Hostname: page-component-78c5997874-mlc7c Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-11-05T08:34:48.335Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false
  • English
  • Français

The Judgement Machine: Markets, Internet Technologies and Policies in Commercial Sex

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  27 August 2014

Lynne Pettinger
Lynne Pettinger*
Affiliation:
Department of Sociology, University of Warwick E-mail: [email protected]
Get access Rights & Permissions [Opens in a new window]

Abstract

The judgements and valuations made on Internet review sites are part of contemporary consumer culture. This article considers what such sites do in the market for commercial sex. It contributes to policy discussions in two ways. Firstly, it considers how the infrastructure and mechanisms of the web enables organising, searching and reporting of consumer experience, and hence how web reviews mediate commercial markets. It thereby draws links between social policies that concern the Internet and those that relate to sex work. Secondly, it explores how sex review sites mediate the field of commercial sex and discusses some of the potential insights for policy audiences. Policies directed at the regulation of this market will benefit from clear recognition of what customers understand their actions to be and how they participate in the construction of norms about commercial sex.

Keywords

Sex workcustomerinternetinfrastructure
Type
Themed Section on The Cultural Study of Commercial Sex: Taking a Policy Perspective
Information
Social Policy and Society , Volume 14 , Issue 1 , January 2015 , pp. 135 - 143
Copyright
Copyright © Cambridge University Press 2014 

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

References

Adam, A. (2005) Gender, Ethics and Information Technology, Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan.Google Scholar
Ashford, C. (2008) ‘Sex work in cyberspace: who pays the price?’, Information and Communications Technology Law, 17, 1, 37–49.Google Scholar
BBC (2009) ‘Terminate degrading site – Harman’, http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/uk_politics/8282626.stm (accessed 15 July 2013).Google Scholar
BBC (2013) ‘High Court: Sally Bercow's Lord McAlpine tweet was libel’, http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-22652083 (accessed 15 July 2013).Google Scholar
Benkler, Y. (2006) The Wealth of Networks: How Social Production Transforms Markets and Freedom, New Haven: Yale University Press.Google Scholar
Braman, S. (2011) ‘Internet policy’, in Consalvo, M. and , C. Ess (eds.), The Handbook of Internet Studies, Oxford: Wiley-Blackwell, pp. 137–67.Google Scholar
Brents, B. G. and Sanders, T. (2010) ‘Mainstreaming the sex industry: economic inclusion and social ambivalence’, in Scoular, J. and Sanders, T. (eds.), Regulating Sex/Work: From Crime Control to Neo-Liberalism?, Oxford: Wiley-Blackwell, pp. 40–60.Google Scholar
Callon, M. (2007) ‘What does it mean to say that economics is performative?’, in Mackenzie, D., Muniesa, F. and Siu, L.. (eds.), Do Economists Make Markets? On The Performativity of Economics, Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, pp. 311–57.Google Scholar
Coy, M., Horvath, M. and Kelly, L. (2012) ‘Troubling notions of male entitlement: men consuming, boasting and confessing about paying for sex’, in Coy, M. (ed.), Prostitution, Harm and Gender Inequality: Theory, Research and Policy, Aldershot: Ashgate, pp. 121–40.Google Scholar
Deibert, R. J. (2008) ‘Black code redux: censorship, surveillance, and the militarization of cyberspace’, in Boler, M. (ed.), Digital Media and Democracy: Tactics In Hard Times, Cambridge, MA and London: The MIT Press, pp. 137–63.Google Scholar
Döring, N. M. (2009) ‘The Internet's impact on sexuality: a critical review of 15 years of research’, Computers in Human Behavior, 25, 5, 1089–101.Google Scholar
Ducey, A. (2007) ‘More than a job: meaning, affect and training healthcare workers’, in Ticineto, P. Clough with Halley, J. (eds.), The Affective Turn: Theorizing the Social, Durham, NC and London: Duke University Press, pp. 187–208.Google Scholar
Earle, S. and Sharp, K. (2007) Sex in Cyberspace: Men Who Pay for Sex, Ashgate: Aldershot.Google Scholar
Fuller, M. and Goffey, A. (2012) Evil Media, Cambridge, MA and London: MIT Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Hubbard, P. (2004) ‘Cleansing the metropolis: sex work and the politics of zero tolerance’, Urban Studies, 41, 9, 1687–702.Google Scholar
Jenkins, S. (2010) ‘New technologies, new territories: using the Internet to connect with sex workers and sex industry organisers’, in Hardy, K., Kingston, S. and Sanders, T. (eds.), New Sociologies of Sex Work, Aldershot: Ashgate, pp. 91–104.Google Scholar
Lessig, L. (2000) Codes and Other Laws of Cyberspace, New York: Basic Books.Google Scholar
McKeganey, N. and Barnard, M. (1996) Sex Work on the Streets: Prostitutes and Their Clients, Buckingham: Open University Press.Google Scholar
Muirhead, R. (2004) Just Work, Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.Google Scholar
O'Connell Davidson, J. (2003) ‘“Sleeping with the enemy”? Some problems with feminist abolitionist calls to penalise those who buy commercial sex’, Social Policy and Society, 2, 1, 55–63.Google Scholar
Oswell, D. (1998) ‘The place of ‘childhood’ in Internet content regulation: a case study of policy in the UK’, International Journal of Cultural Studies, 1, 2, 271–91.Google Scholar
Paasonen, S. (2011) ‘Online pornography: ubiquitous and effaced’, in Consalvo, M. and Ess, C. (eds.), The Handbook of Internet Studies, Oxford: Wiley-Blackwell, pp. 424–39.Google Scholar
Peppet, S. R. (2013) ‘Prostitution 3.0?’, Iowa Law Review, 98, 5, 1989–2060.Google Scholar
Pettinger, L. (2011) ‘Knows how to please a man: what studying customers reveals about service work’, Sociological Review, 59, 2, 223–41.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Pettinger, L. (2013) ‘Market moralities in the field of commercial sex’, Journal of Cultural Economy, 6, 2, 184–99.Google Scholar
Sanders, T. (2008) Paying for Pleasure: Men Who Buy Sex, Cullompton: Willan.Google Scholar
Scoular, J. (2010) ‘What's law got to do with it? How and why law matters in the regulation of sex work’, in Scoular, J., and Sanders, T. (eds.), Regulating Sex/Work: From Crime Control to Neo-Liberalism?, Oxford: Wiley-Blackwell, pp. 12–39.Google Scholar
Sinclair, S. and Bramley, G. (2010) ‘Beyond virtual inclusion – communications inclusion and digital divisions’, Social Policy and Society, 10, 1, 1–11.Google Scholar
Twigg, J. (2001) ‘Social policy and the body’, in Lewis, G., Gewirtz, S. and Clarke, J. (eds.), Rethinking Social Policy, Milton Keynes: Open University Press, pp. 127–40.Google Scholar
Walby, K. (2012) Touching Encounters: Sex, Work and Male-for-Male Internet Escorting, Chicago and London: University of Chicago Press.Google Scholar
Whowell, M. (2010) ‘Male sex work: exploring regulation in England and Wales’, in Scoular, J. and Sanders, T. (eds.), Regulating Sex/Work: From Crime Control to Neo-Liberalism?, Oxford: Wiley-Blackwell, pp. 125–44.Google Scholar
Wu, T. (2003) ‘Network neutrality, broadband discrimination’, Journal of Telecommunications and High Technology Law, 2, 1, 141–79.Google Scholar