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“We are not selling our bodies; we are just selling sex”: Exploring the alienated experience of sex workers across space and place.
Thesis (MA)--Stellenbosch University, 2024.
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| Format: | Thesis |
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Stellenbosch : Stellenbosch University
2025
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| _version_ | 1867613788510879744 |
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| access_status_str | Open Access |
| author | Fife, Nabeelah |
| author2 | Fakier, Khayaat |
| author_browse | Fakier, Khayaat Fife, Nabeelah |
| author_facet | Fakier, Khayaat Fife, Nabeelah |
| author_sort | Fife, Nabeelah |
| collection | Thesis |
| dc_rights_str_mv | Stellenbosch University |
| description | Thesis (MA)--Stellenbosch University, 2024. |
| format | Thesis |
| id | oai:scholar.sun.ac.za:10019.1/131783 |
| institution | Stellenbosch University (South Africa) |
| last_indexed | 2026-06-10T12:41:42.984Z |
| license_str | Other — see source repository |
| provenance_str_mv | Harvested via OAI-PMH from SUNScholar — Stellenbosch University Repository |
| publishDate | 2025 |
| publishDateRange | 2025 |
| publishDateSort | 2025 |
| publisher | Stellenbosch : Stellenbosch University |
| publisherStr | Stellenbosch : Stellenbosch University |
| record_format | dspace |
| source_str | SUNScholar — Stellenbosch University Repository |
| spelling | oai:scholar.sun.ac.za:10019.1/131783 “We are not selling our bodies; we are just selling sex”: Exploring the alienated experience of sex workers across space and place. Fife, Nabeelah Fakier, Khayaat Stellenbosch University. Faculty of Arts and Social Sciences. Dept. of Sociology and Social Anthropology. Thesis (MA)--Stellenbosch University, 2024. This study explores the perceptions of five sex workers on the working conditions and nature of the sex work industry in Cape Town and broader South Africa. While the practice of selling sex commonly evokes negative stereotypes about the sex work population, this study considers how entry into sex work for many is a choice. Thus, sex work emerges as a liberatory practice, particularly for those who are fleeing from the conditions of township living and others from precarious jobs, prejudice, danger, or non-supportive families. In making this analysis, this study draws on Lefebvre and Massey’s theories of space and place; Bourdieu, Standing’s, and Butler’s theory of precarity; Marx’s theory of alienation; Gimlin’s theory of bodywork; as well as Hochschild’s theory emotional labour and emotional rules. In taking seriously the claim that sex work makes for an illegitimate means of work, this study explores the local meaning of sex work from the perspectives of sex workers themselves and the ways in which sex work as a form of work is affirmed as functional and a survivalist strategy. The study concludes that the exploitative and violent conditions experienced at the hands of clients, police, brothel managers, and other sex workers are due to the legal status of sex work in South Africa. Masters 2025-03-24T09:04:56Z 2025-03-24T09:04:56Z 2024-12 Thesis https://scholar.sun.ac.za/handle/10019.1/131783 Stellenbosch University 92 pages application/pdf Stellenbosch : Stellenbosch University |
| spellingShingle | Fife, Nabeelah “We are not selling our bodies; we are just selling sex”: Exploring the alienated experience of sex workers across space and place. |
| title | “We are not selling our bodies; we are just selling sex”: Exploring the alienated experience of sex workers across space and place. |
| title_full | “We are not selling our bodies; we are just selling sex”: Exploring the alienated experience of sex workers across space and place. |
| title_fullStr | “We are not selling our bodies; we are just selling sex”: Exploring the alienated experience of sex workers across space and place. |
| title_full_unstemmed | “We are not selling our bodies; we are just selling sex”: Exploring the alienated experience of sex workers across space and place. |
| title_short | “We are not selling our bodies; we are just selling sex”: Exploring the alienated experience of sex workers across space and place. |
| title_sort | we are not selling our bodies we are just selling sex exploring the alienated experience of sex workers across space and place |
| url | https://scholar.sun.ac.za/handle/10019.1/131783 |
| work_keys_str_mv | AT fifenabeelah wearenotsellingourbodieswearejustsellingsexexploringthealienatedexperienceofsexworkersacrossspaceandplace |