UNLV Sociology Faculty Publications: Barb Brents

In August of 1999, not too long before narratives of sex trafficking began to dominate prostitution policy debates, the residents of a small town in Nevada debated closing the city’s legal brothels. Citizens crowded the hearing hall, holding signs about protecting family and community values. But instead of opposing prostitution, as one might have expected, most public commenters echoed a sign that read, “Pro Family, Pro Prostitution.” Drawing on an analysis of the testimony of the 51 citizens in attendance at that public hearing and ethnographic data gathered in four visits to Evenheart over a 1-year period, this paper examines the arguments that framed support for, and opposition to, legal prostitution at this critical historic juncture. The research finds important differences in the ways particular neoliberal discourses can be deployed to the wide range of sexual, gender, and relationship values that constitute heterosexuality. Both supporters and opponents drew on market logics—defined for purposes of this paper as a neoliberal individualism and economic rationality of free trade, scarcity, competition, and self-regulation—as well as on discourses of morality and the family, but each side used them in strikingly different ways. Brothel supporters drew on market logics to defend and support individualized family values and a market-driven morality, while brothel opponents deployed market logics that supported conservative heteronormative values and morals. I suggest that these deployments of market logics, particularly among brothel supporters, are instances of “heteroflexibility” in neoliberal governance, that is, flexibility in the various gender, sexual, and relationship norms that collectively make up heterosexuality as an institution. Key to the intensity of heteroflexibility’s challenge to heterosexuality, both then and today, is whether market logics use free choice or protection discourses in the neoliberal governance of sexuality.

In the United States and beyond, there is often a wide disconnect between grounded empirical evidence about the sex industry and policies on sex work and human trafficking. In this introduction, we briefly review empirical and critical scholarly literature on sex work and human trafficking policy within the United States. We then introduce three sociological articles that provide compelling empirical research on individuals who work in the sex trade as well as those who organize on behalf of sex workers and trafficked individuals. We conclude by inviting more sociologists to narrow the gap between reliable empirical evidence and policies on sex work and human trafficking, and we urge activists and policy makers to listen.

This paper seeks to analyse the expansion of commercial sex through processes of mainstreaming in economic and social institutions. We argue that cultural changes and neo-liberal policies and attitudes have enabled economic mainstreaming, whilst social ambivalence continues to provide the backdrop to a prolific and profitable global industry. We chart the advancement of sexual consumption and sexual service provision in late capitalism before defining the concept of ‘mainstreaming’ applied here. We use the case studies of Las Vegas and Leeds to identify various social and economic dimensions to the mainstreaming process and the ways these play out in law and regulation. While social and economic processes have integrated sexual services into night-time commerce, remaining social ambivalence fuels transgression and marginalization of the industry which in fact assists the mainstreaming process. Finally, we project some implications for gender relations, work, and inequalities as a result of the integration of sexual services into the economy.

Recent scholarship has begun to examine the effects late capitalist economic structures and cultural practices have on sexuality. What effect do recent shifts have on various parts of the global sex industry? To answer this question, we examine one local institutional site of consumption, the legalized brothel industry in the US state of Nevada. We argue that the brothel industry in Nevada is beginning to use similar marketing strategies and business forms to other tourist service industries. The brothels are also increasingly selling individualized, interactive touristic experiences. We conclude that it is no longer useful to examine the sex industry as generalized `other' to mainstream businesses. It is imperative to study local sex industry sites to examine how late capitalist forms of consumption might have an impact on the sale of sex, especially in comparison with expanding global touristic service industries.

This article examines violence in legalized brothels in Nevada. Debates over prostitution policies in the United States have long focused on questions of safety and risk. These discourses inevitably invoke the coupling of violence and prostitution, though systematic examinations of the relationship between the two are sparse. This article explores the issue of violence in the Nevada brothel industry. By drawing on interviews with prostitutes, managers, and policy makers, this article examines both prostitutes’ perceptions of safety and risk and brothel managers’ practices designed to mitigate violence. Discourses relate to three types of violence: interpersonal violence against prostitutes, violence against community order, and sexually transmitted diseases as violence. The authors conclude by arguing that the legalization of prostitution brings a level of public scrutiny, official regulation, and bureaucratization to brothels that decreases the risk of these 3 types of systematic violence.

The Barnard Conference was as much about the struggle to create a feminist identity as it was about scholarly inquiry. As such, the conflicts that emerged became at once very personal and very political. Living in Las Vegas and doing research on its sex industry over the past twenty years has brought these political struggles home to me in some very personal ways. In this essay I argue that the us vs. them divide that has opened especially around sexual commerce was then and is now tangled in and fueled by political battles far removed from feminism. While not being naïve about how hard this is, we have to start disentangling political battles from scholarship. Those of us interested in good research from both sides must start talking to each other.

Sociology has had plenty to say about terrorism? We do not have a subfield on the sociology of terrorism, nor should we. Terrorism is a political label, and well intentioned scholarly
attempts to define the study of" it" may only reify its political uses and cloud our understanding (Tilly, 2004). We certainly need tools to understand the origins, trajectories, and outcomes of political violence and there is plenty of scholarly work on political ...

This article examines the potential threat of terrorism toward the Nevada Nuclear Test Site and the proposed Yucca Mountain Nuclear Waste Repository by domestic protest groups, particularly anti-nuclear activists. The analysis is based on the history of direct action anti-nuclear campaigns against the facilities, particularly the Nevada Test Site, and suggests that violence as a form of protest, particularly the type of violence that is aimed at jeopardizing human safety (as opposed to violent destruction of property), is very unlikely. It is argued that the normalized relations between authorities and protesters that occurred at the peak of direct actions is critical to maintaining the nonviolence that has characterized activism at the facilities. But, the current climate of heightened government scrutiny and repression toward various types of perceived terrorist threats may affect future forms of protest and engender violent responses on both sides.

Recent neo-Marxian and state-centric analyses of the origins of the American welfare state have misspecified the autonomy of the state, thereby conflating policy formulation with policy-making and missing the complex political struggles that shaped the formulation of the Social Security Act of 1935. Synthesizing Poulantzas's" class struggle" theory of state with social protest theory and Domhoff's analysis of capitalist dominance, we advance a political ...