Dissertation Title:

Towards Psychologies of Decoloniality with People in Sex Work

Candidate:

Christa Marie Sacco

Date, Time & Place:

April 2, 2019 at 12:50 pm
Barrett Center, Ladera Lane campus


Abstract

Today’s public conversation around prostitution forces people who work in the sex industry to identify as either powerless passive victims of sexual slavery with no agency or lifeworld of their own; or as empowered sex workers who enjoy their labor. I argue that sex workers’ life histories offer a counter-text and a voice of resistance to the very structures that seek to control and define them. Sex workers have agency. They use their agency to construct their occupational fields as sites of resistance to the stigmatizing and demeaning dominant paradigm. The current study provides space for people who work or have worked in the sex work industry to come together in a shared participatory research process of dialogue, self-expression, storytelling, and strategic action with the goal of defining and creating liberatory outcomes for healing ourselves and our local communities. Although the study did not complete the proposed methodologies of shared data collection and research design, ground work is laid for future research directions through a critical autoethnography of the researcher’s process of entering the field and building community with sex workers and people with experience in the sex industries. Part of the interpretation of findings includes a qualitative impact assessment of policies of criminalization. The study dialogues with multiple positions regarding liberation and survival with the conclusion that the movement of sex workers in Los Angeles is as strong as our continued ability to build relationships across difference.

Note

Please note parking is available on the Ladera Lane campus.  Therefore, shuttle service is not available.

Thank you for your kind consideration of our grounds!

Details
  • Program/Track/Year: Depth Psychology with Specialization in Community Psychology, Liberation Psychology, and Ecopsychology, Track P, 2011
  • Chair: Dr. Nuria Ciofalo
  • Reader: Dr. Aaron Kipnis
  • External Reader: Dr. Margarita Valencia Triana
  • Keywords: Sex Work, Prostitution, Human Trafficking, Participatory Action Research, Critical Autoethnography