Sex, Work and Sex Work

Sex, Work and Sex Work argues not only that sexuality pervades every aspect of organizations, but also that organization pervades every aspect of our sexuality.
This work argues not only that sexuality pervades every aspect of organizations, but also that organization pervades every aspect of our sexuality. This two-way conceptualization lends the book its two-part structure. Firstly, the ways in which organizational behaviour is shaped by sexuality are addressed through consideration of male managers' experience of violence, a gendered industrial dispute, organizational constructions of sexual harassment, studies of professionals who work with sex offenders and the organised practice of sado-masochism. The second part of the book examines how sex is organized for commercial purposes, and considers sex work as an industry which can be analyzed as any other, with important insights for normal organizing. Core concepts running through the text include: the idea of the re-re-eroticized workplace as a radically new form of work organization, and its critical appraisal; the idea of the abject, as a suppressed space of proscribed and transgressive behaviour which shapes normal activity as it threatens it; and the reconceptualization of desire in a way which fully engages with the inextricable links between death and the erotic. The argument draw