We need more worlds. Better worlds. We can’t overlook the need for horrifying, ruined worlds, true, but more than anything we need better worlds. The worlds academics build…
zeph’s pop culture quiz #61 A warplane in camouflage flies over snowy mountains. But who is inside? What I am asking for are the names of the two…
I wouldn’t have been surprised if the term migrant sex worker had died out except amongst rights-activists, given the hegemony enjoyed by reductionist trafficking narratives. When I was…
I collect well-styled and informative descriptions of sex-industry settings in novels, here John le Carré’s 1990 The Secret Pilgrim. Fiction can transmit far more of the atmosphere and…
On the last day of my introduction to anthropology class, we watch scenes from the documentary Trekkies. Students grin at the sincere folks dressed as Starfleet officers and…
This piece is a little different from previous iterations of “Tip of The Cap.” Earlier entries into this series were written by published scholars, and they were written…
I have been on hiatus from blogging for some time, mainly due to two factors. First, I launched a public anthropology podcast, Anthropologist on the Street (huzzah!), which…
The question of how death is handled and viewed in the horror industry popped into my head earlier this week as I eagerly awaited the release of The…
The story of the Razor’s Edge company continues to unfold with the latest release of one of their private videos, the kind which have normally been distributed to prospective clients…
Lissa: A Story About Medical Promise, Friendship, and Revolution Written by Sherine Hamdy and Coleman Nye Illustrated by Sarula Bao and Caroline Brewer Lettering by Marc Parenteau University…
I’ve been invited to speak at the Human Trafficking Center of the Josef Korbel School of International Studies at the University of Denver, Colorado. The talk is called…
From Press Release: After 525 years, the traditional literature recounting the history of Columbus’s epic voyage and first encounters with Native Americans remains Eurocentric, focused principally—whe…
I know many folks who relate to the idea of sex work as one of their jobs and to sexworker as one of their identities. But I have…
As if Human Trafficking weren’t an already over-used, ambiguous, confusing term for a raft of phenomena, some influential characters want to replace the term with Modern Slavery. I…
Militia detectives are at Kazansky Station in Komsomol Square, in Martin Cruz Smith’s novel Gorky Park. Cartier-Bresson’s 1954 photo shows the station at the left and surrounding traffic. …
zeph’s pop culture quiz #60 A man is sitting in the cinema. Which movie is he watching? Mind, I am not asking from which film the screenshot is…
The headline reads Spanish brothel’s “back to school” party sparks outrage in Andalusia. El Bosque is a legal club de alterne where sex workers drink, dance and chat with customers…
You paid someone to help you leave home, travel across borders or into unknown areas of your own country. You knew you’d be selling sex but probably not…
Nathaniel Hawthorne’s story “Rappaccini’s Daughter” is a nineteenth-century moral fable that sets the fruits of experimental knowledge against obligations to humanity, and stages a dramatic encounter …
Walter, a Synthetic, quietly makes his rounds in the brightly lit, pristine interior of the Covenant, a Weyland Corporation Spaceship. Fingers pressed to the translucent, impermeable glass, he…
There are many interesting formations that might be called networked phenomena. Homophily and the tendency towards triad closure. Scott Feld’s Rule (I’m more likely to make friends with…
In the paragraphs which follow, we will be discussing the ways in which two pieces of speculative fiction, the science fiction film Star Trek IV: The Voyage Home,…
Anti-trafficking campaigners often single out Nigerian women as the worst case of what they call sex trafficking. I first wrote about this years ago and note that, despite…