This is a richly detailed account of the way the sex industry works, and
one of the few empirical studies that investigates the off street
industry in Britain. The book seeks to advance a greater knowledge of
the social organisation of the sex industry by uncovering the day-to-day
activities of women involved in the indoor markets. What types of
occupational risks do women experience in work of this kind? How do
these hazards affect their personal lives? A key concern throughout the
book is to assess whether women are passive victims of the circumstances
of prostitution or whether they understand and calculate their responses
to danger. Drawing upon both sociological and criminological theories,
and on detailed research in the city of Birmingham, the author addresses
these questions by estimating the rationality of those responses and by
providing a measure of how women make sense of different risks. Sex
Work: a risky business describes how women create complex psychological
and emotional techniques to maintain their sanity while selling sex, and
goes on to argue that the indoor sex markets in Britain have a distinct
'occupational culture' with a set of social norms, code of conduct and
moral hierarchies that make it a high regulated workplace despite its
illicit and sometimes illegal nature.
