Sex_Work as Care_Work?! Ethnographic and Cultural-Analytical Perspectives on Sex Work in the Care_Work Context of Sexuality, Intimacy and Emotionality
This dissertation project researches sex work in the context of sexual, intimate, physical, and emotional care_work. It explores the actors’ experiences of their employment as well as their care in the context of sexuality, intimacy, and emotionality, with regard to re_production work. This provides insight 1) into the perspectives, experiences, and options for action of individuals who are exposed to multiple forms of discrimination and explores their connection to neoliberal and neocolonial transformational processes and the associated processes of differentiation and exclusion. This approach makes it possible to take a further look 2) at the entanglement and negotiations of legitimate, precarious, rewarding, and caring work, and asks 3) how a caring collaborative alliance can provide moments of translation and intervene in, and transform, socio-political fields of discourse and representation with the concept of un_learning.
Sabrina Stranzl is a PhD student at the Karl-Franzens-University Graz (Department of Empirical Cultural Studies and Political Anthropology) and is doing her doctorate on Sex_Work as Care_Work. She is focusing on sexuality, intimacy and emotionality from an ethnographic and cultural-analytical perspective. She is a founding member of the Society for Sex Work and Prostitution Research (GSPF), on the board of the Austrian Society for Gender Studies (ÖGGF) and active in the Network for Critical Migration and Border Regime Research (kritnet). Her work and research profile includes labor and care research, urban-spatial-cultural research, aesthetic and political anthropology and engaged ethnography, as well as sex_work, class and social inequality, critiques of representation, collaborative alliances, gender and governmentality studies.
»Wie Sexarbeiter:innen ›sind‹ beziehungsweise ›sein sollen‹ oder ›sein zu haben‹: Kulturanthropologische Perspektiven auf diskursive Figurierungen von Sexarbeiter:innen«, in: Linzer Schriften zu Gender und Recht 69, Linz: Trauner Verlag 2025 (in Druck).
›Und bist du nicht willig, so bezahl ich dich halt‹. Kulturanthropologische Perspektiven auf diskursive und visuelle Konstruktionen und Figurierungen von Sexarbeit, Graz 2022, Open Access: https://unipub.uni-graz.at/obvugrhs/content/titleinfo/7819961.
»›If I can’t spray, it’s not my revolution!‹ Empowerment und Dynamisierung von Geschlechtergerechtigkeit durch partizipative Graffiti-Workshops mit Mädchen«, mit Brigitte Temel und Judith Laister, in: Sozialwissenschaftliche Rundschau 62, 3, 2022, S. 360–383.
»›Your ignorance is more scandalous than my promiscuity‹ Aneignungspraktiken des öffentlichen Raums durch Sexarbeiterinnen«, in: >mcsj> Mobile Culture Studies. The Journal 1 (2020), Sonderband 1: mcs_lab, S. 43–58, https://unipub.uni-graz.at/mcsj/periodical/pageview/5351632.
»›It isn’t socially accepted, but I love what I do.‹ Eine Innenperspektive von Sexarbeiterinnen zu Selbstbestimmung, Handlungsmacht und Lust«, in: Kuckuck. Notizen zur Alltagskultur 1, 2018, S. 38–41.
Befasst mit der Frage: Sex_Arbeit als Care_Arbeit?! arbeitet Sabrina Stranzl in Kollaboration mit Forschungsakteur*innen innerhalb und außerhalb der akademischen Welt zusammen, wie der transdisziplinären Gesellschaft für Sexarbeits- und Prostitutionsforschung (GSPF), mit verschiedenen Sexarbeits-Selbstorganisationen und Fachberatungsstellen.