Child prostitution as filial duty? The morality of child-rearing in a slum community in Thailand

Montgomery, Heather

doi:10.1080/03057240.2014.893420

Cited by 13 publications

(10 citation statements)

References 6 publications

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“…The Theravada Buddhist concept of bun khun (debt of merit) presupposes that daughters repay their filial debt by supporting their parents whereas sons do so by becoming a monk. In line with the findings from the pivotal study From Peasant Girls to Bangkok Masseuses (Phongpaichit, 1982), many authors have argued that Buddhist-sanctioned gender hierarchies and expectations push rural young Thai women and children into sex work (Montgomery, 2001, 2014; Muecke, 1992; Taylor, 2005). However, religious scripts alone cannot account for this practice as other forces come into play including the appeal for modernity, consumption and display of signs of success (Mills, 1999) and tensions between family obligations and personal, material and professional aspirations for Cambodian sex workers (Derks, 2008, p. 182).…”

Section: Resultsmentioning

confidence: 87%

Relational work and careers of intimacy: Rethinking the cultural interpretation of the sex trade in Vietnam

Laínez

2020

The Sociological Review

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Cultural interpretations of the sex trade are pervasive in Southeast Asia, in particular, the argument that daughters enrol in sex work to repay a debt of life and support their parents. While useful to illuminate the role of culture in shaping economic action, this narrative carries the risk of viewing people as robots guided by stable and supra-individual forces. Drawing on ethnographic data collected in Southern Vietnam and Cambodia on precarious and indebted Vietnamese families that encourage their daughters to sell sex, this article disturbs deterministic cultural accounts of sex work by describing how families interpret, negotiate and (re)produce cultural scripts through relational work. More specifically, it shows how these families draw from familistic scripts about hierarchy, duty and sacrifice conveyed in popular culture to assemble relational packages. Deeply imbued in affective undercurrents and power asymmetry, these packages allow families to negotiate taboo trades like the repayment of debt through the sale of their daughter’s virginity. Overall, a relational work framework provides a better understanding of female participation in the sex trade in Vietnam than explanations based on normative accounts of culture or problematic trafficking binaries.

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Section: Resultsmentioning

confidence: 87%

Relational work and careers of intimacy: Rethinking the cultural interpretation of the sex trade in Vietnam

Laínez

2020

The Sociological Review

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“…Yet these 'childhood' ideals are rooted in the affluence and expectations of particular cultural contexts (Gillis 2009;Hendrick 2009), even while such notions are promulgated through international social policy (Ansell 2005;Boyden 1997 Some of this work includes discussion of how to assess 'harm', as seen for example, in relation to issues of child labour (Ansell 2005;Bourdillon 2006;Morrow and Boyden 2010) which is increasingly recognized to be a complex and often locally specific issue to evaluate in terms of its mixed impact on children's lives, their view of themselves, and their position in their families. Even child prostitution as a form of child labour has been discussed by the anthropologist Heather Montgomery (2014Montgomery ( , 2015 as requiring a nuanced sensitivity to understand its significance in children's family lives in local contexts.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Troubling Children’s Families: Who Is Troubled and Why? Approaches to Inter-Cultural Dialogue

McCarthy

Gillies

2017

Sociological Research Online

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This article draws on multi-disciplinary perspectives to consider the need and the possibilities for intercultural dialogue concerning families that may be seen by some to be 'troubling'. Starting from the premise that 'troubles' are a 'normal' part of children's family lives, we consider the boundary between 'normal' troubles and troubles that are troubling (whether to family members or others). Such troubling families potentially indicate an intervention to prevent harm to less powerful family members (notably children). On what basis can such decisions be made in children's family lives, how can this question be answered across diverse cultural contexts, and are all answers inevitably subject to uncertainty? Such questions arguably re-frame and broaden existing debates about 'child maltreatment' across diverse cultural contexts. Beyond recognizing power dynamics, material inequalities, and historical and contemporary colonialism, we argue that attempts to answer the question on an empirical basis risk a form of neo-colonialism, since values inevitably permeate research and knowledge claims. We briefly exemplify such difficulties, examining psychological studies of childrearing in China, and the application of neuroscience to early childhood interventions in the UK. Turning to issues of values and moral relativism, we also question the possibility of an objective moral standard that avoids cultural imperialism, but ask whether cultural relativism is the only alternative position available. Here we briefly explore other possibilities in the space between 'facile' universalism and 'lazy' relativism (Jullien, 2008(Jullien, /2014. Such approaches bring into focus core philosophical and cultural questions about the possibilities for 'happiness', and for what it means to be a 'person', living in the social world.Throughout, we centralize theoretical and conceptual issues, drawing on the work of Jullien (2008Jullien ( /2014 to recognize the immense complexities inter-cultural dialogue entails in terms of language and communication.

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“…This demands ways of making sense of child prostitution that go beyond generalised overviews of what constitutes child prostitution, to access the understandings of those with experiences of involvement and the structural conditions in which they engage in prostitution. Limited studies adopting this approach (Montgomery 2001(Montgomery , 2007(Montgomery , 2014Phoenix 2001;O'Connell Davidson 2005;Orchard 2007) have focused largely on the contexts and structures in which children who are involved in prostitution make decisions and exercise agency. But, there has been little development in extending the use of this knowledge to explain why particular structures lead children and young people to make particular decisions, or to explore the impact of particular structures and particular decisions on children.…”

Section: Structure and Agencymentioning

confidence: 99%

Child Protection and Social Inequality: Understanding Child Prostitution in Malawi

Nkhoma

Charnley

2018

Social Sciences

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This article draws on empirical research to develop understandings of child prostitution, previously theorised on the basis of children’s rights, feminist, and structure/agency debates, largely ignoring children’s own understandings of their involvement in prostitution. Conducted in Malawi, which is one of the economically poorest countries in the world, the study goes to the heart of questions of inequality and child protection. Within a participatory research framework, nineteen girls and young women used visual methods to generate images representing their experiences of prostitution. Individual and group discussions were used to illuminate the meanings and significance of their images. With the exception of the youngest, participants understood their initial involvement in prostitution as a means of survival in the face of poverty and/or parental death, or escape from violent relationships, experiences that were subsequently mirrored by exploitation and violence within prostitution. Using the lens of the capability approach, we capture the complexity of child prostitution, demonstrating the ambiguous agency of participants in the face of deeply embedded patriarchal cultural norms that constrained their choices and limited their freedom to pursue valued lives. We end by reflecting critically on the theoretical and methodological contributions of the study, making policy and practice recommendations and identifying opportunities for further research.

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Child prostitution as filial duty? The morality of child-rearing in a slum community in Thailand

Cited by 13 publications

References 6 publications

Relational work and careers of intimacy: Rethinking the cultural interpretation of the sex trade in Vietnam

Relational work and careers of intimacy: Rethinking the cultural interpretation of the sex trade in Vietnam

Troubling Children’s Families: Who Is Troubled and Why? Approaches to Inter-Cultural Dialogue

Child Protection and Social Inequality: Understanding Child Prostitution in Malawi

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