TY - JOUR
T1 - Emotion work and the management of stigma in female sex workers’ long-term intimate relationships
AU - Murphy, Hannah
AU - Dunk-West, Priscilla
AU - Chonody, Jill
N1 - Publisher Copyright:
© The Author(s) 2015.
PY - 2015/12/1
Y1 - 2015/12/1
N2 - Very little empirical work examines female sex workers’ experiences in sociological detail, particularly within an Australian context. Drawing from a small-scale sample of female sex workers in South Australia, our findings suggest that sex workers’ ongoing negotiations within private relationships represent ‘emotion work’, as described by Hochschild, which was understood as limiting the effect of stigma. Taking the lead from social scripts associated with women’s traditional roles and associated ‘feeling rules’, participants mediated their personal lives as distinct from their professional lives to navigate their way through the complex interplay between identities. This emotion work was manifest in the negotiation of intimacy. Other factors such as partner jealousy, which emerge from dual engagement in intimate and work-related sexual behaviours, were also mediated. These findings point to a broader appreciation of emotion work as dually agential and structured and undertaken by sex workers in both their home and work spheres.
AB - Very little empirical work examines female sex workers’ experiences in sociological detail, particularly within an Australian context. Drawing from a small-scale sample of female sex workers in South Australia, our findings suggest that sex workers’ ongoing negotiations within private relationships represent ‘emotion work’, as described by Hochschild, which was understood as limiting the effect of stigma. Taking the lead from social scripts associated with women’s traditional roles and associated ‘feeling rules’, participants mediated their personal lives as distinct from their professional lives to navigate their way through the complex interplay between identities. This emotion work was manifest in the negotiation of intimacy. Other factors such as partner jealousy, which emerge from dual engagement in intimate and work-related sexual behaviours, were also mediated. These findings point to a broader appreciation of emotion work as dually agential and structured and undertaken by sex workers in both their home and work spheres.
KW - feeling rules
KW - identity
KW - intimacy
KW - sex work
KW - stigma
UR - http://www.scopus.com/inward/record.url?scp=84949519635&partnerID=8YFLogxK
U2 - 10.1177/1440783315614085
DO - 10.1177/1440783315614085
M3 - Article
AN - SCOPUS:84949519635
SN - 1440-7833
VL - 51
SP - 1103
EP - 1116
JO - Journal of Sociology
JF - Journal of Sociology
IS - 4
ER -