The prostitution boundaries condition: a research about illegalisms from codes and daily conducts

Abstract

The practices of prostitution are placed in the boundaries between the work and the immorality, occupation and illegality, the dimensions of the illicit market and of the marginality. In this research project I propose to study prostitution exactly in this ambiguous situation, which is present in the daily prostitution actions, smudging the border ofs the dominant moral and legality . When I study the prostitution as a illegalism, I study also the boundaries of dominant morality and legality . Therefore, I look forward to describe and analyze the codes and conducts used in day-by-day of prostitution contexts (in the relationship between prostitutes, pimp, employees, clients, etc.), looking for the normativities that establish among their interactions. My observation will focus four central analytical dimensions: 1) the rules of socializing in the shared spaces of prostitution; 2) the relationships between prostitutes that shared the same territory; 3) the relationships of prostitutes with the clients and the pimp; 4) relationships between pimp, employees, clients, neighbors, etc., as they appear in these spaces. My ethnographic fieldwork will be conducted in the city of São Carlos, São Paulo State, Brazil, with observations in different spaces of prostitution recorded in field notes. Interviews with prostitutes and other agents that compose these contexts will be used as a complementary method.