Sexed Work Gender, Race, and Resistance in a Brooklyn Drug Market [Hardcover]

Based on three years of ethnographic work in New York City, this book provides the first detailed account of the economic lives of women drug users. Set in a neighborhood plagued with AIDS,Sexed Workreveals the economic lives of a group of women whose options have been severely circumscribed, not only by drug use, but also by poverty, racism, violence, and enduring marginality. Maher draws extensively on the women's own words to describe how structures and relations of gender, race and class are articulated by divisions of labor in the street-level drug economy. This rich, nuanced and theoretically sophisticated study of crime as work will be compelling reading for all those interested in the way in which women deal with the intersection of gender, race, and work.

1: Readings of Victimization and Volition
2: Taking it on the Street
3: Gender, Work, and Informalization
4: A Reserve Army: Women and the Drug Market
5: Jobs for the Boyz: Street Hustles
6: A Hard Road to Ho: Sexwork
7: Intersectionalities: Gender, Race and Class
8: The Reproduction of Inequalities
Appendix: On Reflexivity, Reciprocity, and Ethnographic Research

Maher does a superior job of challenging current conceptions of women's position and behavior in the street-level drug economy. An excellent examination of an often misunderstood and overlooked group and is informative for people from many disciplines.
--Choice

An important contribution to the literature and will improve any reader's understanding of the inner workings of the drug world.
--Professor Christopher Krebs, Florida State University in Journal of Drug Issues

Among the most important contemporary feminist scholarship in criminology. Excellent scholarship, deserving a wide readership.
--Professor Jody Miller in Theoretical Criminology

A landmark work in social study. A rich mix of field study, sociological scholarship and theoretical analó&