Abstract

Child prostitution became one of the key concerns of the international community in the 1990s. World congresses were held, international and national laws were changed and concern over "cemmercially sexually exploited children" rose dramatically. Rarely, however, were the children who worked as prostitutes consulted of questioned in this process, and the voices of these children brought into focus. This book is the first to address the children directly, to examine their daily lives, their motivations and their perceptions of what they do. Based on 15 months of fieldwork in a Thai tourist community that survived through child prostitution, this book draws on anthropological theories on childhood and kinship to contextualize the experiences of this group of Thai child prostitutes and to contrast these with the stereotypes held of them by those outside their community.

“... an admirable pioneering study ... [which] paints a dynamic and often horrific picture of the workings of child prostitution.”   ·  Journal of the Royal Anthropological Institute

"This study is very instructive and deserves to be consulted by specialists of Thailand but also by a wider readership that is interested in the different notions of sexuality and various forms of prostitutions."  · Comptes Rendus

Heather Montgomery is a member of the Fertility and Reproduction Studies Group and a British Academy Post Doctoral Research Fellow at the Institute of Social and Cultural Anthropology, University of Oxford. She has recently been appointed Lecturer in Child Studies at the Open University.