Interaction Rituals and Sexual Commerce in Thailand’s Erotic Bars

Abstract

This article explores bar prostitution as a distinct sexual arena. Drawing on fieldwork in six red-light districts in Thailand, the article identifies key structural and interactional features of the bars located in these areas. The analysis draws on an “interaction rituals” framework to elucidate scripted encounters between workers and customers, successive ritual chains, and the way departures or “broken chains” help to confirm the existence and vitality of normative chains. I argue, further, that the bars are organized around a distinctive moral economy—a courting-and-dating model—that allows sex workers and their clients to simultaneously downplay their involvement in prostitution and form affective ties with one another. Due to this framing, bar prostitution can be distinguished from most other types of prostitution, where opportunities for destigmatization are either minimal or nonexistent.

Thailand’s Sex Entertainment: Alienated Labor and the Construction of Intimacy

“…Promising research on sex work within Southeast Asia highlights well the subjectivity of women working in the field, with various studies including some aspects of intimacy within the encounters of Western customers (see, e.g., Hoefinger 2014;Law 2000;Muangjan 2018;Spitzer 2021;Weerakulthewan 2000;Weitzer 2021). These encounters have led to the spread of institutions like the go-go bar, and ultimately karaoke developed in the context of first the US military, and which emerged from more traditional forms of Thai intimacy between high-ranking Thai men and their concubines.…”

“…Although the rented wife concept from the US naval bases moved to more contemporary terms like "entertainer," "offering company," or providing the "illusion fantasy of a girl not being a professional" in bar settings (Weitzer 2021, p. 644). However, the core of her life remains the same: balancing the dulae responsibilities at the workplace with patrons, and caring for families back home (Gkoumas 2022;Spitzer 2021;Weitzer 2021). Shih (2018) suggests that in Thailand, sex work is a form of care work, in the sense that through their work, women support and take care of their family and others around them.…”