Mother sold food, daughter sells her body: The cultural continuity of prostitution

This article provides a cultural interpretation of female prostitution in contemporary lowland Buddhist Thai society. The heterosexual transmission of AIDS through prostitution has exposed the shallowness of our understanding of prostitution as a sociocultural phenomenon. The data were collected thr...

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Bibliographic Details
Published in:Social science & medicine (1982) 1992-10, Vol.35 (7), p.891-901
Main Author: Muecke, Margorie A.
Format: Article
Language:English
Subjects:
AIDS
AIDS/HIV
Biological and medical sciences
Buddhism
Cross-Cultural Comparison
cultural analysis
Cultural aspects
Cultural Change
Cultural Identity
Culture
Daughters
Developing Countries
Economic conditions
Female
female prostitution
female prostitution Thailand cultural analysis AIDS
Fundamental and applied biological sciences. Psychology
Gender Identity
HIV Infections - prevention & control
HIV Infections - transmission
Humans
Personality. Affectivity
Prostitutes
Prostitution
Psychology. Psychoanalysis. Psychiatry
Psychology. Psychophysiology
Rationalization
Religion and Sex
Risk Factors
Sex Work - psychology
Sexuality. Sexual behavior
Social conditions & trends
Social Support
Social Values
Socioeconomic Factors
Thailand
Traditional Societies
Tropical medicine
Women
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Summary:This article provides a cultural interpretation of female prostitution in contemporary lowland Buddhist Thai society. The heterosexual transmission of AIDS through prostitution has exposed the shallowness of our understanding of prostitution as a sociocultural phenomenon. The data were collected through case studies, participant-observation, and review of Thai language media and texts. It is argued that in the past decade or so, the simultaneous rapid growth of prostitution as a lucrative sex industry and of the Thai economy as an emerging newly industrialized country (NIC) have, paradoxically, enabled female prostitutes to conserve the basic institutions of society. This has occured at a time when landlessness, rampant commercialism and poverty have threatened the survival of traditional lifeways among the majority rural agricultural population. Prostitution, although illegal, has flourished at least in part because it enables women, through remittances home and merit-making activities, to fulfil traditional cultural functions of daughters, conserving the institutions of family and village-level Buddhism, as well as of government.
ISSN:0277-9536
1873-5347
DOI:10.1016/0277-9536(92)90103-W