[Urban-Media] Sex, Work and Migration

[Shekhar Krishnan]

Dear All:

We will meet next on Tuesday 2 May in MIT Building E-51 Room 393 at 7.30 p.m. to discuss the texts 
listed below. We will begin with a presentation by Svati Shah and continue with discussion of texts 
on the politics of urban labour and work, sexual commerce, and migration in globalising cities of 
the South.

Please note that this meeting is only a week away, and is on Tuesday, rather than the usual 
Wednesday. My apologies for the late notice and shift in schedule for this session.

Primary Texts

Svati Shah, "Sex Work and Secrecy" (ch.4) and "The Red Light Area: Producing the Spectacle of Sex 
Work" (ch.5) from Seeing Sexual Commerce: Sex, Work and Migration in the City of Mumbai, 
dissertation submitted to the Columbia University Department of Anthropology, 2005.
http://www.mit.edu/~shekhar/urban-media/shah_ch4.pdf
http://www.mit.edu/~shekhar/urban-media/shah_ch5.pdf

David Harvey, "Introduction" and "On Bodies and Political Persons in Global Space" (ch.6 "The Body 
as Accumulation Strategy" and ch.7 "Body Politics and the Struggle for a Living Wage") from Spaces 
of Hope, Berkeley: Univesity of California Press, 2000, pp.97-132
http://www.mit.edu/~shekhar/urban-media/harvey_spaces_hope.pdf

Rajnarayan Chandavarkar, "Workers' Politics and the Mill Districts in Bombay Between the Wars" from 
Imperial Power and Popular Politics: Class, Resistance and the State in India, 1850-1950, pp.100-142
http://www.mit.edu/~shekhar/urban-media/chandavarkar.pdf


Supplementary Texts

Kamala Kempadoo, "Introduction: Globalizing Sex Workers' Rights" in Kamala Kempadoo and Jo Doezema, 
eds., Global Sex Workers: Rights, Resistance and Redefinition, New York: Routledge, 1998, pp.1-28.
http://www.mit.edu/~shekhar/urban-media/kempadoo.pdf

Jeremy Seabrook, Selections from In the Cities of the South: Scenes from a Developing World (ch.1 
"Myths of the Megacities", ch.2 "Urbanization: The Making of a Transnational Working Class", ch.3 
"Migrants to the City", ch.4 "Bombay in the Nineties", ch.6 "Labour in the Cities", and ch.10 "Slums 
and Settlements"), London: Verso, 1996, pp.1-73, 86-130, 174-209)
http://www.mit.edu/~shekhar/urban-media/seabrook.pdf

Kalpana Sharma, Rediscovering Dharavi: Stories from Asia's Largest Slum. New York: Penguin Books, 2000.



Best,


S.K.
-- 

Shekhar Krishnan
Apt.302, Edgerton House
143, Albany Street
Cambridge, MA 02139
U.S.A.

http://www.crit.org.in/members/shekhar
http://www.mit.edu/~shekhar