Caribbean Pleasure Industry
Tourism, Sexuality, and AIDS in the Dominican Republic
In recent years, the economy of the Caribbean has become almost completely dependent on international tourism. And today one of the chief ways that foreign visitors there seek pleasure is through prostitution. While much has been written on the female sex workers who service these tourists, Caribbean Pleasure Industry shifts the focus onto the men. Drawing on his groundbreaking ethnographic research in the Dominican Republic, Mark Padilla discovers a complex world where the global political and economic impact of tourism has led to shifting sexual identities, growing economic pressures, and new challenges for HIV prevention. In fluid prose, Padilla analyzes men who have sex with male tourists, yet identify themselves as “normal” heterosexual men and struggle to maintain this status within their relationships with wives and girlfriends. Padilla’s exceptional ability to describe the experiences of these men will interest anthropologists, but his examination of bisexuality and tourism as much-neglected factors in the HIV/AIDS epidemic makes this book essential to anyone concerned with health and sexuality in the Caribbean or beyond.
Society for the Scientific Study of Sexuality, Eastern Region: John Money Award
Won
Award for most significant contribution to gender and sexuality studies
Lambda Literary Foundation: Lambda Literary Awards
Short Listed
Society of Lesbian & Gay Anthropologists: Ruth Benedict Prize
Won
“Caribbean Pleasure Industry is a major new work on the political economy of gender and sexuality. Mark Padilla’s detailed ethnographic study of male sex work in the Dominican Republic opens up new insights in relation to masculinity and male sexuality more generally. Few studies have so carefully documented the impact of changing social and economic forces on intimate experience—or the ways in which this intersection shapes the evolving HIV epidemic.”
“Padilla’s thorough, nuanced research gives an up-close account of male hustling in the Dominican Republic. In delving into straight-identified sex workers’ lives, motivations, and relationships, it also throws new light on old questions about gender norms, sexual identities, and, of course, how these relate to a globally-connected political economy. A very useful antidote to the current rage for one-sided denunciations of sex work as exploitation, trafficking, and slavery.”
PREFACE
ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS
Introduction
1 Global Sexual Spaces and Their Hierarchies
2 "Me Lo Busco": Looking for Life in the Dominican Pleasure Industry
3 "Orgullo Gay Dominicano": Shifting Cultural Politics of Sexual Identity in Santo Domingo
4 Familial Discretions: Unveiling the Other Side of Sex Work
5 "Love," Finance, and Authenticity in Gay Sex Tourism
6 AIDS, the "Bisexual Bridge," and the Political Economy of Risk
Conclusion
APPENDIX
NOTES
BIBLIOGRAPHY
INDEX
Sociology: Occupations, Professions, Work
Travel and Tourism: Tourism and History
You may purchase this title at these fine bookstores. Outside the USA, see our international sales information.
