Post-fordist desires: The commodity aesthetics of bangkok sex shows
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2010-04-01
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This essay investigates the political economy of sexuality through an interpretation of sex shows for foreigners in Bangkok, Thailand. Reading these performances as both symptoms of, and analytical commentaries on, Western consumer desire, the essay suggests the 'pussy shows' parody the mass production that was a hallmark of Western masculine identity under Fordism. This reading makes a case for the erotic generativity of capitalism, illuminating how Western, post-Fordist political economy of the post-1970s generated demand for these erotic services in Asia and how Western, heterosexual masculine desire is integrated into global capitalist circuits. © 2010 Springer Science+Business Media B.V.
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Wilson, A (2010). Post-fordist desires: The commodity aesthetics of bangkok sex shows. Feminist Legal Studies, 18(1). pp. 53–67. 10.1007/s10691-010-9145-2 Retrieved from https://hdl.handle.net/10161/6761.
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Ara Wilson
In my scholarly work, I am especially interested in two combinations: interpreting empirical research through theoretical reflection and connecting economic systems to sex/gender systems and sexuality. I've taken these bridging projects in a few directions:
- ethnographic fieldwork in Bangkok, Thailand, with interest in the Southeast Asian region (on hiatus since Covid19);
- Science & Technology Studies (STS), e.g., projects on medical tourism, infrastructure, and standardization;
- a political economy of sex/gender, or queer political economy (QPE)
- rigorous conceptualization of keywords, such as intimacy, infrastructure, or the history of gender itself.
- histories of the scholarly fields of Anthropology and Women's Studies
- transnational networks relevant to sex/gender, e.g., the UN-NGO orbit and the World Social Forum.
I have taught a range of undergraduate courses in Gender Studies and regularly teach Money/Sex/Power and for many years team-taught Nature/Nurture-Sex/Gender with a neurobiologist. I co-ran a project on Transgender Studies and helped initiate GSF's courses on Introduction to Transgender Studies and Digital Feminism.
At the graduate level, I have led seminars in core feminist areas (feminist theory; transnational feminist theory; research design; sexuality studies) as well as topical courses on Infrastructure; The 1970s; and Care Economies (team taught). When serving as the DGS for GSF, I enjoyed mentoring graduate students from various departments on dissertation writing and entering the unnerving market for jobs and fellowships.
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