2134/4406
Phil Hubbard
Phil
Hubbard
Mary Whowell
Mary
Whowell
Revisiting the red light district: still neglected, immoral and marginal?
Loughborough University
2009
Urban geography
Sexuality
Regulation
Gender
Prostitution
EU
Earth Sciences not elsewhere classified
2009-03-31 11:42:22
Journal contribution
https://repository.lboro.ac.uk/articles/journal_contribution/Revisiting_the_red_light_district_still_neglected_immoral_and_marginal_/9481499
Twenty years ago, Ashworth et al (1988) offered a distinctive and
innovative interpretation of a neglected aspect of the urban scene: the red-light
district. Focusing on the location of female prostitution in a series of Western
European cities, their paper suggested that the geographies of sex work are
revealing of some of the ‘less obvious’ social and political processes that shape
urban space. Here, we revisit Ashworth et al’s paper in the light of subsequent
developments in the organisation of commercial sex as well as the study of
sexuality and space. Noting important continuities as well as major shifts in the
location of sex work, with a significant shift to off-street forms of sex working
having occurred, this paper argues that some of the ideas in Ashworth et al’s
paper remain highly pertinent, but others appear in need of updating. In
particular, we stress the importance of focusing on men as both clients and
workers within the sex industry, and flag up a number of connections that might
be made with the emerging literatures on the geographies of sex itself. We hence
conclude by considering Ashworth et al’s paper as an important early intervention
in debates surrounding the relations of sexuality and space, albeit one in which
questions of gender, embodiment, and sexual desire remained largely
unexplored.