Svati Shah
Biographic Data
| ID | 3633579 |
|---|---|
| NAME | Svati Shah |
| GIVEN NAMES | Svati |
| FAMILY NAME | Shah |
| SIGNATURE | SHAH S |
| AFFILIATIONS | University of Massachusetts Amherst |
| ORCID | 0000-0001-9072-2696 |
| VERIFIED | Yes |
| TOTAL WORKS | 22 |
| TOTAL CITATIONS | 48 |
| AUTHOR COUNT | 22 |
| EDITOR COUNT | 0 |
| FIRST PUBLICATION YEAR | 1999 |
| LATEST PUBLICATION YEAR | 2025 |
| H-INDEX | 4 |
Kamala Kempadoo's influence on sexual economies scholarship in South Asia and Latin America
In this article we outline Kamala Kempadoo's influence on research on sex work, transactional sex, and sexual economies in South Asia and Latin America, focusing on Brazil and India, the authors’ respective areas of expertise. We draw on our own research arcs to show how Kempadoo's work enabled generations of ethnographic and ethnographically informed research on sexual commerce that centered questions of labor and critiques of policing and impov…
Lahore Cinema: Between Realism and Fable, written by Iftikhar Dadi
Caste Capitalism and Queer Theory: Beyond Identity Politics in India
This article uses "caste capitalism" as a framework for thinking through the entanglements of sexuality politics, caste, and capital in contemporary India. The author uses a queer hermeneutic of heritability and endogamy, drawing inspiration from Indian feminist, queer, anti-caste, and Marxist critiques, and from racial capitalism as theorized by Cedric Robinson. The author argues that caste capitalism, read through a queer hermeneutic, makes the…
Queer and Asian in the American South: Mid-1990s Diary
In this contribution to the forum we recall our experiences of doing Asian queer community-based organizing in Atlanta in the mid-1990s. We draw on the friendship and community that we formed at that time, and the friendships that persist between us and many other people whom we met and worked with then. These networks are part of the politically progressive community space we helped to build, which grew, changed, and eventually gave way to other…
Agriculture, rivers and gender: Thinking with ‘caste capitalism’, migrant labour and food production in the Capitalocene
This briefing offers an analytic frame for understanding how the politics of irrigation for food crops are imbricated with the politics of gender and the re/production of caste-based hierarchies in contemporary India. The briefing focuses on how we might understand industrial pollution, particularly of rivers used for irrigating crops, as well as the increased propensity of drought due to climate change, in relation to the ways in which the bound…
Impossible Migrants
In the wake of the twinned specters of authoritarianism and antidemocratic governance that the COVID-19 pandemic lockdowns in India have both exacerbated and facilitated, the author argues that scholarship on sex work deployed through a critique of labor will be pressed to rethink its analytic focus on the law. Instead, the author argues for a field-level focus built around both the everyday life of surviving sex work in the informal economy and …
Sedition, Sexuality, Gender, and Gender Identity in South Asia
While there is a consensus that we are in a period of heightened official foreclosure of critical speech in South Asia, it would be wrong to presume that this historical period is exceptional in this regard. This special issue of SAMAJ takes up the ways in which laws against sedition and other laws controlling speech in South Asia are being used by the governments there with increasing frequency—against activists, lawyers and journalists. The iss…
Sex and work
This chapter discusses economic policies that are signified by terms like &s;neoliberalism&s; and &s;globalisation&s;, and the relationship of these policies to sexual commerce. It shows that the relationship between &s;neoliberalism&s; and sexual commerce is varied and complex. The terms &s;neoliberalism&s; and &s;globalisation&s; both describe economic policies that were promoted by a range of institutions, including some governments, corporate…
Queering Critiques of Neoliberalism in India: Urbanism and Inequality in the Era of Transnational “LGBTQ” Rights
Understanding contemporary sexuality and gender politics in India compels an examination of the imbrications between cities, the idea of modernity, the production of non‐normative identity‐based social categories, and critiques of neoliberalism. Recent developments in Indian sexuality and gender politics with respect to non‐normative subjects must be understood through the critical lens that scholarship on neoliberalism offers. At the same time, …
Sex Work and the Law: Life Interrupted: Trafficking into Forced Labor in the United States and Playing the Whore: The Work of Sex Work
Street Corner Secrets: Sex, Work, and Migration in the City of Mumbai
Street Corner Secrets challenges widespread notions of sex work in India by examining solicitation in three spaces within the city of Mumbai that are seldom placed within the same analytic frame-brothels, streets, and public day-wage labor markets (nakas), where sexual commerce may be solicited discretely alongside other income-generating activities. Focusing on women who migrated to Mumbai from rural, economically underdeveloped areas within Ind…
Brothels and Big Screen Rescues: Producing the Idea of ‘Prostitution in India’ Through Documentary Film
Scholarship on prostitution in India has grown to reflect a diverse range of perspectives on sexual commerce. In stark contrast, popular documentaries produced in the United States and Europe about prostitution in India have telescoped their representations of sex work to that of prostitution as an iconic, unequivocal and perpetual human rights violation, against women and girls per se, that should be eradicated. In this essay I elaborate on my e…
Interrogating Heteronorms of Development
"Knowing "The Unknowns: The Artwork of Chitra Ganesh
To the extent that [Walter] Benjamin is right, that is a history of perception that is ultimately the history of myth, it would not be inappropriate to regard these philosophical studies as critical illumi nations of that mythology—an ideological formation. . . . What the light of history shows, we have learned, it shows only with adumbra tions. There is no light without shadows, without darkness and con cealment. —David Levin
Codes of Misconduct: Regulating Prostitution in Late Colonial Bombay
South Asian border crossings and sex work: Revisiting the question of migration in anti-trafficking interventions
Producing The Spectacle of Kamathipura: The Politics of Red Light Visibility in Mumbai
In this article, I discuss the ways in which prostitution in Mumbai's main red light area is produced and functions as a spectacle. I examine several instantiations of discourses on prostitution in the city, including the press, and a 2003 HIV/AIDS prevention campaign which targeted female sex workers and their clients. I argue that the spectacle of prostitution in Mumbai is framed by international discourses of trafficking, as well as the local …
Born Into Saving Brothel Children
Antinomies of Modernity: Essays on Race, Orient, Nation (review)
Reviewed by: Antimonies of Modernity: Essays on Race, Orient, Nation Svati P. Shah Antimonies of Modernity: Essays on Race, Orient, Nation. Edited by Vasant Kaiwair and Sucheta Mazumdar. Durham and London: Duke University Press, 2003. “Globalization” has come to signify a multiplicity of intellectual and political movements, both in its defenses and in attempts at its disruption. The term itself increasingly stands in for perspectives which read …
Prostitution, Sex Work and Violence: Discursive and Political Contexts for Five Texts on Paid Sex, 1987–2001
This article deals with the trope of the victimised, female body in feminist debates on the selling of sexual services. The notion of ‘violence’ is central to the construction of a key axis of the debates. The article explores these issues by discussing five recent and historical feminist works on prostitution/sex work, and touches on works which address methodological issues of gathering information on an activity which is, by definition, illici…
Sex Work in the Global Economy
Economic globalization, shifting trends in militarization, and anxieties aroused by increases in labor migration across international borders, are now affecting the goals and concerns of labor organizing. Organizing in the economic sector1 including piecework manufacturing, small-scale factories, black and gray markets, and the sex industry is growing more important. An expanding informal sector entails the increased feminization of migration and…
Reflections on Queer South Asian Progressive Activism in the U.S
Queering Critiques of Neoliberalism in India: Urbanism and Inequality in the Era of Transnational “LGBTQ” Rights
Understanding contemporary sexuality and gender politics in India compels an examination of the imbrications between cities, the idea of modernity, the production of non‐normative identity‐based social categories, and critiques of neoliberalism. Recent developments in Indian sexuality and gender politics with respect to non‐normative subjects must be understood through the critical lens that scholarship on neoliberalism offers. At the same time, …
Prostitution, Sex Work and Violence: Discursive and Political Contexts for Five Texts on Paid Sex, 1987–2001
This article deals with the trope of the victimised, female body in feminist debates on the selling of sexual services. The notion of ‘violence’ is central to the construction of a key axis of the debates. The article explores these issues by discussing five recent and historical feminist works on prostitution/sex work, and touches on works which address methodological issues of gathering information on an activity which is, by definition, illici…
Producing The Spectacle of Kamathipura: The Politics of Red Light Visibility in Mumbai
In this article, I discuss the ways in which prostitution in Mumbai's main red light area is produced and functions as a spectacle. I examine several instantiations of discourses on prostitution in the city, including the press, and a 2003 HIV/AIDS prevention campaign which targeted female sex workers and their clients. I argue that the spectacle of prostitution in Mumbai is framed by international discourses of trafficking, as well as the local …
South Asian border crossings and sex work: Revisiting the question of migration in anti-trafficking interventions
Caste Capitalism and Queer Theory: Beyond Identity Politics in India
This article uses "caste capitalism" as a framework for thinking through the entanglements of sexuality politics, caste, and capital in contemporary India. The author uses a queer hermeneutic of heritability and endogamy, drawing inspiration from Indian feminist, queer, anti-caste, and Marxist critiques, and from racial capitalism as theorized by Cedric Robinson. The author argues that caste capitalism, read through a queer hermeneutic, makes the…
Codes of Misconduct: Regulating Prostitution in Late Colonial Bombay
Agriculture, rivers and gender: Thinking with ‘caste capitalism’, migrant labour and food production in the Capitalocene
This briefing offers an analytic frame for understanding how the politics of irrigation for food crops are imbricated with the politics of gender and the re/production of caste-based hierarchies in contemporary India. The briefing focuses on how we might understand industrial pollution, particularly of rivers used for irrigating crops, as well as the increased propensity of drought due to climate change, in relation to the ways in which the bound…
Sedition, Sexuality, Gender, and Gender Identity in South Asia
While there is a consensus that we are in a period of heightened official foreclosure of critical speech in South Asia, it would be wrong to presume that this historical period is exceptional in this regard. This special issue of SAMAJ takes up the ways in which laws against sedition and other laws controlling speech in South Asia are being used by the governments there with increasing frequency—against activists, lawyers and journalists. The iss…
Born Into Saving Brothel Children
Reflections on Queer South Asian Progressive Activism in the U.S
Reflections on Queer South Asian Progressive Activism in the U.S
Sex Work in the Global Economy
Economic globalization, shifting trends in militarization, and anxieties aroused by increases in labor migration across international borders, are now affecting the goals and concerns of labor organizing. Organizing in the economic sector1 including piecework manufacturing, small-scale factories, black and gray markets, and the sex industry is growing more important. An expanding informal sector entails the increased feminization of migration and…
Antinomies of Modernity: Essays on Race, Orient, Nation (review)
Reviewed by: Antimonies of Modernity: Essays on Race, Orient, Nation Svati P. Shah Antimonies of Modernity: Essays on Race, Orient, Nation. Edited by Vasant Kaiwair and Sucheta Mazumdar. Durham and London: Duke University Press, 2003. “Globalization” has come to signify a multiplicity of intellectual and political movements, both in its defenses and in attempts at its disruption. The term itself increasingly stands in for perspectives which read …
Prostitution, Sex Work and Violence: Discursive and Political Contexts for Five Texts on Paid Sex, 1987–2001
This article deals with the trope of the victimised, female body in feminist debates on the selling of sexual services. The notion of ‘violence’ is central to the construction of a key axis of the debates. The article explores these issues by discussing five recent and historical feminist works on prostitution/sex work, and touches on works which address methodological issues of gathering information on an activity which is, by definition, illici…
Born Into Saving Brothel Children
Producing The Spectacle of Kamathipura: The Politics of Red Light Visibility in Mumbai
In this article, I discuss the ways in which prostitution in Mumbai's main red light area is produced and functions as a spectacle. I examine several instantiations of discourses on prostitution in the city, including the press, and a 2003 HIV/AIDS prevention campaign which targeted female sex workers and their clients. I argue that the spectacle of prostitution in Mumbai is framed by international discourses of trafficking, as well as the local …
South Asian border crossings and sex work: Revisiting the question of migration in anti-trafficking interventions
Codes of Misconduct: Regulating Prostitution in Late Colonial Bombay
"Knowing "The Unknowns: The Artwork of Chitra Ganesh
To the extent that [Walter] Benjamin is right, that is a history of perception that is ultimately the history of myth, it would not be inappropriate to regard these philosophical studies as critical illumi nations of that mythology—an ideological formation. . . . What the light of history shows, we have learned, it shows only with adumbra tions. There is no light without shadows, without darkness and con cealment. —David Levin
Interrogating Heteronorms of Development
Brothels and Big Screen Rescues: Producing the Idea of ‘Prostitution in India’ Through Documentary Film
Scholarship on prostitution in India has grown to reflect a diverse range of perspectives on sexual commerce. In stark contrast, popular documentaries produced in the United States and Europe about prostitution in India have telescoped their representations of sex work to that of prostitution as an iconic, unequivocal and perpetual human rights violation, against women and girls per se, that should be eradicated. In this essay I elaborate on my e…
Street Corner Secrets: Sex, Work, and Migration in the City of Mumbai
Street Corner Secrets challenges widespread notions of sex work in India by examining solicitation in three spaces within the city of Mumbai that are seldom placed within the same analytic frame-brothels, streets, and public day-wage labor markets (nakas), where sexual commerce may be solicited discretely alongside other income-generating activities. Focusing on women who migrated to Mumbai from rural, economically underdeveloped areas within Ind…
Queering Critiques of Neoliberalism in India: Urbanism and Inequality in the Era of Transnational “LGBTQ” Rights
Understanding contemporary sexuality and gender politics in India compels an examination of the imbrications between cities, the idea of modernity, the production of non‐normative identity‐based social categories, and critiques of neoliberalism. Recent developments in Indian sexuality and gender politics with respect to non‐normative subjects must be understood through the critical lens that scholarship on neoliberalism offers. At the same time, …
Sex Work and the Law: Life Interrupted: Trafficking into Forced Labor in the United States and Playing the Whore: The Work of Sex Work
Sex and work
This chapter discusses economic policies that are signified by terms like &s;neoliberalism&s; and &s;globalisation&s;, and the relationship of these policies to sexual commerce. It shows that the relationship between &s;neoliberalism&s; and sexual commerce is varied and complex. The terms &s;neoliberalism&s; and &s;globalisation&s; both describe economic policies that were promoted by a range of institutions, including some governments, corporate…
Sedition, Sexuality, Gender, and Gender Identity in South Asia
While there is a consensus that we are in a period of heightened official foreclosure of critical speech in South Asia, it would be wrong to presume that this historical period is exceptional in this regard. This special issue of SAMAJ takes up the ways in which laws against sedition and other laws controlling speech in South Asia are being used by the governments there with increasing frequency—against activists, lawyers and journalists. The iss…
Impossible Migrants
In the wake of the twinned specters of authoritarianism and antidemocratic governance that the COVID-19 pandemic lockdowns in India have both exacerbated and facilitated, the author argues that scholarship on sex work deployed through a critique of labor will be pressed to rethink its analytic focus on the law. Instead, the author argues for a field-level focus built around both the everyday life of surviving sex work in the informal economy and …
Queer and Asian in the American South: Mid-1990s Diary
In this contribution to the forum we recall our experiences of doing Asian queer community-based organizing in Atlanta in the mid-1990s. We draw on the friendship and community that we formed at that time, and the friendships that persist between us and many other people whom we met and worked with then. These networks are part of the politically progressive community space we helped to build, which grew, changed, and eventually gave way to other…
Agriculture, rivers and gender: Thinking with ‘caste capitalism’, migrant labour and food production in the Capitalocene
This briefing offers an analytic frame for understanding how the politics of irrigation for food crops are imbricated with the politics of gender and the re/production of caste-based hierarchies in contemporary India. The briefing focuses on how we might understand industrial pollution, particularly of rivers used for irrigating crops, as well as the increased propensity of drought due to climate change, in relation to the ways in which the bound…
Lahore Cinema: Between Realism and Fable, written by Iftikhar Dadi
Caste Capitalism and Queer Theory: Beyond Identity Politics in India
This article uses "caste capitalism" as a framework for thinking through the entanglements of sexuality politics, caste, and capital in contemporary India. The author uses a queer hermeneutic of heritability and endogamy, drawing inspiration from Indian feminist, queer, anti-caste, and Marxist critiques, and from racial capitalism as theorized by Cedric Robinson. The author argues that caste capitalism, read through a queer hermeneutic, makes the…
Kamala Kempadoo's influence on sexual economies scholarship in South Asia and Latin America
In this article we outline Kamala Kempadoo's influence on research on sex work, transactional sex, and sexual economies in South Asia and Latin America, focusing on Brazil and India, the authors’ respective areas of expertise. We draw on our own research arcs to show how Kempadoo's work enabled generations of ethnographic and ethnographically informed research on sexual commerce that centered questions of labor and critiques of policing and impov…
Sociology (18 works) · Political science (16 works) · Gender Studies (12 works) · Law (12 works) · Politics (11 works) · Sex work and related issues (11 works) · Economics (8 works) · Sex work (8 works) · Gender Studies (6 works) · Aesthetics (5 works)