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1 Introduction
The silent point of globalization

A Russian-Estonian woman is dancing in an erotic bar in Tampere, an expand-
ing former industrial town, which now rides on the high tide created by boom in
information technology. It is late evening and the bar, where the woman dances,
is small and cozy. There are several Finnish men seated around the stage, watch-
ing her as she strips herself and dances completely naked in front of them while
simulating phallic sex.1 They have come to see an “Eastern girl” perform their
erotic fantasies. There are no Finnish women either dancing or in the audience.
There is a Finnish woman tending the bar, and this is the usual way the gendered
and ethnicized labor is organized in bars like this; there is also a Finnish male
bouncer. After her dance, she slips into her G-string and goes around the bar
asking for tips. The men obey her and give her the usual 20 FIM (C3.50), slip-
ping it into her G-string. This is a moment of touch and also small talk. The
woman smiles and flirts and advertises a private show – a dance especially for
“you.”2 She makes the movements and gestures that one would associate with
the stereotypical image of the female in heterosexual sex. The men seem to be
pleased; they are getting their money’s worth. And what about her? In two
weeks she has made 9,000 FIM (C1,500) for herself, even after all expenses
have been paid and cuts taken by the bar and by her own manager. This is the
kind of money that would have been impossible for her to make, let alone save,
back home in Tarto, Estonia. After working for three weeks, she will go back,
finish her degree in clothing design, then hopefully go on to a medical school
and maybe some day work abroad for “real.”

In this short story, there are many levels of globalization taking place. The
obvious point simply is that, before globalization and the breaking down of the
Soviet borders, there were no such possibilities for Russian or Baltic women to
travel and work abroad. It is also with the emergence of globalization, in the
form of liberalization of commercial erotic culture, that Finland has become
enmeshed in the commercial sex business. Before the 1990s, there were no
erotic clubs where these “Eastern girls” could work. Before the 1990s, the
“Eastern girl,” meaning a sex worker of any age of Baltic or Russian origin, did
not exist discursively. The name “Eastern girl” has been associated with sexual
drive and also moral looseness, meaning that an “Eastern girl” has no hang-ups
over engaging in immoral work, but also cannot be trusted – she may steal, cheat

and so on; but primarily she has been defined by her sexuality. This is due to the
globalization of information flows that provide the “Eastern girl” with informa-
tion of different places – some of them remote – in Finland, where there is a
demand for sex workers. Before globalization of the world economy, Finnish
people did not talk of “Eastern girls,” but with the commercialization and the
advent of the sex business, “Eastern girls” has become a concept. The Finnish
sex business demands and relies on these women, who are exchangeable and
exotic and are willing to satisy the sexual demands of the male customers.

This book addresses prostitution as a consequence of international politics. In
this book, I will show how globalization produces prostitution as a means to
cope with globalization. Therefore, I will show also that globalization con-
cretizes as prostitution at the individual level and that prostitution and sex-
trafficking present how globalization operates as subjectivating bio-power. This
book’s approach toward the issue of prostitution is different from that of most of
the literature on prostitution politics, which tends to focus on the ideologies
behind legislative measures toward prostitution, the interpretation of the
client–prostitute relationship and the definitions of prostitution and trafficking.
Furthermore, the manner in which this book approaches the issue of globaliza-
tion is different from what is familiar to the majority of mainstream international
relations (IR) literature, by addressing how globalization manifests itself in
everyday lives.

In most IR literature, globalization is simplified into economic, political or
cultural terms and discussed and debated upon in two ways. First, there is the
assumption that globalization takes place in the world out there. It follows from
this assessment of globalization that there is debate on where exactly globaliza-
tion takes place, what counts as globalization and what drives the globalization
processes. As somewhat distinct from the first debate on globalization, I see the
debate on how globalization is theorized. Of course, this is related to the assess-
ment of where globalization is seen to take place and, accordingly, the theoriz-
ing of globalization falls also easily into isolationist camps. Therefore, in the
theories of globalization, it is conceptualized as an economic or a politico-
ideological or a cultural process (see also Berndtson 2000). Therborn (2000:
152–153) categorizes the discourses in similar terms, identifying them as
competition economics, “sociocritical,” state (im)potence, cultural and planetary
ecology.3 These different perspectives have opposed each other and have com-
peted with one another; and only a few theorists have worked to find a synthesis
of the different aspects characteristic of globalization (Appadurai 1996).

Instead of debating over where globalization takes place and what globaliza-
tion is, I want to emphasize the connection between theories and practices of
globalization. I see the discussion on globalization as a form of discourse by
which is considered to be globalization is constructed. Therefore, by discussing
globalization, we are also constructing globalization (see Peterson 1996). The
weakness I identify in much writing on globalization in the context of IR is that
the focus is most often on macrolevel agents and events. Globalization is dis-
cussed in the context of the global economy from a critical theory perspective4

2 Introduction

or as competition economics,5 relations of states6 or in terms of politico-
ideological developments such as democratization and the universalization of
human rights.7 Therefore, the debate on who generates globalization is also cen-
tered on these macrolevel agents. What I find missing for the most part are the
concerns of questions of power and the individual. As portrayed in so much IR
literature, it would appear as though there are no individuals who are affected or
who do globalization and as though globalization is something that happens
above and beyond individuals; and the issues of gender and ethnicity are most
often overlooked in defining and theorizing what globalization is.

However, feminist approaches to globalization bring together, for critical
review, most of what has been said about globalization. Still, even in the feminist
debate on globalization, the focus is on gendered effects of globalization, rather
than on the question of a gendered construction of globalization (see Chow 2003).
Yet, it is in the feminist-oriented discussion that the questions of the theory and
practices of globalization that inform my own analysis have been raised.

The definitions of globalization point to the interconnectedness of distant
locations in shaping events and consequences, namely, the space-time compres-
sion due to technological innovations and cultural flows. Globalization is some-
times seen as universalization and homogenization of culture in the American
style consumer society (Berndtson 2000)8 or instead, taking form through
fragmentation and localization as well as through marginalization of peripheries
by the affluent centers. Along with the word “globalization,” which has become
part of everyday usage, there are also terms which attempt to describe the com-
plexity and contradictions of globalization by saying the world is going through
“fragmegration” or “glocalization.” Globalization can be seen as the continuity
of world politics or as a fundamental transformation from the past. Although
there are many different and contradicting accounts of globalization, I agree
with Jens Bartelson (2000: 180) that, although “there is no agreement on what
globalization is, the entire discourse on globalization is founded on the agree-
ment that globalization is.” (italics original). And, as McCormack (2002: 105)
argues, “Globalization attracts so much current theoretical attention because it is
a simple (perhaps the simplest) way of defining the messy and all-too-often
violent conflict of human interaction.” He also argues that the name “globaliza-
tion” has itself become a category that contains all the different elements of
globalization. Therefore, the name and the meaning attributed to it are being
continuously contested in various fora (McCormack 2002).

The term “globalization” resists and eludes any easy or simple definition. It is
also often stated that one cannot talk of globalization in singular, but instead,
globalization should be assessed in plural as it takes many forms and thus “glob-
alizations” is a more appropriate term (Therborn 2000).9 What is singular about
globalization is rather the different discourses on globalization, which do not
engage in dialogue with each other (Therborn 2000; see also Maclean 2000).
However, these authors seem to have left feminist conceptualizations of global-
ization off their lists and do not address questions of method in researching or
writing about globalization.

Introduction 3

Feminist conceptualization of globalization

The feminist debate on globalization rounds up the different discussions pre-
sented above by gendering the economic, cultural and politico-ideological analy-
ses of globalization. The feminist approaches to globalization in IRs can be
roughly categorized into standpoint feminism and postmodern feminism.10 The
first line of questioning involves, “Where are the women in globalization?”
focusing on the gendered impacts of globalization as in the marginalization and
relative impoverishment of women, but also the manner in which women con-
tribute to globalization by their cheap labor in the global assembly line. The
postmodern feminists also focus on how sex and gender are produced through
globalization processes by bringing into question the masculinist bias inherent in
systems of power and knowledge that contribute to globalization (see Chow
2003).

I want to elaborate in a few words on how globalization is conceptualized by
using feminist lenses. Important texts, for example, are Anne Sisson Runyan and
V. Spike Peterson’s (1993) Global Gender Issues; Jan Jindy Pettman’s (1996)
Worlding women; and Meyer, Mary K. and Elisabeth Prügl (eds) Gender Poli-
tics in Global Governance (1999). The main theme that arises from these texts
in terms of globalization is the focus on how neoliberal economic restructuring
has affected women in discriminating ways. The criticism is directed at the
inherent masculine bias and gender blindness in neoliberal practices, but also, on
a deeper level, at matters concerning science and modern epistemology11 accord-
ing to which economic restructuring processes have been legitimated. In this
way, the feminist criticism is extensive, for it addresses masculinism in the
recent economic processes in terms of questions of power and knowledge that
underline principles and practices of globalization. In this respect, feminist
critics have also been skeptical about the triumph of liberalism and have on
many occasions pointed to the unsustainability of economic growth as a means
for progress or development. Feminists have criticized the triumph of liberalism
being inherently based on a relationship of exploitation and criticized its inher-
ent euro-centrism and gender bias.

Feminists argue that globalization, perceiving it to mean the globalization of
production and consumption, could not have happened, had not the women been
the silent contributors in “maquiladoras” and sweatshops (see e.g., Peterson and
Sisson Runyan 1993, Pettman 1996, Wichterich 1998). Therefore, it is exactly
women’s cheap labor that has enabled globalization to take place as female
workers have been essential for transnational corporations that want to maxi-
mize profits. However, exploitation of women as cheap labor is based on mas-
culinist bias and the institution of patriarchy. Women are considered not to need
the same level of income as men since they are assumed to bring only secondary
income to the family or else to be so young that they will soon marry, start a
family and leave the workplace. Therefore women are paid less than the
minimum wage on many occasions (Wichterich 1998, Ehrenreich and Russell
Hochschild 2002). In addition, women are attractive workers for global produc-

4 Introduction

tion since they are assumed not to unionize and to accept oppressive working
conditions so as to gain any income at all.

However women’s cheap labor in the global assembly line is not the only
type of work that has been represented as attractive. An important part of the
discourse is also the large numbers of women working in organized prostitution.
It has been shown how important prostitutes are in attracting tourists, business-
men and transnational business. Pettman (1996) has followed Cynthia Enloe’s12

(1988) lead in extensively covering the links with sex tourism, hospitality ser-
vices and trafficking in women for purposes of prostitution, mail-order brides
and domestic servants. The feminist analysis also relates to colonialism, eco-
nomic restructuring, growing internationalization and indebtedness in state
economies due to the imposed policies of the International Monetary Fund
(IMF) and World Bank. Pettman calls this system “the International Political
Economy of Sex” as the gendered impacts of international and national policies
so evidently shape women’s position and possibilities to deal with economic
restructuring, thus constituting sex work also as a means for coping with global-
ization. This aspect of the sex specificity of forms of agency, as a constituting
factor of the international political economy of sex, will be taken up in the
following chapter on the construction of gender and ethnicity in the globalized
sex market.

The feminist criticism of globalization as a form of power and knowledge
aims to deconstruct and reconstruct how globalization is produced as a form of
discourse. The criticism addresses the masculine bias in knowledge production
through valorized dichotomies, reductionism and gender-blind empiricist
methods (see e.g., Harding 1991). It is acknowledged that, as globalization poses
theoretical and practical challenges to IRs, it may also open space for remapping
these fields in more gender-sensitive ways. This is grounded in the arguments of
the integral nature of discourses in reshaping world politics and vice versa.
Peterson (1996) argues that the feminist project is important in responding to the
empirical and epistemological weaknesses of IR theory in analyzing globaliza-
tion. What feminists propose is to acknowledge the relational quality of world
politics instead of its separation into states-markets, public-private and internal-
external binary oppositions. Moreover, Peterson claims that postmodern femin-
ism can account for the complexity and contingency of the globalizing world,
for its strategy is in contextualizing, comparing and critically reflecting rather
than in the search for objective truth and origin or ahistorical methods and
theories.

An important part of the feminist project is not only the deconstruction of
Western masculine-biased knowledge production but also the aim to give voice
to those who have been marginalized (Krause 1996). This is important since
feminism is not only an academic debate but also a political project, connected
with political women’s movements, that aims at ending women’s discrimination
in all forms. Globalization, as it is understood in terms of interconnectedness
and overcoming of the tyranny of distances and borders, also enables the
transnationalization of the feminist political project. This is evident in global

Introduction 5

women’s movements, in transnational collaboration of women’s non-govern-
mental organizations and also in the attention and recognition that feminist
issues have received at the level of the UN, such as its observance of 1976–1985
as the United Nations Decade for Women and also the holding of the 1995
United Nations World Conference for Women in Beijing. Women’s rights form
an important part of a more general “human rights” discourse and, within this
debate also, the violence against women in the globalized world has received
strong emphasis and weight (Krause 1996). The best means to achieve the goals
are also questioned and, therefore, participating in male-dominated institutions,
such as the UN, is seen as futile from the point of view of the feminist project.13

What is probably one of the most important things that comes through the
feminist academic and political (if these can be separated) projects is the open-
ness and sensitivity toward different kinds of knowledge and voices. The femi-
nist project, as it maintains that there is no ungendered experience, also makes
interdisciplinary and multidisciplinary approaches possible in academic
research. The result is that, with these streams of feminist inquiry and interven-
tions, a new kind of space for plurality of voices and discourses opens, making
also the remapping of theories and practices of globalization possible. My own
project stems from these feminist-informed perspectives on the study of global-
ization, thus making it possible also to address the question of agency and sex
specificity in the theory and practices of globalization.

Globalization as corporeal politics

This book addresses prostitution and sex-trafficking in the context of globaliza-
tion as corporeal politics. In this book I take the familiar question, “Where are
the women in international relations?” presented by feminist scholars in IR, and
I present it in terms of, “Where are the sex-specific and ethnicized bodies in the
context of globalization?” I am going to address globalization as a form of bio-
power, drawing on Michel Foucault and Judith Butler; this is discussed in more
detail in Chapter 2. I will argue that globalization subjectivates, that is, produces
sex-specific and ethnicized subject positions that are incorporated and embodied.
In other words, I am going to be looking at how globalization concretizes at the
level of the body and how, in turn, the sex-specific and ethnicized bodies enact
and reiterate globalization. I will be exemplifying the corporealities of globaliza-
tion by looking at the operations of the global sex industry. I will develop from
the basis of Arjun Appadurai’s framework of landscapes of globalization, creat-
ing a framework of sexscapes of globalization in Chapter 3 in order to show how
the global sex industry feeds on the complex global flows. These complex flows
form global conjunctures in which new forms of agency and subjectivity are
created. This is developed further in the narratives of corporeal globalization
presented in Chapters 4–6, in which I explore the new forms of subjectivity and
agency enacted in the global conjunctures of Finnish sex bars, brothels and
parking lots where the sex trade takes place.

In this book, I will show how the global sex industry operates through a

6 Introduction

complex system of global flows and how it operates in correlation with the
processes of globalization, in turn benefiting from them and also how it accord-
ingly subjectivates in a gendered and ethnicized manner. Conceptualizing the
global sex industry as a part of the globalized world economy implies several
things. First of all, the global sex industry can be conceptualized as shadow
globalization. What I mean by shadow globalization relates partly to how the
shadow economy is theorized and defined as comprising illicit, informal,
domestic and unrecorded activity (Fleming et al. 2000). However, by shadow
globalization I also mean activities that have been made possible by global flows
of information, technology, finance and people, that are taking place in informal
and illegal ways, but in the shadows in terms of otherness of the domain of
subjectivity of global world economy.

My aim is to conceptualize the global sex industry in the context of the
overall processes of globalization. In this respect, I see it as shadow globaliza-
tion, operating in relation to globalization of the world economy and also reiter-
ating and reinventing it, but from the shadows by taking advantage of
disjunction and construction of otherness.14 Globalization of the world economy,
then, is seen marking the domain of subjectivity established by power/
knowledge, which takes shape through global governmentality. I will discuss
this further in the following chapter.

Second, both these forms of globalization, the global village kind and shadow
globalization, operate as forms of subjectivating power, producing and requiring
certain kinds of subjectivities, which result in agency and also in the incorporation
of the position of the subject. This means that subjectivity acts on and activates
bodies, is performed through bodies and constrains bodies. These embodied posi-
tions exemplify the bio-politics of globalization. They result in incorporation and
embodiment of gendered, economic, cultural and social as well as ethnicized rela-
tions that are shaped by globalizing processes. I argue that these embodied subject
positions are gendered and ethnicized, resulting in different forms of agency, chal-
lenge and opportunity along gender and ethnic divides.

However, I also follow Appadurai in arguing that globalization is fundament-
ally disjunctive. I see the global sex industry as representing shadow globaliza-
tion, a zone that the “abject of globalization” inhabit. For the abject bodies of
prostitutes and other sex workers, globalization does not open up new opportun-
ities or possibilities of agency, but instead, it creates concrete constraints and
controls. I am going to show that the category of the abject, of the ethnicized
other woman engaged in sex work, needs to be maintained in order for the cat-
egory of the subjects of globalization to exist. Still, the position of the abject is
seen as a form of limited agency, as this position is one that disrupts order and
can destabilize the domain of subjects. These sex-specific and ethnicized
embodiments and enactments of globalization are investigated by the case study
of foreign sex workers in Finland. From the fieldwork that I have done in the
places where the sex trade takes place in Finland, I construct narratives which
exemplify the corporealities of globalization and the sex-specific forms of
agency that have developed.

Introduction 7

The narrative turn (in International Relations)

I have argued elsewhere (Penttinen 2004) that the discipline of IR operates as a
form of exclusionary power that excludes voices and forms of expression
outside the sphere of IR. Indeed, maintaining the boundaries of the discipline in
place requires power. These boundaries have to be established time and again,
which means that the boundaries are not beyond contestation and challenge (see
also Enloe 1996). The feminists and post-structuralists have done a lot to stretch
the boundaries of IR so that the “unsaid” of IR has been highlighted and brought
under critique and reconstruction (see Ashley 1989 and Der Derian in the
same volume).

This stretching of IR has also been the motivation to write this book by using
the possibilities offered by the narrative turn. I have wanted to avoid the writing
of IR in the familiar hierarchic and inherently masculinist logico-scientific form.
Instead, I propose to write IR in an open and subjective form, that is, in a narrat-
ive form that is both embodied and the embodiment of IR.

Bochner (2001) sees the narrative turn as both turning away and turning
toward. He summarizes these narrative turns as follows:

The narrative turn moves away from a singular monolithic conception of
social science toward a pluralism that promotes multiple forms of
representation and research; away from facts and toward meanings; away
from master narratives and toward local stories; away from idolizing cate-
gorical thought and abstracted theory and toward embracing the values of
irony, emotionality, and activism; away from assuming the stance of disin-
terested spectator and toward assuming the posture of feeling, embodied
and vulnerable observer; away from writing essays and toward telling
stories.

(Bochner 2001: 135)

This turning does not mean, however, that the logico-scientific form of writing
and analytical approach to stories and texts would be excluded. The narrative
turn is not about new forms of exclusion. Instead, the narrative turn, as men-
tioned at the beginning of Bochner’s list, is about turning toward plurality. In
this way, the narrative turn does not imply that the normative social science
writing should be eliminated. On the contrary, with the narrative turn, the differ-
ent forms of privilege that have been established in the scientific community are
challenged and sensitivity for these privileges is called for. This means the sen-
sitivity of the position of privilege of the researcher as well as the privilege of
the exclusionary scientific community. One thing that the narrative turn emphas-
izes is to avoid such positions of privilege and hierarchy as those established in
mainstream social science.

The narratives of corporeal globalization that I write arise exactly from these
points that stress plurality instead of a master narrative of IR and by the
acknowledgment of the power that is required to control the role of the scientist

8 Introduction

as well as to assess what counts as science. I do not want to be taking on the
position of privilege of a distanced spectator-scientist in relation to data and
pretend that this kind of position would even be possible.

The narratives I write are as much about doing research as they are the stories
of the people involved in sex traffic between Finland and Russia and thus illus-
trate how globalization is incorporated by the people involved in the sex indus-
try. In the narratives of corporeal globalization, I combine information gathered
during fieldwork and my own observations of the relationships between clients
and prostitutes, erotic dancers and pimps. The fieldwork I have done is very
much researching the impossible. In fact, while doing my fieldwork, it has
become obvious that I am involved in researching the silent point of globaliza-
tion. Therefore, the way in which I have done my research, the limitations I have
faced and the manner in which these have affected the research process have to
be brought into the text.

What I have wanted to do is to write about the experiences of women, espe-
cially women regarded as social others, and reveal how the international or
political world is inscribed on their lives and their bodies. In one sense, the
objective of my research has been to show the micro-physics and bio-power of
globalization. Thus, I have wanted to challenge by this example the issues which
are deemed worthy of attention in the context of the discipline of IR. Writing the
research in a narrative form also challenges the genre of writing in mainstream
IR that has relied on logico-scientific writing, which, however, has been chal-
lenged by postmodernists, especially by feminist postmodernists (see Ashley
1996, Sylvester 1996).

My own personal quest involves the will to stretch the boundaries of IR
research discipline. The stretching I wish to accomplish is in terms of what can
be researchable in IR, what kind of methods are used in IR research and how the
research is written/reported. The need for new kinds of approaches in terms of
research topics and methods calls for bringing gender sensitivity into IR, or
making visible the sex specificity of research questions, methods, producers and
users of knowledge in IR. Darby (2003) raises these similar issues and argues
that IR has operated as a colonizing discipline that colonizes different forms of
knowledge. He criticizes the practices of exclusion of knowledge in IR and the
lack of interdisciplinary research and mentions how mainstream IR is closed to
other disciplines of research, such as development studies and postcolonial
studies. He claims that IR has taken over the concept of the “international” and
separated it from the ordinary and lived experiences of people who are neverthe-
less affected by and live in the international society as is the case of people
living in, for example, postcolonial societies.

Not only has the discipline of IR separated the concept of the “international”
from ordinary lives, but also from bodies or corporealities of individuals. I want
to reflect here in a few words how Grosz (1993) explains the development of
dualism in modern science in relation to the conceptualization of the body.
Grosz’s interest has been in addressing the question of the body in philosophy
and looking for reasons for its exclusion and neglect. Grosz (1993: 6) argues that

Introduction 9

the dualist thinking, institutionalized by Cartesian tradition, has dominated
modern science for the last 300 years. Descartes has established not only
dualism between mind and body – this had already been done by Plato – but,
rather more importantly, also the separation of mind/soul from nature and con-
versely detaching the body as separate from the mind and as belonging to the
realm of nature. This has several consequences. Whereas the body belongs to the
natural world following its natural laws, it is also deemed secondary to the mind.
The human mind, as it is capable of reasoning, is separated from the natural
world and is thus capable of producing objective and pure knowledge from the
natural world. Indeed, Grosz argues that the dualist thinking is much to blame
also for the separation of natural sciences from the social sciences. It is respons-
ible for the elevation of consciousness above corporeality (Grosz 1993: 8). The
body has been relevant only in terms of being the object of knowledge in natural
science (ibid.), but has not been relevant in terms of production of knowledge.

The narrative turn responds to this issue of separation between mind and
body by aiming to produce knowledge where the embodied position of the
researcher is acknowledged and made visible. Additionally, the aim is to write in
such a way that the texts can be felt, thus provoking an emotional response (see
Ellis and Bochner 1993, Bochner 2001). This is one way how the narrative turn
aims to overcome the hierarchic binary opposition of mind and body as estab-
lished by the Cartesian tradition.

It is important to note here that when the hierarchic dichotomy of mind and
body had been accepted, this had consequences on other binary pairs that go
alongside the mind and body. As the female is associated with the secondary
term, it implies that woman cannot be a subject of knowledge. The female, being
perceived as associated with nature and the private sphere, is categorically
outside the possibility of producing knowledge that could be acknowledged as
science. Grosz (1993) argues that it is as though the female body is more biolog-
ical, more natural than the male body, and indeed, as though the male body is
free from biology “as it represents the realm of the mind.” The important
element of this criticism has been the focus on dualisms and the hierarchies that
have been used to explain the “natural” inequality between men and women and
which has been used to deny women’s access to public and knowledge produc-
tion. Here, then the feminist point is emphasized that the identity of the knower
in modern epistemology is most often a male mind (Sylvester 1998).

Bochner (2001) also discusses how the valorization by a distanced analyst in
relation to data shows a strong male ethos. The qualities of the scientist that are
valued and regarded as the requirements of good research, that is, research that
counts as science, show a strong binary that valorizes the masculine over the
feminine. Bochner (2001: 144) claims that the call for “methodological purity
and disengaged reason” is “unmistakably macho.” The scientist as “cool, under
control, detached and analytical” (ibid.) clearly represents masculine qualities,
which gain their valorized position in making the feminine as a secondary cat-
egory. In this manner, the feminine qualities are excluded from what counts as
science. Bochner (2001: 146) brings forward Jane Tompkins’ point on ongoing

10 Introduction

war waged “against feeling, against women, against what is personal” in the
academy. In this way, the emphasis of objectivist, distanced research implies
that the scientific community looks down upon forms of knowledge that are
associated with women and the feminine, such as emotion and the private.

Writing autoethnography: writing subjective and situated
narratives

No textual staging is innocent.15

(Foucault)

All texts are personal statements.
Denzin and Lincoln (1998: 413)

The narrative turn is grounded in the ontological statement that “people live by
stories,” that our lives are storied (see e.g., Whitebrook 2001). Then stories are
closely linked with how identity and subjectivity are formed. If the stories are
limited and limiting, so are different expressions of life and possible lived
spaces limited (Richardson 1990, 1997). Whitebrook explains that, “The polit-
ical aspect of identity rests on an understanding of the self as social, ‘situated’,
and narratives of identity as embedded in others stories, including the wider
stories of social and cultural settings” (2001: 4).

Inclusion of the writer’s self into the text is informed by the feminist thesis
that “our politics start with our feelings” (Grosz 1993: 20). In terms of the
narrative turn, this refers also to the understanding of narrativity and identity
construction. Following the ontological assumption that people live by stories
and that our lives are storied, it entails that the personal narrative that reveals
the situatedness and subjectivity of the author is connected to the larger cul-
tural narratives. The feminist thesis of the “personal” being political relates
also to the acknowledgment of the role of sex-specific bodies in knowledge
production.

Personal narratives are not simply about revealing the inner self to the audi-
ence, thus being confessional, but through the personal one can also reveal
something about the larger structures of power. This means that the personal is
constructed in relation to the cultural settings, that personal selves are not iso-
lated from the world and others, but are formed in relation to the others and are
so formed especially through the different narratives of the self, others and the
world. The personal is then related to the public and not categorically separate
from it. Therefore, personal narratives are necessarily already filled with meta-
narratives and narratives by others. Personal narratives can also offer ideas of
boundaries of possible narratives, which again, convey the possibilities of lived
spaces.

Sparkes (2002) discusses how autoethnography rests on the assumption that it
is possible to learn about the general through the particular and therefore,
writing individual experience is also about writing social experience. Subjective

Introduction 11

experiences are part of the world and so these experiences are not private. In this
way, writing autoethnography also challenges the hierarchic binary pairs intrin-
sic to modern epistemology, such as subjective and objective, self and other.
Sparkes (ibid.) writes how the self has become the silenced other in the practices
of modern epistemology. It is something that has been excluded and made sec-
ondary to the objective, public and rational. What is important here is that these
two aspects, the personal and emotional and the rational and objective, do not
cancel each other out. Instead, autoethnography does not merely try to bridge the
gulf between these two sides, but rather demonstrates how these two sides are
not opposites at all, but overlap and coexist.

The attention that Grosz gives to the body as a mediator between psychical
inner space and what is publicly observable is closely related to the goals of the
autoethnographic project of knowledge production. For Grosz, overcoming
the dualism between mind and body means thinking of subjectivity through the
concept of corporeality. This means regarding the body as something which is
between nature and culture. Grosz explains that this means that we cannot
regard the body as a kind of natural raw material nor as a purely social and cul-
tural product which would lack “its own weighty materiality” (Grosz 1993: 21).
Then, in terms of the question of the body, moving between binary opposition,
between nature/culture and mind and body means thinking in terms of embodied
subjectivity and psychical corporeality (Grosz 1993: 22). Approaching the body
as such, as a mediator between inside and outside, helps to overcome dualistic
thinking that is characteristic of modern epistemology in terms of methodology
and representation of data. Moreover, Grosz stresses that the body must be
stressed as a cultural product. This argument is linked to the basis of autoethnog-
raphy, that is to say, learning about the general from the particular. This is also
crucial in writing my own research of corporeal globalization. Grosz does not
mean by the understanding of the body as a cultural product, that the body is
purely social. Rather, for her, the body is a pivotal point in binary pairs. Grosz
explains that the body is not part of the binary pairs, instead it is both sides of
the dichotomies between “self and other, private or public, psychical or social,
instinctive or learned, genetically or environmentally determined” (ibid.: 23).
Therefore, Grosz argues, we also need new terms to be able to discuss the body
outside and beyond binary pairs (ibid.: 24).

In the narratives of corporeal globalization, I am writing about bodies that are
out of place, homeless or marginalized and, in this case, writing openly about
sexual difference. The bodies that represent different sexes and ethnicities that
interact in the global sex industry are acknowledged as political sites as well.
Bodies are seen then as sites, points of mediation between private and public,
self and other, and not immutable raw material that follows the laws of nature.
In this respect the body of the prostitute, whore, sex worker or stripper is an
exemplary body. It is in itself a site that is politicized in debates for and against
prostitution, but more importantly, in terms of my own research, the body is a
site onto which power is inscribed, drawing on Foucault (1980). Focusing on
particular bodies is a way to learn about the general, that is, the powers involved

12 Introduction

in determining the domain of subjectivity in the context of globalization. In
order to grasp this particular and to be able to tell through the particular about
the general, the methods of new ethnography (Richardson 1990, Ellis and Fla-
herty 1992, Bochner 2001, Ellis and Berger 2002, Sparkes 2002) have been
employed, involving intimate detail, concrete experience and literary strategies,
including examples of poetry, fiction and personal narratives and drawing the
reader into an active relationship with the text.

The narratives I write are about corporeal shadow globalization in the back-
ground of the zone of the abject, and by doing this I try to move between the
binary opposition between mind and body as discussed by Grosz. Here also,
Butler’s (1993) investigation on the position of the abject body and the social
abject is crucial, as is Irigaray’s theory on the mechanics of fluids (Irigaray
1985). Thus, the purpose is to extend the investigation of IRs beyond the divi-
sion between private and public and national and international by discussing the
corporeal politics of globalization. In this way this book aims to transcend
boundaries between subject and object. At a particular level, it means also tran-
scending or extending those boundaries which determine what is researchable
within the discipline of IR, what kinds of topics count as worthy of attention and
how knowledge about such issues is gained.

This also means that I want to be sensitive about my own authority as the
author, which leads me to follow the narrative turn and write the results of my
research in the way enabled by the new ethnography. Thus, by employing the
narrative mode in writing, I want to let go of the form of writing that reproduces
the binary opposition and position of otherness of the object of research. In this
case I want to also refrain from reproducing the social otherness of the sex
workers in writing about their embodied subjectivities in the context of global-
ization. Instead, what I try to do by the method of narratives is to describe the
corporeal globalizations as sites of agency, which are positions of “subjectivity”
for the abject. I have already expressed my objection to boundaries between
subject and object and between passive and active. I am keen not to portray the
trafficked woman as a victim that needs to be saved by those who are situated in
a more privileged western position (see also Pettman 1997). This includes prob-
lematizing my own embodiment of globalization along with that of the inter-
national sex workers and also includes my own position of subjectivity into the
text.

I acknowledge that the boundaries which mark domains of the subject and the
abject are human constructs, discourses and texts that inhere relations of power.
This exclusionary power is also present in the meta-narratives of modern epis-
temology and logico-scientific forms of writing. In my own writing, I want, at
least, not to reinforce these boundaries. I want to wonder about them, question
them and question my own position and prerogatives in the process. This is why
I decline in this book to use common positivist methods and forms of
representation so familiar to main(male)stream IR.

Writing in a narrative form is both a political and ethical choice, but most
importantly, a bridge between objective and subjective knowledge, science and

Introduction 13

literature, fact and fiction. The aim is to bring forth an alternative form of
writing in the field of social sciences and thus overcome the hierarchies, mas-
culinities and power positions that are central to mainstream writing. The narrat-
ive turn is a means by which the researcher can be open about the context and
situatedness of the knowledge produced and about her own biases and values
that she brings to the text. Nevertheless, it is also a matter of offering something
that the reader can associate with. In one sense, what is offered here is what the
reader can feel, without assuming that these feelings represent raw material and
discarding the baggage that comes along with the notion of experience. It is also
a matter of writing texts that move and thus slightly chip away the valorized
binary between mind and body.

14 Introduction

Seminar Preparation Week 3: Empire Critical Perspectives on Global Politics

4PIRS008W.2

Learning Portfolio Task 1

Complete the following reading notes for the essential reading,

Learning Portfolio Task 2

Read Chapter 17, ‘How is the world organised economically?’ in the textbook, Global Politics: a new introduction.

1) We are now in week 5, and we have learnt various concepts to help us understand global politics: racialization, imperialism, colonialism and globalisation. How does the international sex trade relate to international relations?

2) What is a gendered division of labour? (bonus question, how does the gendered division of labour relate to the informal economy?)

3)

Shifts in technology are key to the shape of globalisation. How do shifts in technology shape the international sex trade?