NCJ Number
192611
Journal
Social Problems Volume: 48 Issue: 4 Dated: November 2001 Pages: 545-571
Date Published
November 2001
Length
27 pages
Annotation
This article explores how global forces have shaped the production and consumption of sex tourism in two very different cities, Amsterdam and Havana, Cuba.
Abstract
"Sex tourism" is a term that attempts to capture varieties of leisure travel that have as a part of their purpose the purchase of sexual services. "Sex tourism" highlights the convergence between prostitution and tourism, links the global and the local, and draws attention to both the production and consumption of sexual services. This article focuses on how the global forces that have shaped the growth of sex tourism connect the practice of sex work in two disparate cities with globalized sex tourism. First, the authors explore the global forces that influence the production and consumption of sex tourism. They argue that global forces influence the production of globalized sex tourism via the increased movement of bodies associated with migration and tourism. Global forces also influence the consumption of sexual services by fostering tourism as an industry aimed at those who have the resources to travel and purchase what they desire. A second goal of the analysis is to profile cities as strategic sites of globalization and to identify some of the mediating institutions that connect cities to the global forces that shape sex tourism. The analysis of sex tourism in Amsterdam and Havana suggests that the forces subsumed under the term globalization are reshaping local contexts, whether their histories are capitalist or socialist, and often doing so in ways that cannot be anticipated. In the cities analyzed, there is a high probability that local institutions will increasingly serve the economic interests associated with "tourism" as a way to ensure one more niche in the global marketplace. 116 references