Edited by Susan Frohlick and Jessica Jacobs. Abstracts accepted until January 15, 2008. Full chapters due by July 1, 2008

2009 publication target date. We are seeking ethnographically informed papers that focus on the multiple dimensions of women’s participation in sexual and intimate relationships with local men or women in international tourist destinations, to be included in an edited volume on transnational/cultural intimacy and sexual subjectivity in women’s travel. We are currently looking into various channels for publication, and are aiming for eight contributors. Scholarship on ‘ethno-sexual relations’ (Nagel, 2003) between tourists and locals is growing and reflects, in our view, the expansion of sex tourism in late capitalism from a predominantly masculine terrain (tied into ideas around the modern subject) and historical practice to a global phenomenon that includes the gendered consumption practices of First World women shaped by some women’s increasing economic power and mobility. Most work to date draws almost exclusively upon a political-economic framework that refers to “female sex tourists” or “romance tourists”, whose parameters are defined by women’s similarity (or difference) to male sex tourists. As well as sustaining the male subject at the center of the conceptualization of female sex tourism, we feel these approaches ignore the complex sensorial and emotional dimensions of women’s inter-racial, transcultural sexual and intimate relationships with local people in largely Southern and Third World countries. They also miss the opportunity to comment on the role these encounters play in new subject formations and transnational relationships. We encourage papers that open up the current narrow focus of debate and do not simply reproduce the argument that First World female tourists are exploiting their white feminine privilege by taking sex from young men on the beaches of the Gambia (or Barbados, Bali, Indonesia, etc) in exchange for money, goods or other less tangible benefits. We are particularly interested in papers with a strong empirical grounding, based on fieldwork and ethnographic methodology or historical approaches, that consider the diverse international tourist spaces and multifaceted contexts in which these relationships occur. We especially welcome papers that, as a collection, are multi-disciplinary (e.g. anthropology, geography, sociology, women’s and gender studies, cultural and media studies, tourist studies, history), examine a range of destinations and landscapes, and deal with a variety of nationalities and ethnicities.

Please send an abstract of between 300 and 500 words before January 15, 2008 to
Dr. Susan Frohlick frohlick[at]cc.umanitoba.ca and
Dr. Jessica Jacobs: jessica.jacobs[at]blueyonder.co.uk.
Full papers of approximately 7, 000 to 8, 000 words will be expected by April 1, 2008.

CfP aus: http://sscl.berkeley.edu/