Overview

The relationships between female sex workers and their noncommercial male partners are often assumed to be coercive and anchored in risk, dismissed as “pimp-prostitute” arrangements by researchers and the general public alike. Yet, these stereotypes unjustly erase the complexity of lives we imagine to be consumed by social suffering. Dangerous Love centers a framework of love to rethink sex workers’ intimate relationships as commitments to collective solidarity and survival in contexts of oppression. Combining epidemiological research and ethnographic fieldwork in Tijuana, Mexico, Jennifer Leigh Syvertsen examines how individuals try to find love and meaning in lives marked by structural violence, social marginalization, drug addiction, and HIV/AIDS. Linking the political economy of inequalities along the border with emotional lived experience, this book explores how intimate relationships become dangerous safe havens that fundamentally shape both partners’ well-being. Through these stories, we are urged to reimagine the socially transformative power of love to carve new pathways to health equity.

Full Product Details

9780520384392

Table of Contents

Reviews

""Dangerous Love flips the script on critical studies about sex work in the global south. . . . At its core, the book presents readers with an insightful ethnography into the complex ways female sex workers using drugs navigate contending, often contradictory, and yet complementary ways of intimacy that shape their health and well-being."" * The Journal of Development Studies *

Author Information

Jennifer Leigh Syvertsen is Associate Professor of Anthropology at the University of California, Riverside.

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