Preliminary Programme

Shanghai, notorious for prostitution in the early 20th century, only became a world city with rampant prostitution after the 1840s, when it became a treaty port, with foreign concessions and extraterritoriality. Resulting changes, including a large influx of foreigners, both as visitors and residents, had important consequences for all areas of life, including sex work. Equally important were 19th and 20th century Chinese events, particularly uprisings and rebellions, economic dislocations and social upheavals, which attracted millions of refugees and labor migrants to Shanghai’s comparative safety and dynamic economy. These migrant waves had serious implications for sex work, which was traditionally understood as rooted in economic need and patriarchal arranged marriages. Industrialization brought businessmen, officials, and workers from other parts of China, who preferred women from their native regions, with different levels in the prostitution hierarchy linked to specific regions, ethnicities and occupations. The changing nature of employment also drew women to work in textile mills, some of whom ended up as prostitutes, along with women sold by their impoverished families or kidnapped. In a “modern” Shanghai where the traditional categories had collapsed, taxed, licensed brothels and teahouses with madams, servants and prostitutes gradually gave way to independent prostitutes connected to new media, dance halls and now clubs, bars and hotels. Clearly, practices and beliefs challenged by missionaries and Maoists have been modernized, but there has been a resurgence of a prostitution connected in many ways to the past. For the IISH project, “Selling Sex in the City: Prostitution in World Cities,” Shanghai represents a singular case of “semi-colonialism” followed by Maoist revolution and liberal reform. In the midst of the violent ruptures of civil and foreign wars, and economic, political and social crises, Shanghai was home to a legendary prostitution that remained legal, licensed and regulated –from street walkers and brothels to courtesans, despite missionary and Chinese moral reform efforts. Then, after the Communist victory of 1949, prostitution was banned for thirty years as capitalist, bourgeois, and Western, only to reemerge in 1978 with the liberal economic reforms, now linked to consumerism and a get-rich-quick mentality. There has also been an explosion of interest in sex and sexuality in the media, the arts and the internet, with prostitution a focus of debate. The sources that I would draw on for my urban overview of prostitution in Shanghai are rich and varied. Important social and labor histories of Shanghai, many of them with feminist approaches to sex work, have been published in recent years. There is also much contemporary scholarship by sociologists, anthropologists, sexologists and students of law and criminal justice. Primary sources on the pre-1800 period are scarce, but for the 19th and 20th centuries there is a wide variety of sources, from official records and journalism to guidebooks and traveler’s accounts, in addition to literary sources such as poetry and song, fiction and memoirs. (Show less)

This paper discusses the social profile of sex workers throughout the world between the early seventeenth century and today. Subjects included are the religious, racial and ethnic backgrounds of sex workers, their education level and employment experiences prior or parallel to prostitution as well as their family situation, age structure and physical and psychological health. (Show less)

This paper looks at Gender Relations and Prostitution from 1600 to 2000. It is based on local studies on the history of prostitution in the period 1600-2000 in the following towns: Africa: Cairo, Johannesburg, Lagos, Nairobi; Asia: Calcutta, Hanoi, Jaffa and Tel Aviv, Shanghai, Singapore; Europe: Bruges, Florence, Istanbul, London, St. Petersburg/Moscow, Paris, Stockholm, Vienna; Latin America: Mexico City, Rio de Janeiro, Buenos Aires, La Paz, Havana; North America: Frontier; Oceania: Sydney & Perth. (Show less)