Women And Prostitution: A Social History
Condition: SECONDHAND
This is a secondhand book. The jacket image is a photograph of the exact copy we have in stock. This image shows the condition of this book. Further condition remarks are below.
Condition remarks:
Book: Good
Jacket: No dust jacket
Pages: Good
Condition remarks: Condition as shown in image
From the brothels of ancient Mesopotamia to the red-light districts of the modern West, Women and Prostitution: A Social History presents one of the most comprehensive and unflinching accounts of the world's oldest profession ever committed to the historical record. Vern and Bonnie Bullough chronicle millennia of social, legal, and moral attitudes toward prostitution, mapping the complex intersections of gender, power, poverty, and sexuality that have shaped the lives of women across vastly different cultures and centuries. Drawing on a formidable breadth of primary sources and scholarly research, the authors argue that prostitution cannot be understood in isolation — it is a mirror held up to every society's treatment of women, class, and bodily autonomy. The Bulloughs write with the authority of seasoned academics, yet their prose remains accessible and unfailingly rigorous, avoiding moralistic judgment in favour of clear-eyed historical analysis. Themes of patriarchal control, economic disenfranchisement, and the criminalisation of female sexuality recur throughout, lending the work a resonance that extends far beyond its ostensible subject. For anyone seeking to understand how societies have constructed, commodified, and condemned female sexuality through the ages, this landmark study raises questions whose answers remain urgently, uncomfortably relevant today.
Author: Vern Bullough And Bonnie Bullough
Format: Paperback
Published: 1987, Prometheus Books
Genre: Society & culture
Condition remarks:
Book: Good
Jacket: No dust jacket
Pages: Good
Condition remarks: Condition as shown in image
From the brothels of ancient Mesopotamia to the red-light districts of the modern West, Women and Prostitution: A Social History presents one of the most comprehensive and unflinching accounts of the world's oldest profession ever committed to the historical record. Vern and Bonnie Bullough chronicle millennia of social, legal, and moral attitudes toward prostitution, mapping the complex intersections of gender, power, poverty, and sexuality that have shaped the lives of women across vastly different cultures and centuries. Drawing on a formidable breadth of primary sources and scholarly research, the authors argue that prostitution cannot be understood in isolation — it is a mirror held up to every society's treatment of women, class, and bodily autonomy. The Bulloughs write with the authority of seasoned academics, yet their prose remains accessible and unfailingly rigorous, avoiding moralistic judgment in favour of clear-eyed historical analysis. Themes of patriarchal control, economic disenfranchisement, and the criminalisation of female sexuality recur throughout, lending the work a resonance that extends far beyond its ostensible subject. For anyone seeking to understand how societies have constructed, commodified, and condemned female sexuality through the ages, this landmark study raises questions whose answers remain urgently, uncomfortably relevant today.