Paper short abstract:

The ethnography for this paper draws on research in a Philippines sex tourism industry. My aim is beyond the politics of 'giving voice' to allegedly mute female victims or castigating demonised 'sex tourists'. Instead I evoke the complexities of these peoples' desires and prospective hopes.

Paper long abstract:

The ethnography for this paper draws on research in a Philippines sex tourism industry. It delves into the difficulties and possibilities of researching illegal and shameful acts amongst suspicious and at times hostile subjects. Foreign men aim to create boundaries around who is inside, and who is outside of their community. Narratives of belonging and the expulsion of those seen as disruptive or disapproving of this foreign male Utopia - such as White women - helps create the White male expatriate community. My aim is beyond the politics of 'giving voice' to allegedly mute female victims or castigating demonised 'sex tourists'. Instead I evoke the complexities of these peoples' desires and prospective hopes. Categories such as 'sex tourists' and 'prostitutes/sex workers' are replaced by descriptions of emergent exchanges between people, relations, and contexts. As such, the productive possibilities of identity do not lead to a position of neutrality and a consequent denial of the problems which pervade this world - drug and alcohol abuse, feelings of alienation and unhappiness, allegations about the sexual abuse of children, and corruption and violence. Instead I show the importance, indeed necessity, of taking specific articulations of identity into account, including for the researcher, in a world both harsh and tender.