ABSTRACT
Sex has always had financial pulling power beyond the marital sheets. The attraction of money for sex means that such encounters have come to be seen as having erotic capital in which profit variously rules over emotion, moral values and productive relationships. This chapter focuses primarily on three domains in which sex is for sale, local prostitution, the global sex tourism industry and lap and table dancing, and reveals how terms that denote sexual activity in these arenas are highly contested and fought over for their moral, legal and social capital. In Western societies some have argued that the sexual economy is characterized by three elements: financial remuneration, sex and psychological effects. For Elizabeth Bernstein, then, the commerce of sex has shifted from an emotionally contained sexual release characteristic of modern prostitution to an emerging post-industrial erotic economy where what is bought and sold increasingly requires emotional engagement as well as sexual labour.
