ABSTRACT
If this book is be more than yet another description of sex tourism, illustrated by vignettes of tourist-sex worker interactions, it is necessary to generate a conceptual framework within which such encounters can be understood. The approach selected is an adaptation of what Turner (1982) has termed ‘comparative symbology’, that is, a comparative study and interpretation of symbols, but one within a wider socio-economic and political framework. It will be argued that both tourist and prostitute are symbols of, and actors seeking, needs generated by a wider social context formed by the modern era ushered in by the Industrial Revolution. Essential to this argument is the contention that both are marginal or liminal people. As marginal people, both tourists and prostitutes have had, at least in Western societies, their roles defined by hegemonies of power, and unless regard is paid to those structures, then at best any description of sex tourism remains but that – a description. Thus this first chapter seeks to establish tourism and that part of tourism known as ‘sex tourism’ within a historical context and a specific discourse. Within this explanation a number of themes are expounded, implied and hinted at, and in due course throughout this book, these facets will be elaborated and brought to the foreground. First, it will be argued that being a tourist is to occupy a liminal role within a temporal marginality. It will subsequently be argued that this is important in our understanding of sex tourism as in the western world the prostitute is also marginalised. The act of sex tourism can therefore be explained as an interaction between two sets of liminal people – but with a difference. The one, the tourist, is enacting a socially sanctioned and economically empowered marginality, while the second, the prostitute, is stigmatised as a whore, a woman of the night, as the scarlet woman. Yet, as will be described, such stigmatisation is now being challenged, made ambiguous and respectability sought by emphasising the role of female labour within the terminology of being a sex worker. Additionally, any analysis which focuses on women alone as prostitutes is but partial as male strippers and prostitutes are an emerging sector of the sex industry, while homosexual and lesbian holiday markets utilising sex for reasons of relaxation and self-identification are also of growing importance.
