Elizabeth Bernstein

Sex, secularism and religious influence in US politics.

Abstract Through an analysis of alliances between secular and religious actors in US politics and a specific case study on anti-trafficking policy, we show that the intertwining of religion and politics in the US comes from two sources: 1) the secular political and cultural institutions of American public life that have developed historically out of Protestantism, and which predominantly operate by presuming Protestant norms and values; and 2) the direct influence on US politics of religious groups and organisations, particularly in the past quarter-century of lobby groups and political action committees identified with conservative evangelical Christianity. The sources of policies that promote gender and sexual inequality in the US are both secular and religious and we conclude that it is inaccurate to assume that religious influence in politics is necessarily conservative or that more secular politics will necessarily be more progressive than the religious varieties.

Redemptive Capitalism and Sexual Investability

Abstract In recent years, the issue of human trafficking has become a key component of a growing number of corporate social responsibility initiatives, in which multinational corporations have furthered the pursuit of “market based solutions” to contemporary social concerns. This essay draws upon in-depth interviews with and ethnographic observations of corporate actors involved in contemporary anti-trafficking campaigns to describe a new domain of sexual politics that feminist social theorists have barely begun to consider. Using trafficking as a case study, I argue that these new forms of sexual politics have served to bind together unlikely sets of social actors – including secular feminists, evangelical Christians, bipartisan state officials, and multinational corporations – who have historically subscribed to very different ideals about the beneficence of markets, criminal justice, and the role of the state.

Author Comment on Review

I wish to comment on Ronald Weitzer’s recent review of my book, Temporarily Yours: Intimacy, Authenticity, and the Commerce of Sex (Vol. 24, p. 135). While Weitzer provides an adequate summary of some components of my argument and makes an effort to situate it within the broader literature on sexual commerce, there are several errors and misunderstandings in the review. First, Weitzer argues that my work offers “no convincing evidence of a decline in street prostitution in the U.S.” and that my claims are “based on examination of one city,” thus redefining the scope of my study away from postindustrial cities and toward the United States as a whole (a framework that I explicitly reject in my methodological appendix) and ignoring the ample ethnographic research that I conducted within Europe. Second, Weitzer faults the evidentiary basis of my argument about the shift from street-based to online prostitution but fails to mention that I conducted my research over the course of a decade, witnessing these changes firsthand as well as hearing them described by a range of sex workers, clients, and police officers. I further provide a quantitative analysis of online advertisements between 2001 and 2005 to support this claim. Finally, Weitzer misrepresents my argument concerning the relevance of public policy to the social organization of sexual commerce. Weitzer writes that I believe “state policy is unrelated to actors’ lived experiences.” This statement seriously misconstrues one of the central arguments of my book. In fact, I argue that those who seek to understand or intervene in sexual economies must look toward a broader range of social policies beyond those that explicitly concern prostitution—such as those pertaining to immigration, gendered pay inequities, and urban redevelopment.

The Politics of Prostitution: Women's Movements, Democratic States, and the Globalization of Sex CommerceThe Politics of Prostitution: Women's Movements, Democratic States, and the Globalization of Sex Commerce, edited by OutshoornJoyce. Cambridge, UK; New York: Cambridge University Press, 2004. 329 pp.

development strategies. This reformulation of class and development theory bridges the sacrosanct structure-culture divide by building an argument that culture influences how structures develop, thus shaping political and economic outcomes—an argument that is sure to draw fire from scholars on the structure side of the divide. If there is a weakness in the analysis, it stems from its fundamentally interpretive nature. Although Davis acknowledges opposing interpretations of historical events in her literature review, she does not offer new evidence supporting her interpretation and refuting those of others. Nevertheless, Davis tells compelling stories to explain the divergent outcomes of Argentina, Mexico, South Korea, and Taiwan. The stories are convincing because of their methodological and empirical rigor, though surprisingly Davis leaves her discussion of case selection and comparative historical methods to an appendix. However, scholars with expertise in other countries may well counter Davis’ argument with examples in which countries successfully adopted export-oriented industrialization and achieved balanced growth without having politically influential rural middle classes. Such challenges to her interpretation may well be a fruitful line of scholarly debate. The fruit of this debate is likely to be a deeper understanding of the social and political forces that constrain globalization. The case studies Davis elaborates occurred during a window of opportunity in which late developing countries benefited economically from adopting export oriented industrial policies— a window that may well be closed today. Davis leaves us pondering whether the forces of globalization have overwhelmed the disciplinary potential of the rural middle-class to harness unbridled capital in an increasingly neoliberal global economy. Surely other social and political forces seek to constrain global capital and harness it to promote local development.