Love for Sale: A World History of Prostitution |
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Love for Sale: A World History of Prostitution
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by Nils Johan Ringdal and Richard Daly
Sales Rank: 325991
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$7.85
At Amazon
on 6-20-2008.
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Features
Cover Type: Hard Cover with 448 pages
Published by: Grove/Atlantic July 2003
Written in: English
ISBN 10 Number: 0802117457
ISBN 13 Number: 978-0802117458
Book Dimensions:
9.2 x 6.5 x 1.4 inches
Weighs: 1.6 pounds
From Publishers Weekly
Norwegian historian Ringdal argues that prostitution is, in many cultures, a borrowed tradition, but his evidence suggests that prostitution emerged of its own accord in most cultures although in wide-ranging forms. Under European influence, for example, an Asian tradition of contracted temporary marriage evolved to direct pay for individual encounters. In Africa, according to Ringdal, European missionary campaigns against polygamy actually resulted in greater numbers of women entering prostitution. Ringdal considers varying perceptions of promiscuity and prostitution as well as economic, cultural and moral analyses of why women, and to a lesser extent men, enter the business. Given the book's scope, it goes almost without saying that some eras are treated in greater depth than others. Some chapters are based on very few sources, and while we might want greater analysis of ancient temple prostitution or greater care in identifying biblical figures, we get rather too much detail on how the Mayflower madam ran her business. Ringdal wrestles with but does not bring into clear focus the issue of choice in modern prostitution. In early chapters, he sets up a straw-man "feminist" argument, but not until the final chapters does he directly engage some of the researchers and activists with whom he differs. On the whole, however, this study provides both a fascinating range of evidence across world cultures and the opportunity to see broad patterns in attitudes toward sex for hire and the relation between these attitudes and women's freedoms. 32 pages of color and black and white illus. not seen by PW.
Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.
From Booklist
Historian Ringdal assembles a wealth of fascinating facts to render a panoramic view of the complex global history of prostitution. Writing with respect, candor, and wit, he begins by describing the women who worked in the temples of Ishtar as both "nurses and sacred sex therapists." He continues to develop his key theme--that for intelligent, savvy, and fortunate women, prostitution has provided a liberated and lucrative life--when he writes that in ancient Greece "the best paid Greek prostitutes were in many ways the world's first free women." Then there's the Roman empress Theodora, a former prostitute who enacted reforms to protect women and children, and Yu Hsuan-chi, a gifted and intrepid Tang Dynasty Chinese poet-prostitute. He offers a fresh interpretation of the life of Mary Magdalene, chronicles the horrific fate of "comfort women," and tracks ever-evolving societal attitudes toward sex workers. Ringdal's admiration for successful prostitutes is tempered by his tacit recognition that most prostitutes' lives are wretched at best, and his at times gratingly upbeat survey does conclude before AIDS changed everything. Donna Seaman
Copyright © American Library Association. All rights reserved
Reader Reviews
Norwegian historian Nils Johan Ringdal traces the history of what is, if not the oldest profession, at least the most notorious, and covers just about everything: he begins with world literature's first lady of the night, found in the 4,000-year-old epic of Gilgamesh, includes a chapter on the nature of the relationship between Jesus Christ and Mary Magdalene, shows how ancient Greece and Rome incorporated prostitutes into several social echelons, and how the rise of the courtesan in nineteenth-century Europe shaped literature (e.g Zola's Nana), fashion, arts, and modern sensibility. It tells the stories of the British Empire's campaigns against prostitution in India, and of the "comfort women" who served the armies in the Pacific theater of World War II. It closes with the rise of the sex-workers' rights movement and "sex-positive" feminism, and a look at risks and rewards of prostitution in the present day. Nevertheless, Ringdal's tone is so matter-of-fact that at times it seems more like a recital than a narration. Ringdal illustrates prostitution's pragmatic benefits, which have dwindled only recently with the sexual revolution (with the advent of birth control and the women's movement, prostitution has lost its basic functions as a pastime and a training ground for young men; even so, women willing to have sex for money continued to fill pragmatic roles up to the present). In fact, he assures us, the prostitute was regarded as nothing less than "a guarantor and stabilizer of morality and matrimony" until Victorian times; it was only during the Victorian era, with its emphasis on individual morality, that prostitution took on the cloak of sin. In his opinion, no one is entitled to sex -- paid or unpaid. But, if both parties agree that one will sell sex to the other and if both parties behave decently, then prostitution should be considered a private transaction.
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Love for Sale: A World History of Prostitution
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Price: $7.85
Updated on 6-20-2008.
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