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An Ethnographic Analysis of Escort Services in Poland: An Interactionist Approach

100%

Ślęzak I.

Qualitative Sociology Review

2020

vol. 16

issue 4

122-144

In the Polish literature on the subject, prostitution is analyzed from various theoretical perspectives, but, first of all, from the perspective of social pathology. This approach makes the researchers focus mainly on the social maladjustment of women providing sex services and the reasons for their violation of the normative order. In my ethnographic research conducted in escort agencies in Poland, I was willing to go beyond this narrow outlook. I have adapted an interactionist perspective to analyze the escort agencies as organizations where intense interactions between employees, as well as employees and clients, take place, the sex work process is organized, and the meanings of prostitution are negotiated. I conducted the analysis according to the procedures of the grounded theory methodology. It allowed me to see and describe such processes as: (re)defining the situation of providing sex services from vice to work, sex work as a collective action, performing sex work, secondary socialization for sex work. The adaption of an interactionist perspective opens some new directions for analysis, which could help to understand the phenomenon of women getting involved in and continuing to provide sex services for a long time.

Defining and Regulating Prostitution from the Polish and European Perspective

88%

Lasocik Z.

Studia Europejskie-Studies in European Affairs

2021

vol. 25

issue 1

103-125

Prostitution has not received the academic interest it deserves in Poland. On the one hand the issue of eroticism and human sexuality is a relatively strong cultural taboo, on the other research on prostitution raises numerous methodological difficulties. The purpose of this article is to explore two issues. The first is go back to unsatisfactory attempts to define the commercial sex. The second is to look at legal regulations regarding this issue in Poland and several European countries. At the level of sociological reflection, prostitution can be defined by referring to the elements of a specific interaction between two people, one o whom offers paid sex and the other of whom is interested in using such a service. Prostitution is defined completely differently in law and in several European countries, for example in Great Britain and Austria there are interesting legal provisions. But I propose my own definition of prostitution or sex work in which the eight elements are combined. As far as legal regulations of prostitution are concern four categories of countries can be mentioned in Europe. From these in which the provision and purchase of sexual services is prohibited, to those where prostitution is legal and the professional status of the person engaging in it is regulated. There is also variety of perceptions of prostitution as a social phenomenon and different typologies of policies implemented by individual countries. But it appears that further studies on sex business and prostitution as a social phenomenon are needed.

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1 Qualitative Sociology Review

1 Studia Europejskie-Studies in European Affairs

1 Lasocik Z.

1 Ślęzak I.

1 2021

1 2020

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An Ethnographic Analysis of Escort Services in Poland: An Interactionist Approach

Defining and Regulating Prostitution from the Polish and European Perspective