Octávio Sacramento

Violence against Prostitutes

Violence has long been assumed to be an intrinsic trait of female prostitution. However, it has been mostly associated with the locale in which the activity is exercised, i.e. with working time and space. In this article, based on data gathered by direct observations, in-depth interviews and the compilation of so-called time-budgets, the authors demonstrate that violence is as pervasive and omnipresent a feature of prostitutes’ ostensibly private ‘off-duty’ (non-working) time and space, though it takes on varied and distinct forms and configurations, compared to violence in the workplace.

Liminal Spaces Reflections on the Proxemia of Cross-Border Demand for Prostitution

Based on ethnographic fieldwork on female prostitution in the border areas between Portugal and Spain, this article focuses on the analysis of physical space as a dimension of substantial influence over the organization and social dynamics of the cross-border demand for sexual services. The basic aim is to understand the strategies underpinning the localization of “clubs,” and to interpret the processes whereby their clients incorporate specific geographies of desire/eroticism and cartographies of male (in)fidelity into their everyday lives. In order to do this, special analytical attention was paid to the diacritical markers that men use to delineate the specific social spheres in which they are permanent or temporary actors, and that indicate the changes taking place in the frames that guide their definition of the distinct situations in which they find themselves. By constructing a multidimensional concept of the border/frontier, the article also explores and interprets men’s experiences in the “ecology” of commercial sex, and their subjective perceptions and attempts to legitimate extramarital sexual pursuits in the context of their most typical daily social roles, in particular those related to the family.

From Europe with passion: frameworks of the touristic male desire of Ponta Negra, in the North-East of Brazil

Based upon multi-sited ethnographic fieldwork, this article debates the constitution of a particular type of transatlantic touristic flows from the European continent to the cosmopolitan beach neighbourhood of Ponta Negra, in Natal, capital city of the state of Rio Grande do Norte in the North-East of Brazil. These flows are predominantly male and are quite evidently permeated by issues related to passion, personal relations and sexual intimacy. The main objective of the analysis is to attempt to map and understand the most influential social and cultural frameworks (biographical paths of intimacy, gender relationships, subjectivities, the production and circulation of representations of Brazil, homosociabilities) in the definition and substantiation of the foreign male tourists desire to visit Ponta Negra. It thus constitutes an attempt to socially and culturally locate the option of travelling to this leisure destination, on the part of both first-time visitors and the numerous individuals who repeatedly visit Ponta Negra over the years.

A despistagem do VIH/sida: saúde pública e motivações dos utentes do teste rápido no Nordeste de Portugal

O artigo analisa a adesao dos cidadaos ao teste rapido de despistagem do VIH no Centro de Aconselhamento e Detecao Precoce do VIH/sida (CAD) da cidade de Braganca (Nordeste de Portugal). Em concreto, procura-se examinar o papel do diagnostico rapido na luta contra a infecao pelo VIH/sida no quadro do sistema publico de saude portugues, compreender as circunstâncias subjacentes a procura do servico e interpretar as percepcoes e praticas dos utentes do CAD objecto desta pesquisa. Em termos metodologicos, tratou-se de um estudo de caso assente em inquiricao etnografica, articulando observacao direta, dialogos informais e entrevistas, a que se associou uma extensa pesquisa documental e estatistica. Os resultados apurados permitem afirmar que o teste rapido proporcionou um contributo muito positivo para a luta contra a infecao pelo VIH/sida, facilitando o acesso dos cidadaos ao conhecimento praticamente imediato do seu estado serologico e melhorando o seguimento destes por parte dos tecnicos de saude. A chamada “dissipacao da incerteza”, na sequencia de uma situacao de risco, e o principal motivo que leva os utentes a realizar o teste rapido.

The production of tourism in Ponta Negra, Northeast Brazil: policies, representations and logics of desire

ABSTRACT This article discusses how the beach neighbourhood of Ponta Negra (Natal, RN), in the Northeast of Brazil, came to experience the intensive tourist development that now characterises it. Its origins as a fishing village, its gradual emergence as a local resort and the internationalisation of its tourism in the late twentieth century are examined. The discussion of this process demonstrates how public policies have played a major role not only in configuring the model of spatial planning and urbanisation that was adopted, but also in defining Europe as the main geographical focus of tourist internationalisation, in creating attractive conditions for foreign investment, and in the construction and dissemination of a tourist identity largely founded on past images and desires. At the same time, this discussion of Ponta Negra’s tourist-capitalist appropriation, Europeanisation and its (re)production as a site of racialised desires contributes to a better understanding of the ambivalent spatialities and multiple tensions that coexist in the neighbourhood today. The analysis presented here draws on empirical data collected during a period of ethnographic fieldwork in which the predominant methodologies included participant observation, semi-structured interviews and documental and statistical research.

Espacios y tiempos de transnacionalización de la intimidad en un contexto turístico brasileño

Social reality is structured in space and time. These coordinates are, simultaneously, elements produced in the framework of practices of signification, relational dynamics, and expressions of identity embedded in that same reality. From this generic premise and based on an empirical ethnographic research, in this article, I analyze the spatial and temporal orderings of the passion landscapes that take place in the touristic neighbourhood of Ponta Negra (Natal, Northeast of Brazil) among Brazilian women and European tourists. I aim to shed light on Euro-Brazilian transnationalization of intimacy —fuelled by mass tourism— and to understand the ways in which this intimacy is engraved and organized in specific topological and chronological segments of that place, providing them identity, relief, and sometimes a heterotopic configuration on the neighbourhood scenario, generating dissonances and some social tensions and disputes.