ABSTRACT
This introduction presents an overview of the key concepts discussed in the subsequent chapters of this book. The book acknowledges the importance of context without losing sight of the pressing need to highlight commonalities of both experience and circumstance among many sex workers throughout the world. It addresses fundamental questions regarding what aspects of the sex industry are empirically knowable given the myriad contextual and individual elements at work within it, including the institutional and social forces that shape what scholars in this field can accomplish. The book shows how people in the sex industry financially and emotionally support their children, family members, and intimate partners. It examines how legal, policy, and available support structures inform, constitute, or otherwise shape families and intimate relationships as well as the forms of support that sex industry workers receive from family members, intimate partners, and others. The chapter also examines how the sex industry has itself facilitated technological innovation.
