This article examines local forms of women's solidarity and political resistance in Madre de Dios, Peru, within the context of international feminist debates about freedom and "consent" in the sex industry. Through the figures of two "madams" who played integral roles in organizing the sex workers of Puerto Maldonado, the regional capital, I address issues of voice in constructing policies aimed to protect sex workers. These women's experiences both enrich and trouble analyses of "consent" in prostitution and sextrafficking economies, where nongovernmental organizations and the state also stand to profit, adding to the traffic in ideas about agency, power, and responsibility. From the perspective of a "middle ground" feminist, I argue that ignoring the voices of the very women affected by antiprostitution and anti-trafficking policies only hinders efforts to create solidarity across race and class.Este artículo examina las formas locales de la solidaridad de las mujeres y la resistencia política en Madre de Dios, Perú, en el contexto de los debates feministas internacionales sobre la libertad y el "consentimiento" de la industria del sexo. A través de dos proxenetas de sexo femenino que tenían un rol integral en la organización de las trabajadoras sexuales de Puerto Maldonado, restituyo el discurso para la construcción de políticas destinadas a proteger a las trabajadoras sexuales. Las experiencias de estas mujeres enriquecen y también cuestionan los análisis de "consentimiento" en las economías de la prostitución y la trata sexual, donde las ONG y el Estado también se benefician, por lo que incorporo en el análisis ideas de agencia, poder y responsabilidad. Desde la perspectiva de una feminista de "terreno medio", sostengo que no hacer caso a las voces de las propias mujeres afectadas por las políticas de lucha contra la prostitución y contra la trata sólo obstaculiza los esfuerzos para crear solidaridad entre las mujeres.
This article examines physical and linguistic sites through which women and words about women circulate along Latin America’s Interoceanic Road, running from the Brazilian to the Peruvian coast. I argue that the discourse on women circulates with specific linguistic-packaging, made and remade at different sites. In analyzing how these sites form ‘cartographies of communicability’ (Briggs 2005), this article engages Marilena Chauí’s discussion of the ‘semiophor’ (2000) to refer to people and things that once pulled out of daily circulation, take on new meanings beyond their material existence. By complicating the socially viable/acceptable identities offered/imposed upon these women – victims or voluntary agents, this article seeks to avoid reinscriptions of difference that “muzzle the subaltern” (Spivak 1988), advocating for a practice of ethnographic vigilance.
Malian women and children represent the poorest as well as the most difficult to reach through written media. The interrelated practices of dancing, drumming, and storytelling transmit history, cultural beliefs, and current events for people who do not read and write. Researchers in the social sciences and officials for international aid organizations struggle with the circulation and reception of public health literature. They now recognize that native non-governmental organizations with staff that are fluent not only in the native languages but also in the social mores, better communicate with under-served populations through means other than billboards, pamphlets, or power-point presentations. The body, in both a general Western and Malian tradition, plays a particular role in how we come to know the world. This paper describes research conducted in Mali on female circumcision with international aid organizations, native NGOs, and independent human rights activists. Three interconnected areas form a triangular framework: how different research methods like dancing, drumming, storytelling, and soccer can offer valuable phenomenological insights to lived experience; the ethics of learning and listening to these various voices that transmit sexual health knowledge; and the ethics of engaging and disseminating such knowledge. The talking drums elicit new ways of seeing, being, and listening along with ethical ethnographic conundrums.
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