Fragments Towards an Impossible (Domestic) Genre of the Human in Kenyan Crime Fiction

2021 ◽  
Vol 47 (3) ◽  
pp. 99-119
Author(s):  
Wairimũ Mũrĩithi
Keyword(s):  
Sex Work ◽  
Sex Workers ◽  
Social Life ◽  
Crime Fiction ◽  
Literary Fiction ◽  
International Media ◽  
Post Colonial ◽  
Mainstream Media ◽  
History Of ◽  
The City

Extrajudicial executions and other forms of police violence in Kenya have always been an issue of significant concern in local and international media and human rights organisations. Reflective of this, scholarly interest in crime fiction in Kenya has grown significantly in recent years. However, the gendered implications of criminality – from sex work to errant motherhood to alternative modes of investigation – are still largely overlooked in postcolonial literary fiction and criticism. As part of a larger study on how women writers and characters shape crime fiction in Kenya, this paper critically engages with stories that the criminalised woman knows, tells, forgets,  incarnates, discards or hides about the city. It does so by examining the history of urban sex workers in Kenya, the representation of ‘urban women’ in postcolonial Kenyan novels and contemporary mainstream media, and the various (post) colonial laws that criminalise sex work. Through Justina, an elusive character in Yvonne Adhiambo Owuor’s Dust, I consider how (post)colonial legislative frameworks and social life attempt to manage “impossible domesticity” (Saidiya Hartman) inside and against the geo-history of gendered and classed criminality in urban Kenyan spaces. My purpose is to interrogate hegemonic constructions of the citizen – and by extension, of the human  – in Kenyan law and public morality Keywords: crime fiction, feminism, sex work, human, homo narrans

Urban Space and Aristocratic Power in Late Antique Rome

2019 ◽  
Author(s):  
Carlos Machado
Keyword(s):  
Roman Empire ◽  
Cultural History ◽  
Urban Space ◽  
Social Life ◽  
Late Antiquity ◽  
Late Antique ◽  
The Social ◽  
Traditional Elite ◽  
History Of ◽  
The City

This book analyses the physical, social, and cultural history of Rome in late antiquity. Between AD 270 and 535, the former capital of the Roman empire experienced a series of dramatic transformations in its size, appearance, political standing, and identity, as emperors moved to other cities and the Christian church slowly became its dominating institution. Urban Space and Aristocratic Power in Late Antique Rome provides a new picture of these developments, focusing on the extraordinary role played by members of the traditional elite, the senatorial aristocracy, in the redefinition of the city, its institutions, and spaces. During this period, Roman senators and their families became increasingly involved in the management of the city and its population, in building works, and in the performance of secular and religious ceremonies and rituals. As this study shows, for approximately three hundred years the houses of the Roman elite competed with imperial palaces and churches in shaping the political map and the social life of the city. Making use of modern theories of urban space, the book considers a vast array of archaeological, literary, and epigraphic documents to show how the former centre of the Mediterranean world was progressively redefined and controlled by its own elite.

Bar-Dancing, Palm Wine, and Letters

2019 ◽  
Vol 3 (2) ◽  
pp. 123-154
Author(s):  
Danielle Porter Sanchez
Keyword(s):  
Alcohol Consumption ◽  
Social Life ◽  
Second World War ◽  
Sense Of Control ◽  
World War ◽  
Palm Wine ◽  
History Of ◽  
The Will ◽  
The City ◽  
Second World

Abstract This article focuses on the militarization of social life and leisure in Brazzaville during the Second World War and argues that efforts to instill a sense of control over the city could only suppress life so much, as many Congolese people were unwilling to completely succumb to the will of the administration in a war that seemed to offer very little to their communities or their city as a whole. Furthermore, drinking and dancing served as opportunities to engage with issues of class and race in the wartime capital of Afrique Française Libre. The history of alcohol consumption in Brazzaville is not simply the story of choosing whether or not to drink (or allow others to drink); rather, it is one of many stories of colonial control, exploitation, and racism that plagued Europe’s colonies in Africa during the Second World War.

Demographic Change, Prostitution, and Sexually Transmitted Infection Rates in China

2016 ◽  
Author(s):  
Avraham Ebenstein ◽  
Ethan J. Sharygin
Keyword(s):  
Sex Work ◽  
Sex Workers ◽  
Census Data ◽  
Supply And Demand ◽  
Transmitted Infection ◽  
Demand And Supply ◽  
Sexually Transmitted ◽  
Policy Responses ◽  
Large Numbers ◽  
History Of

China has experienced an explosion in the sex ratio at birth, with 25 million more men than women younger than 20 (2005 census). This chapter examines the implications of large numbers of men failing to marry on the supply-and-demand dynamics of sex work, with a focus on how this affects the prevalence of sexually transmitted infections (STIs). The chapter begins with a history of prostitution in China and describes the massive increase in sex work following economic reforms in the late 1970s. It then analyzes the current dynamics of demand and supply for sex work in China, using national census data and detailed microdata on sex workers. The authors find a clear link between high-population sex ratios, the prevalence of sex work, and STI rates. The analysis concludes with projections for the future and a discussion of policy responses in light of an anticipated increase in sex work.

Conclusion

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
Nicole von Germeten
Keyword(s):  
Public Health ◽  
Eighteenth Century ◽  
Sex Work ◽  
Sex Workers ◽  
Government Regulation ◽  
First Century ◽  
Spanish American ◽  
The World ◽  
History Of ◽  
Nineteenth And Twentieth Centuries

The conclusion surveys how in nineteenth-century Mexico, Europe, and regions around the world under European colonial rule, sex work took place in an environment of increasing government intervention, a phase in the history of sexuality that extends into the twenty-first century. The concern about disease control took on a more scientific, sanitary tone in the eighteenth century. This discourse remained critical to sex work law, as it does to the present day. Through prolific regulations, scientific studies, works of literature, and statements made by sex workers themselves, the nineteenth and twentieth centuries saw an enormous increase in the archiving and inscribing of women who sold sex. But their roles remained the same: either pathetic victims (usually of non-whites or non-Christians or other feared populations), lascivious and scandalous disturbers of the peace, or dehumanized and horrific threats to public health. Imperialism and international conceptions of race/gender difference led to increasing government regulation in locations as dispersed as the disappearing Spanish American viceroyalties, extending outwards to Europe, Asia, and Oceania.

Inhabiting modern landscape

1997 ◽  
Vol 4 (1) ◽  
pp. 23-28 ◽  
Author(s):  
Denis Cosgrove
Keyword(s):  
Social Life ◽  
Human Life ◽  
Decisive Role ◽  
Human Geography ◽  
Physical World ◽  
Post Colonial ◽  
Social Sciences And Humanities ◽  
The Social ◽  
History Of ◽  
Modern Landscape

Archaeology, anthropology, human geography: three disciplines born out of a nineteenth-century imperative among Europeans to apply a coherent model of understanding (Wissen-schaft) to varied forms of social life within a differentiated physical world; three disciplines stretched between the epistemology and methods of the natural sciences (Naturwissenschaften) which promised certainty, and the hermeneutic reflexivity and critical doubt of the Humanities (Geisteswissenschaften) which promised self-knowledge. Each of these disciplines is today in crisis, and for the same reason. Europe as the place of authoritative knowledge, of civilization, has been decentred upon a post-colonial globe; the white, bourgeois European male has been dethroned as the sovereign subject of a universal and progressive history. Thus, the enlightened intellectual project represented by archaeology, anthropology and human geography, whose findings were unconsciously designed to secure the essentially ideological claims of liberal Europeans, are obliged to renegotiate their most fundamental assumptions and concepts (Gregory, 1993). The linguistic turn in the social sciences and humanities which has so ruthlessly exposed the context-bound nature of their scientific claims — what Ton Lemaire refers to as a critical awareness of their inescapable cultural and historical mediation — forces a recognition that their central conceptual terms, such as ‘culture’, ‘nature’, ‘society’, and ‘landscape’, are far from being neutral scientific objects, open to disinterested examination through the objective and authoritative eye of scholarship. They are intellectual constructions which need to be understood in their emergence and evolution across quite specific histories. Ton Lemaire seeks to sketch something of the history of landscape as such a socially and historically mediated idea: as a mode of representing relations between land and human life, which has played a decisive role in the development of archaeology as a formal discipline. On the foundation of this history he develops a critique of the social and environmental characteristics and consequences of modernity, and seeks to relocate archaeological study within a reformed project of sensitive contemporary ‘dwelling’ on earth.

scholarly journals Sex Work and the City

2021 ◽  
Vol 6 (1) ◽  
pp. 6-13
Author(s):  
Helen Roitberg
Keyword(s):  
Sex Work ◽  
Sex Workers ◽  
Sexual Exploitation ◽  
State Regulation ◽  
Indigenous Women ◽  
Women's Bodies ◽  
Public And Private ◽  
Sexual Services ◽  
The City ◽  
Ongoing Project

Bill C-36, or the Protection of Communities and Exploited Persons Act, which was introduced in Canada in 2014, made the purchase of sexual services illegal. To the end of eliminating sex work, Bill C-36 rests on the premise that sex work is inherently exploitative, and that sex workers and their communities are harmed by the exchange of sexual services. Considering that Indigenous women are overrepresented among sex workers and disproportionately victims of severe violence, this paper examines the goals of Bill C-36 in conversation with Canada’s ongoing project of colonialism. This paper demonstrates that Bill C-36 upholds the systemic devaluation of Indigeneity by which Indigenous women’s bodies are rendered deserving of violence, and by which this violence is normalized and invisibilized. Rather than protect ‘victims’ of sexual exploitation, Bill C-36 relies on the colonial stereotypes of the Indigenous prostitute to reimagine sexually autonomous Indigenous women as inherent threats to (white) Canadian society and themselves, and thereby justify state regulation in both public and private spaces.

scholarly journals The character of the city of Verny (Almaty) in pre-revolutionary journals of historical themes in Russia (1854-1917)

2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Sergei Sergeevich Tiurin
Keyword(s):  
Social Life ◽  
Russian Empire ◽  
Specific Information ◽  
South Eastern ◽  
Internal Politics ◽  
History Of ◽  
Historical Themes ◽  
The Russian Empire ◽  
Xix Century ◽  
The City

Faithful military fortification, founded in the middle of the XIX century in the south-eastern outskirts of the Russian Empire, was located far from the center of the state with a turbulent political and social life. At the same time in the middle of the XIX century, there is interest in the history of Russia, memoirs, internal politics and social sciences in general, that leading to the emergence of an unprecedented hitherto the number of periodicals historical themes. This article explores references to the city / Verny Fortification in the "Historical Gazette", "Notes of the Fatherland", "Russian Archive", "Niva", "Russian Gazette", "Russian Antiquity", "Russian Thought" and a number of other publications. Identified during the study, articles and notes on the city of Verny allow us to get an idea of what exactly the city remembers to travelers, what specific information about it was reflected in historical journals published between 1854 and 1917 in Moscow and St. Petersburg.

scholarly journals Factors associated with use of long-acting reversible contraception among female sex workers operating in Gulu district, Northern Uganda – a cross-sectional study

2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Simple Ouma ◽  
Nazarius Mbona Tumwesigye ◽  
Catherine Abbo ◽  
Rawlance Ndejjo
Keyword(s):  
Sex Work ◽  
Unintended Pregnancy ◽  
Sex Workers ◽  
Female Sex Workers ◽  
Northern Uganda ◽  
Sectional Study ◽  
Factors Associated ◽  
History Of ◽  
Gulu District ◽  
Long Acting

Abstract Background: Long-acting reversible contraception (LARC) are the most effective and reliable contraceptives for female sex workers (FSWs) and require periodic users’ involvement only at the time of application or re-application. However, information on LARC use among FSWs in Uganda is scarce. To fill this gap, we determined the prevalence of LARC use among FSWs and examined factors associated with LARC use among FSWs operating in Gulu district, Northern Uganda.Methods: Across-sectional study was conducted among 300 FSWs aged 18 years and above and operating in Gulu district. Semi-structured questionnaires were used to measure factors associated with the use of LARC: intrauterine device (IUD), Implants, and injectables. Data analyses were conducted using STATA 14.0 and restricted to 280 non-gravid adult FSWs aged 18-49 years who were not on permanent contraception method. To examine factors associated with LARC use, prevalence ratios (PR) with robust standard errors were computed using Poisson regression.Results: Among the participants, the mean age (SD, range) was 26.5 (5.9, 18 - 45) years, 53.2% never married, 66.1% reported consistent condom use independent of LARC, 58.9% had unintended pregnancy during a lifetime, 48.6% had at least one unintended pregnancy during sex work, and 37.4% had at least one induced abortion. The prevalence of LARC use was 58.6%; the majority were using Implants (48.2%), followed by injectables (42.7%), and IUDs (9.1%). Independent factors associated with LARC use included: longer duration of sex work [≥ two years] (adjusted PR=1.44, 95% CI: 1.03-2.02), higher parity [≥ two] (adjusted PR=1.13, 95% CI: 1.02-1.26), history of unintended pregnancy during sex work (adjusted PR=1.24 CI: 1.01-1.51), and being a brothel/lodge-based FSWs (adjusted PR=1.28, 95% CI: 1.01-1.63).Conclusions: There is a big gap in LARC use with only 58.6% of FSWs using LARC. LARC use was associated with longer duration of sex work, higher parity, history of sex work-related unintended pregnancy, and being a brothel/lodge-based FSW. Therefore, interventions to improve LARC use should intensively target the newly recruited FSWs, FSWs with low parity, and FSWs not based in brothels or lodges.

scholarly journals Modernitas Berseragam dan Wajah Buram Modernitas di Kota Makassar pada Masa Orde Baru

2019 ◽  
Vol 4 (1) ◽  
pp. 15
Author(s):  
I. Ilham
Keyword(s):  
Private Sector ◽  
Urban Space ◽  
Urban Areas ◽  
Social Life ◽  
The State ◽  
City Government ◽  
New Order ◽  
Urban Residents ◽  
History Of ◽  
The City

This article describes modernity in the city of Makassar during the New Order era. The meaning of modernity in this article was a modern idea or thought in the form projects of development (modernization) which the state tries to control. The control of the State is manifested in the form of uniformity and mobilization of development projects by the city government. The main impact that arises from the process is problems of urban, environment of the urban physical and social life of population of the city. This study uses the approach of the history of the city. The data used came from archives, newspapers, magazines, and results of interviews. This study shows that uniformity and mobilization of urban development modernity projects touch the lowest level, especially in the regulation and use of urban space and in the activities of urban residents. At the same time, the control and influence of the private sector increasingly determines the use of space. A predetermined city plan often can not work because it gets intervention from the interests of the private sector. In this conflict of interests, various "disappointments" arose in the attempt to modernize urban space. In urban areas, problems arise in structuring cities and social life which are vulnerable as an impact of an increasingly widespread modernization project. On the other side, the livelihood sources of some urban residents such as the informal sector are increasingly marginalized and have no support from the city government.

Imagining Spaces of Violence and Transgression in Vancouver and Northern Ireland

2019 ◽  
pp. 93-116
Author(s):  
Lizzie Seal ◽  
Maggie O’Neill
Keyword(s):  
Northern Ireland ◽  
Case Studies ◽  
Sex Workers ◽  
Indigenous Women ◽  
Downtown Eastside ◽  
History Of ◽  
Valentine's Day ◽  
The City

This chapter focuses specifically on the issue of space, place, violence and transgression drawing on case studies in Canada and Northern Ireland. ‘Imagining spaces of violence and transgression in Vancouver and Northern Ireland’ focuses first of all on the lives of indigenous women and sex workers in Vancouver’s Downtown Eastside (DTES). For 26 years, on 14 February, Valentine’s Day, women of the DTES have led a memorial march through the city, stopping at the places and spaces where women were murdered or went missing. The chapter draws on material from walking methods, participatory photographs and interviews with women who attended the march in 2016 to examine spaces of past, present and future in their lives. Continuing the theme of the construction and impact of space and borders explored in the previous chapter, this chapter also examines the history of the ‘peace walls’, ‘peace lines’ or ‘border lines’ in Belfast in the context of spaces of war, violence and conflict in Northern Ireland. Specifically,the ‘architecture of conflict’ is explored through criminological scholarship on the conflict in Northern Ireland. As with the Vancouver case study, arts-based walking methods are utilised that explore these border spaces through sensory, kinaesthetic, multi-modal research with citizens of Belfast.

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