Hardy, K orcid.org/0000-0003-0429-2701 and Barbagallo, C (2021) Hustling the Platform: Capitalist Experiments and Resistance in the Digital Sex Industry. South Atlantic Quarterly, 120 (3). pp. 533-551. ISSN 0038-2876
Abstract
An increasing amount of sex work in the United Kingdom is now digitally mediated, as workers and clients identify each other, agree prices and services, undertake security checks, and often make payment through various platforms and websites. Existing accounts of “digital sex work” have been both overly technological deterministic and optimistic, largely invisibilizing capital and the new forms of power and control it enables. The authors argue that the dominant platform for digital sex work in the United Kingdom, AdultWork, is reshaping the market in direct sexual services, driving down standards and prices, and normalizing risky behaviors. The article posits that these changes in the sex industry are symptomatic and reflective of wider shifts in labor-capital relations and technology and therefore argues that bringing research on platform work and sex work into closer dialogue is mutually productive. Studies of digital sex work would benefit from critical insights into power and control in platform work, while scholars of platform work—and of work and employment more generally—have much to learn from paying attention to the gendered labor of sex workers. In particular, resistance and collective organizing among sex workers, some of the most marginalized workers in contemporary capitalism, can suggest wider strategies of labor resistance and transformation in platform work and beyond.
Metadata
Item Type: | Article |
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Authors/Creators: |
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Copyright, Publisher and Additional Information: | © 2021 Duke University Press. This is an author produced version of an article published in South Atlantic Quarterly. Uploaded in accordance with the publisher's self-archiving policy. |
Keywords: | sex work, platforms, digital work, gig economy, hustle |
Dates: |
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Institution: | The University of Leeds |
Academic Units: | The University of Leeds > Faculty of Business (Leeds) > Work and Employment Relation Division (Leeds) |
Depositing User: | Symplectic Publications |
Date Deposited: | 03 Nov 2021 13:10 |
Last Modified: | 03 Nov 2021 13:10 |
Status: | Published |
Publisher: | Duke University Press |
Identification Number: | 10.1215/00382876-9154898 |
Open Archives Initiative ID (OAI ID): | oai:eprints.whiterose.ac.uk:179396 |