'Its all supply and demand': Market fatalism and norm construction by prostitution clients in the Netherlands and Belgium

Stef Adriaenssens ()

No 2010/18, Working Papers from Hogeschool-Universiteit Brussel, Faculteit Economie en Management

Abstract: Given the deviant nature of prostitution, expectations and information used to depend on clients personal experiences. This has changed fundamentally during recent decades. The emergence of user-generated websites discussing commercial sexual exchanges has allowed moral economies of prostitution as a distinctly social phenomenon to develop. This contribution reconstructs the social norms of prostitution clients with the help of a qualitative analysis of internet reviews by clients in the Netherlands and Belgium. Clients develop a dominant market fatalist approach to exchanges with sex workers, so that prostitution is constructed as "just happening" paralleling everyday consumption practices. It emulates mainstream exchanges, for example in fixed price norms. It is argued that this market fatalist approach consists of a moral economy concealed behind a veil of amorality. Reconciling these market fatalist expectations with an equally strong demand for authentic and personal experiences with the sex worker is further analysed and discussed.

Keywords: Market fatalism; Moral economy; Prostitution; Sex work; Social norms; Netherlands; Belgium (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Pages: 25 page
Date: 2010-05
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations:

Downloads: (external link)
https://lirias.hubrussel.be/bitstream/123456789/3704/1/10HRP18.pdf (application/pdf)

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:hub:wpecon:201018

Access Statistics for this paper

More papers in Working Papers from Hogeschool-Universiteit Brussel, Faculteit Economie en Management Contact information at EDIRC.
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Sabine Janssens ( this e-mail address is bad, please contact ).