ISSN (Print) - 0012-9976 | ISSN (Online) - 2349-8846

Articles by Varsha GopalSubscribe to Varsha Gopal

Respatialising the Digitised and Globalised Sex Industry

There is a consensus that sex work and the sex industry have been globalised owing to factors such as the development of sex tourism, neo-liberal economic policies and the influence of the sexual revolution. This paper attempts to pose the question: How have digitisation and globalisation altered the spatiality of sex work and the sex industry? I use Saskia Sassen’s framework provided in "The City: Localizations of the Global" in this attempt to propose a new lens for understanding the spatial changes that sex work has undergone. The notion of the globalised sex industry’s spatiality needs to be reconfigured—spatiality of sex work can no longer be seen as purely physical as there is an imbrication of the digital in the non-digital. The globalised sex industry is a local environment placed in a global network, whose notions of centrality have changed as well with changes in the spatiality of the functional and locational centrality of the red-light districts. This diffusion of centrality has manifested itself at the level of the world system as well via the formation of “third-world” business centres.

Opening Up Tennis

What was the silver lining to the COVID-19-ridden US Open last year?

​Pixação in São Paulo

Pixação is a visual art form born from resistance that contributes to the cultural production of São Paulo.

Back to Top