sex workers in the high-end sector and their clients (both local Chinese men and foreigners) may involve not only pecuniary transactions but also genuinely intimate and non-remunerative feelings. The relationships can best be explored by examining the complex connection between money and intimacy. Workers in the high-end sex industry make use of their earned economic capital to acquire cultural capital, and use technology as a marketing tool to forge longer-term intimate relationships while male clients in more commercialised, postindustrial cities in China begin to seek diverse types of sexual experiences. The study will aim to make a major contribution to the current literature on the sociology of sex work in China, which has thus far focused narrowly on sex workers and largely ignored the dynamics of worker/client relationships.