Policing Bodies: Law, Sex Work, and Desire in Johannesburg

by I. India Thusi

Sex work occupies a legally gray space in Johannesburg, South Africa, and police attitudes towards it are inconsistent and largely unregulated. As I. India Thusi argues in Policing Bodies , this results in both room for negotiation that can benefit sex workers and also extreme precarity in which the security police officers provide can be offered and taken away at a moment's notice. Sex work straddles the line between formal and informal. Attitudes about beauty and subjective value are manifest in formal tasks, including police activities, which are often conducted in a seemingly ad hoc manner. However, high-level organizational directives intended to regulate police obligations and duties toward sex workers also influence police action and tilt the exercise of discretion to the formal. In this liminal space, this book considers how sex work is policed and how it should be policed. Challenging discourses about sexuality and gender that inform its regulation, Thusi exposes the limitations of dominant feminist arguments regarding the legal treatment of sex work. This in-depth, historically informed ethnography illustrates the tension between enforcing a country's laws and protecting citizens' human rights.

Genres: Nonfiction, Feminism, Labor, Sociology, Africa

240 pages, Paperback

Published December 21, 2021

About the author

India Thusi is a Professor of Law at the Indiana University Bloomington Maurer School of Law and a Senior Scientist at the Kinsey Institute. She writes about policing, race, sexuality, and gender.

Reviews

[Jennifer deBie · Rating 5 out of 5]

I received an ARC copy of Policing Bodies through Reedsy Discovery. See the full review at https://reedsy.com/discovery/book/pol...

Policing Bodies: Law, Sex Work, and Desire in Johannesburg is the culmination of Dr. India Thusi’s pioneering work observing, mapping, and interviewing the people who make up the sex work landscape of Johannesburg, South Africa.In her research, Thusi sought to lay out how sex workers, and those who police them, define the impossibly complex, and ever evolving, relationship between these two groups, and the spaces where they inevitably come into contact.

However, Policing Bodies is not merely a contemporary study. One cannot explore the South Africa of today without also examining the history of colonialism, slavery, exploitation, and apartheid on the country as a whole, and Johannesburg in particular. By looking back to this history and apartheid’s laxer view on what some might call police brutality, and the officers themselves might call a necessary show of force, Thusi shows how this legacy still echoes through the policing of Johannesburg to this day. In doing this Thusi further complicates, and enriches, the debate surrounding modern sex work in her regions of study and the conversation surrounding it.

Yes, this is an excellent piece of ethnographic scholarship from a young and impressive researcher, and it should be treated as such – but Thusi never loses sight ethnos part of her study. In a field of research where ethical questions and moral grey areas can prove absolute pitfalls to researchers new and old alike, Thusi never forgets that ethnography is the study of people who are just trying to survive in a world that can range from unkind, to indescribably cruel, and that is what truly elevates her work.

[Ashley Adams · Rating 4 out of 5]

First of all, this is a beautiful book. I. India Thusi's work Policing Bodies: Law, Sex Work, and Desire in Johannesburg is an academic look at the cross-section of race, gender, and the law as it relates to sex work in South Africa. Through the lens of a black, female citizen of the United States, the author offers a picture of a marginalized group of sex-workers whose livelihood is stigmatized by decades of fear. Fear of racial subversion has been just as strong as fear of disease in South Africa. As the police struggle to protect people by enforcing order, we have to ask, just which people are being protected? And what are they being protected from?

[Yolanda · Rating 4 out of 5]

So grateful to I. India Thusi, the author, for sending me a signed copy. Thank you to Goodreads for providing this book. This is filled with historical information about sex work in Johannesburg, South Africa. Brutally honest and raw.

[K. · Rating 5 out of 5]

I won a free copy from the Goodreads First Reads Giveaway Program and think that it interesting. I would recommend it to everyone

[Stephanie · Rating 5 out of 5]

Really interesting and informative read. Hard to read at times

[Ali · Rating 5 out of 5]

The author has a remarkable way of retelling her experiences in Johannesburg - the text is deeply immersive and incredibly informative.