Dangerous Pleasures (Prostitution in 20th Century Shanghai and Modernity)

Author: He Xiao [USA]
Publisher:
Publish Date: 2003-06-01
Features: This book is a history of the prostitution industry in Shanghai, but it is a historical work produced in the post-structuralist era. It benefits from the rich theoretical explorations, intellectual dialogues, and multiple perspectives of the latter half of the 20th century. The author is particularly influenced by Marxism, feminist and gender studies, post-structuralism, and the concept of "subordinate groups" in post-colonial studies. Both "source materials" and the "history" produced by the author are seen as dynamic, complex, and open "processes" of dialogue, negotiation, memory, construction, and creation. The book is divided into five parts and 15 chapters, discussing how the issue of "prostitution" over the 100 years from the late Qing Dynasty to the early 1990s became entangled with rich semantic fields at various levels, such as national consciousness, political power relations, commercial and economic interests, national strength strategies, social reform, national psychology, desires and fears, and the construction of gender. It became a core symbol of China's political, economic, historical, and spiritual culture. This book received the Joan Kelly Women's History Memorial Award from the American Historical Association, marking the first time the association awarded this prize to an author writing about women's history outside the United States.