Sustaining and Contesting Commodity Frontiers: Gendered Bodies and Sex Work in Kenya

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Abstract

This contribution considers sex work as social reproductive work in gendered capitalist structures. Exploring the role that sex workers played and continue to play in Kenya, the article argues that this commercialized social reproductive labor has historically enabled and continues enabling commodity frontier expansion and extractive processes by supporting both the workers directly engaged in extractive economies, and the vulnerable households that would struggle to survive capitalist conditions otherwise. At the same time, sex work is an extractive capitalist labor in its own right, which allows women to independently accumulate capital, and so opens the possibilities to contest some gendered notions of the local economies.
Original languageEnglish
Pages (from-to)10-17
Number of pages8
JournalCommodity Frontiers Journal
Issue number5
DOIs
Publication statusPublished - 31 May 2023

Keywords

  • Sex work
  • Body
  • Commodity Frontiers
  • Kenya

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