Description

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 Work reveals 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.

Reviews

"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

Product Details

296 pages; ISBN13: 978-0-19-826495-8ISBN10: 0-19-826495-X

About the Author(s)