Prabha Kotiswaran
Datos Biográficos
| ID | 642307 |
|---|---|
| NOMBRE | Prabha Kotiswaran |
| NOMBRES | Prabha |
| APELLIDO | Kotiswaran |
| FIRMA | KOTISWARAN P |
| AFILIACIONES | King's College London |
| ORCID | 0000-0001-7990-1204 |
| VERIFICADO | Sí |
| TOTAL DE OBRAS | 19 |
| TOTAL DE CITAS | 48 |
| TOTAL COMO AUTOR | 18 |
| TOTAL COMO EDITOR | 1 |
| PRIMER AÑO DE PUBLICACIÓN | 2008 |
| AÑO MÁS RECIENTE DE PUBLICACIÓN | 2025 |
| ÍNDICE H | 4 |
Justice within the new factory gates
The gated community is a unique site of social reproduction which has proliferated across India. Elite families are reproduced at the individual, household level but also at the communal level in service-rich private enclaves. These households rely heavily on specialised reproductive labourers who are deprived of worker status because they work in the private domain. Homeowners’ associations or resident welfare associations (RWAs) meanwhile regul…
Women’s work, never done, now paid
Reproductive resistance, law, and informality
Our article critically examines the impact of India’s new law on assisted reproductive technologies (ART), namely, the Assisted Reproductive Technology (Regulation) Act, 2021 on women’s reproductive labour, particularly, egg donation. Despite the Act’s prohibition of paid egg donation, based on an empirical study, we find that women are driven by severe economic shocks to their households, rely on linguistic devices, principles of compensation an…
Laws of Social Reproduction
Feminists have long demonstrated the invisibility of women's reproductive labor, performed in bearing and raising children, maintaining households, and socially sustaining male labor. Every wave of feminist struggle from the late nineteenth century onward has actively queried the inequalities that characterize women's performance of such work, variously referred to as unpaid domestic and care work, domestic labor, or care work. Robust traditions …
Toward a Model of Universal Care, One Manifesto at a Time
In the wake of the pandemic, we are all too aware of this carelessness.It turns out that we had stopped caring pre-pandemic, the authors say, where the social infrastructure of several countries was decimated by a politics of austerity and neoliberal economic policies over the past forty years.This of course will come as no surprise to feminists.Yet there is something unique about the post-pandemic moment that warrants a feminist restatement of t…
The Sexual Politics of Anti-Trafficking Discourse
20 years since the negotiation of the Palermo Protocol on Trafficking in 2000, the anti-trafficking field has gone from an early, almost exclusive preoccupation with sex work to addressing extreme exploitation in a range of labour sectors. While this might suggest a reduced focus on the nature of the work performed and a greater focus on the conditions under which it is performed, in reality, anti-trafficking discourse remains in the grip of pola…
Governance Feminism
Governance Feminism
Revisiting the Law and Governance of Trafficking, Forced Labor and Modern Slavery
In the decades following the globalization of the world economy, trafficking, forced labor and modern slavery have emerged as significant global problems. States negotiated the Palermo Protocol in 2000 under which they agreed to criminalize trafficking, primarily understood as an issue of serious organized crime. Sixteen years later, leading academics, activists and policy makers from international organizations come together in this edited volum…
Protocol at the Crossroads
As we approach the fifteenth anniversary of the United Nations Trafficking Protocol, we can discern several phases of its diffusion, materialisation and interpretation in domestic criminal law regimes across the world. Although not exclusively preoccupied with sex work and sex trafficking anymore, the fact remains that the inordinate attention on trafficking in Western industrialised economies is disproportionate to the extent of the problem. Onl…
Valverde’s Chronotopes of Law
Beyond the allures of Criminalization
This article explores the shifting trends in prostitution law and policy in the postcolonial context of India. Indian law has since the 1950s criminalized several aspects of the commercialization of prostitution rather than the sale of sex for money per se. Of late however, following international trends around human trafficking and the relatively popular Swedish model, the Indian state has been keen to criminalize further the demand for sexual s…
Sword or Shield
In the contemporary neoliberal moment, the judicial discourse of appellate Indian courts has sought to normalize the identity of sexual minorities such as bar dancers and the LGBT community. While the recognition of the rights of abject sexual groups is welcome, this essay argues that the legal space for normalization is hardly equally available or even the same for all sexual minorities. Indian sex workers are a case in point. Although the India…
Introduction
Do Feminists Need an Economic Sociology of Law
Feminist legal scholars have long exposed the mutually constitutive relationship between the market and the social sphere, particularly, of the family, as mediated by the state. A peculiar division of labour has emerged in American feminist legal theorizing on the market in the context of care work, on the one hand, and sex work on the other. Care is valorized, thus entrenching the family‐market dichotomy while the sex‐work debates view the marke…
Vulnerability in Domestic Discourses on Trafficking
Dangerous Sex, Invisible Labor
Popular representations of third-world sex workers as sex slaves and vectors of HIV have spawned abolitionist legal reforms that are harmful and ineffective, and public health initiatives that provide only marginal protection of sex workers' rights. In this book, Prabha Kotiswaran asks how we might understand sex workers' demands that they be treated as workers. She contemplates questions of redistribution through law within the sex industry by e…
Labours in Vice or Virtue? Neo‐liberalism, Sexual Commerce, and the Case of Indian Bar Dancing
Of late, the Indian state has adopted an abolitionist stance towards sex work and bar dancing. This article argues that although in the Indian state of Maharashtra, the judicial overturning of the ban against bar dancing has been celebrated by feminists as a triumph of women's right to livelihood over patriarchal demands of women's sexual morality, the judgment is predicated on a sharp distinction between morally ‘good’ and ‘bad’ female labour, n…
Born unto Brothels—Toward a Legal Ethnography of Sex Work in an Indian Red-Light Area
The global sex panic around sex work and trafficking has fostered prostitution law reform worldwide. While the normative status of sex work remains deeply contested, abolitionists and sex work advocates alike display an unwavering faith in the power of criminal law; for abolitionists, strictly enforced criminal laws can eliminate sex markets, whereas for sex work advocates, decriminalization can empower sex workers. I problematize both narratives…
Born unto Brothels—Toward a Legal Ethnography of Sex Work in an Indian Red-Light Area
The global sex panic around sex work and trafficking has fostered prostitution law reform worldwide. While the normative status of sex work remains deeply contested, abolitionists and sex work advocates alike display an unwavering faith in the power of criminal law; for abolitionists, strictly enforced criminal laws can eliminate sex markets, whereas for sex work advocates, decriminalization can empower sex workers. I problematize both narratives…
The Sexual Politics of Anti-Trafficking Discourse
20 years since the negotiation of the Palermo Protocol on Trafficking in 2000, the anti-trafficking field has gone from an early, almost exclusive preoccupation with sex work to addressing extreme exploitation in a range of labour sectors. While this might suggest a reduced focus on the nature of the work performed and a greater focus on the conditions under which it is performed, in reality, anti-trafficking discourse remains in the grip of pola…
Labours in Vice or Virtue? Neo‐liberalism, Sexual Commerce, and the Case of Indian Bar Dancing
Of late, the Indian state has adopted an abolitionist stance towards sex work and bar dancing. This article argues that although in the Indian state of Maharashtra, the judicial overturning of the ban against bar dancing has been celebrated by feminists as a triumph of women's right to livelihood over patriarchal demands of women's sexual morality, the judgment is predicated on a sharp distinction between morally ‘good’ and ‘bad’ female labour, n…
Toward a Model of Universal Care, One Manifesto at a Time
In the wake of the pandemic, we are all too aware of this carelessness.It turns out that we had stopped caring pre-pandemic, the authors say, where the social infrastructure of several countries was decimated by a politics of austerity and neoliberal economic policies over the past forty years.This of course will come as no surprise to feminists.Yet there is something unique about the post-pandemic moment that warrants a feminist restatement of t…
Valverde’s Chronotopes of Law
Vulnerability in Domestic Discourses on Trafficking
Laws of Social Reproduction
Feminists have long demonstrated the invisibility of women's reproductive labor, performed in bearing and raising children, maintaining households, and socially sustaining male labor. Every wave of feminist struggle from the late nineteenth century onward has actively queried the inequalities that characterize women's performance of such work, variously referred to as unpaid domestic and care work, domestic labor, or care work. Robust traditions …
Do Feminists Need an Economic Sociology of Law
Feminist legal scholars have long exposed the mutually constitutive relationship between the market and the social sphere, particularly, of the family, as mediated by the state. A peculiar division of labour has emerged in American feminist legal theorizing on the market in the context of care work, on the one hand, and sex work on the other. Care is valorized, thus entrenching the family‐market dichotomy while the sex‐work debates view the marke…
Introduction
Born unto Brothels—Toward a Legal Ethnography of Sex Work in an Indian Red-Light Area
The global sex panic around sex work and trafficking has fostered prostitution law reform worldwide. While the normative status of sex work remains deeply contested, abolitionists and sex work advocates alike display an unwavering faith in the power of criminal law; for abolitionists, strictly enforced criminal laws can eliminate sex markets, whereas for sex work advocates, decriminalization can empower sex workers. I problematize both narratives…
Labours in Vice or Virtue? Neo‐liberalism, Sexual Commerce, and the Case of Indian Bar Dancing
Of late, the Indian state has adopted an abolitionist stance towards sex work and bar dancing. This article argues that although in the Indian state of Maharashtra, the judicial overturning of the ban against bar dancing has been celebrated by feminists as a triumph of women's right to livelihood over patriarchal demands of women's sexual morality, the judgment is predicated on a sharp distinction between morally ‘good’ and ‘bad’ female labour, n…
Dangerous Sex, Invisible Labor
Popular representations of third-world sex workers as sex slaves and vectors of HIV have spawned abolitionist legal reforms that are harmful and ineffective, and public health initiatives that provide only marginal protection of sex workers' rights. In this book, Prabha Kotiswaran asks how we might understand sex workers' demands that they be treated as workers. She contemplates questions of redistribution through law within the sex industry by e…
Vulnerability in Domestic Discourses on Trafficking
Sword or Shield
In the contemporary neoliberal moment, the judicial discourse of appellate Indian courts has sought to normalize the identity of sexual minorities such as bar dancers and the LGBT community. While the recognition of the rights of abject sexual groups is welcome, this essay argues that the legal space for normalization is hardly equally available or even the same for all sexual minorities. Indian sex workers are a case in point. Although the India…
Introduction
Do Feminists Need an Economic Sociology of Law
Feminist legal scholars have long exposed the mutually constitutive relationship between the market and the social sphere, particularly, of the family, as mediated by the state. A peculiar division of labour has emerged in American feminist legal theorizing on the market in the context of care work, on the one hand, and sex work on the other. Care is valorized, thus entrenching the family‐market dichotomy while the sex‐work debates view the marke…
Beyond the allures of Criminalization
This article explores the shifting trends in prostitution law and policy in the postcolonial context of India. Indian law has since the 1950s criminalized several aspects of the commercialization of prostitution rather than the sale of sex for money per se. Of late however, following international trends around human trafficking and the relatively popular Swedish model, the Indian state has been keen to criminalize further the demand for sexual s…
Protocol at the Crossroads
As we approach the fifteenth anniversary of the United Nations Trafficking Protocol, we can discern several phases of its diffusion, materialisation and interpretation in domestic criminal law regimes across the world. Although not exclusively preoccupied with sex work and sex trafficking anymore, the fact remains that the inordinate attention on trafficking in Western industrialised economies is disproportionate to the extent of the problem. Onl…
Valverde’s Chronotopes of Law
Revisiting the Law and Governance of Trafficking, Forced Labor and Modern Slavery
In the decades following the globalization of the world economy, trafficking, forced labor and modern slavery have emerged as significant global problems. States negotiated the Palermo Protocol in 2000 under which they agreed to criminalize trafficking, primarily understood as an issue of serious organized crime. Sixteen years later, leading academics, activists and policy makers from international organizations come together in this edited volum…
Governance Feminism
Governance Feminism
Toward a Model of Universal Care, One Manifesto at a Time
In the wake of the pandemic, we are all too aware of this carelessness.It turns out that we had stopped caring pre-pandemic, the authors say, where the social infrastructure of several countries was decimated by a politics of austerity and neoliberal economic policies over the past forty years.This of course will come as no surprise to feminists.Yet there is something unique about the post-pandemic moment that warrants a feminist restatement of t…
The Sexual Politics of Anti-Trafficking Discourse
20 years since the negotiation of the Palermo Protocol on Trafficking in 2000, the anti-trafficking field has gone from an early, almost exclusive preoccupation with sex work to addressing extreme exploitation in a range of labour sectors. While this might suggest a reduced focus on the nature of the work performed and a greater focus on the conditions under which it is performed, in reality, anti-trafficking discourse remains in the grip of pola…
Laws of Social Reproduction
Feminists have long demonstrated the invisibility of women's reproductive labor, performed in bearing and raising children, maintaining households, and socially sustaining male labor. Every wave of feminist struggle from the late nineteenth century onward has actively queried the inequalities that characterize women's performance of such work, variously referred to as unpaid domestic and care work, domestic labor, or care work. Robust traditions …
Justice within the new factory gates
The gated community is a unique site of social reproduction which has proliferated across India. Elite families are reproduced at the individual, household level but also at the communal level in service-rich private enclaves. These households rely heavily on specialised reproductive labourers who are deprived of worker status because they work in the private domain. Homeowners’ associations or resident welfare associations (RWAs) meanwhile regul…
Women’s work, never done, now paid
Reproductive resistance, law, and informality
Our article critically examines the impact of India’s new law on assisted reproductive technologies (ART), namely, the Assisted Reproductive Technology (Regulation) Act, 2021 on women’s reproductive labour, particularly, egg donation. Despite the Act’s prohibition of paid egg donation, based on an empirical study, we find that women are driven by severe economic shocks to their households, rely on linguistic devices, principles of compensation an…
Political science (16 obras) · Law (15 obras) · Sociology (15 obras) · Law (12 obras) · Sex work and related issues (10 obras) · Gender Studies (8 obras) · Politics (8 obras) · Criminology (7 obras) · Gender Studies (6 obras) · Feminism (5 obras)