ABSTRACT
A global service-based consumer economy has profoundly altered the social relations around buying and selling sex. From fertility rituals in the temples of ancient Egypt, Greece, and India, global sex work "circuit," the contexts surrounding what regard as prostitution have changed. History, culture, and place impact the meaning, the organizational setting, and the actual exchanges involved in prostitution. From informal sales of local goods to maid services to an international sex tourist industry, transnational service economy is exploiting inequalities within a country, and between wealthy and disadvantaged nations. Tourist and leisure industries capitalize on dominant forms of heterosexual masculinity and do so in ways that encourage objectifying women as part of the experience. These experiences often rely on exotic, romantic myths about the simplicity of poverty or mysterious foreign locales in ways that stereotype people of color. The growth of a global leisure economy also transforms sense of place.
