A bene placito*

Abstract

Sex work is often interpreted through master narratives that see women as victimized and subjected to stigmas and negative attitudes. This paper offers an insight into narratives that challenge or can be seen as an alternative to these narratives. Data are from a sample of 15 interviews with women who show an interest in sex work, conducted in a netnographic context. While widespread master narratives about sex work tend to revolve around the notion of commodification, these alternative narratives present scenarios in which sex work is interpreted as a complex activity of networking and self-promotion. The women’s narratives describe how sex work can have positive implications for the development of careers, social impact and female emancipation, and is morally coherent. Arguably, they can be important in understanding the stories that instigate and sustain sex work.

In nomine Diaboli: The ideologies of organized crime

“…All of them were Italian and come from Foggia, a city in the region of Apulia affected by a marked presence of organized crime. 1 The subject selection procedure for this study relied on the notion of deep interest (see Poppi and Sandberg, 2020; Raitanen et al, 2019): the participants were selected for having (1) an interest in considering organized crime as an interesting topic, in both factual and fictional representations (for example films, TV series) and (2) a willingness to consider the possibility of justifying some activities in which organized crime was generally involved.…”

“…Personal narratives are particularly relevant on a personal level because their content is more likely to reflect individual differences in personality characteristics and life experiences (McLean et al, 2007). In this regard, personal narratives are thematically based (Poppi et al, 2018; Poppi and Sandberg, 2020) and shape the ways in which individuals attend to, and feel about, events and social phenomena (Ochs and Capps, 1996).…”

“…Interactional fantasizing merges the concept of fantasy (Miller and Sperry, 1988) and interactional narratives (Nelson, 2003). A crucial property of interactional fantasizing is its capacity to reveal the values, ideas and practices of a society, and therefore its ideologies, which start from micro-level interactions and can contribute to the understanding of macro social phenomena (see Poppi, 2019, 2021, forthcoming; Poppi and Sandberg, 2020).…”

“…A narrative can be regarded as the product of a single voice about real events, as well as imaginary events that are co-constructed by several people (see Botvin and Sutton-Smith, 1977;Propp, 1970). In ordinary social interactions, participants tend to build fantasizing scenarios single-handedly in reference to topics commenced by other interlocutors, and across turns in the interactions to which they contribute (see Poppi, 2019;Poppi and Sandberg, 2020). Interactional fantasizing describes a practice where participants induce or inspire other participants to produce narratives about imaginary events (Poppi, forthcoming) or what some scholars refer to as imagined possibilities (Hall, 1974: 55).…”

The Symbolic Boundary Work of Incels: Subcultural Negotiation of Meaning and Identity Online

“…No one has used narrative criminology to study incels, and only a few have used the framework to study sexual offenses more generally. However, research within narrative criminology has shown how women sex workers experience gender violence, intersecting forms of subjugation and oppression (Boonzaier 2019), and how alternative narratives can instigate and sustain sex work (Poppi and Sandberg 2020). Narrative criminology has also highlighted the importance of stories in managing shame for sex offenders who try to make sense of themselves and their victims (Ievins 2019) while attempting to habilitate themselves after participating in treatment programs for sexual offenders in prison (Victor and Waldram 2015).…”