reading note

1 Introduction The silent point of globalization

A Russian-Estonian woman is dancing in an erotic bar in Tampere, an expand- ing former industrial town, which now rides on the high tide created by boom in information technology. It is late evening and the bar, where the woman dances, is small and cozy. There are several Finnish men seated around the stage, watch- ing her as she strips herself and dances completely naked in front of them while simulating phallic sex.1 They have come to see an “Eastern girl” perform their erotic fantasies. There are no Finnish women either dancing or in the audience. There is a Finnish woman tending the bar, and this is the usual way the gendered and ethnicized labor is organized in bars like this; there is also a Finnish male bouncer. After her dance, she slips into her G-string and goes around the bar asking for tips. The men obey her and give her the usual 20 FIM (C3.50), slip- ping it into her G-string. This is a moment of touch and also small talk. The woman smiles and flirts and advertises a private show – a dance especially for “you.”2 She makes the movements and gestures that one would associate with the stereotypical image of the female in heterosexual sex. The men seem to be pleased; they are getting their money’s worth. And what about her? In two weeks she has made 9,000 FIM (C1,500) for herself, even after all expenses have been paid and cuts taken by the bar and by her own manager. This is the kind of money that would have been impossible for her to make, let alone save, back home in Tarto, Estonia. After working for three weeks, she will go back, finish her degree in clothing design, then hopefully go on to a medical school and maybe some day work abroad for “real.”

In this short story, there are many levels of globalization taking place. The obvious point simply is that, before globalization and the breaking down of the Soviet borders, there were no such possibilities for Russian or Baltic women to travel and work abroad. It is also with the emergence of globalization, in the form of liberalization of commercial erotic culture, that Finland has become enmeshed in the commercial sex business. Before the 1990s, there were no erotic clubs where these “Eastern girls” could work. Before the 1990s, the “Eastern girl,” meaning a sex worker of any age of Baltic or Russian origin, did not exist discursively. The name “Eastern girl” has been associated with sexual drive and also moral looseness, meaning that an “Eastern girl” has no hang-ups over engaging in immoral work, but also cannot be trusted – she may steal, cheat

and so on; but primarily she has been defined by her sexuality. This is due to the globalization of information flows that provide the “Eastern girl” with informa- tion of different places – some of them remote – in Finland, where there is a demand for sex workers. Before globalization of the world economy, Finnish people did not talk of “Eastern girls,” but with the commercialization and the advent of the sex business, “Eastern girls” has become a concept. The Finnish sex business demands and relies on these women, who are exchangeable and exotic and are willing to satisy the sexual demands of the male customers.

This book addresses prostitution as a consequence of international politics. In this book, I will show how globalization produces prostitution as a means to cope with globalization. Therefore, I will show also that globalization con- cretizes as prostitution at the individual level and that prostitution and sex- trafficking present how globalization operates as subjectivating bio-power. This book’s approach toward the issue of prostitution is different from that of most of the literature on prostitution politics, which tends to focus on the ideologies behind legislative measures toward prostitution, the interpretation of the client–prostitute relationship and the definitions of prostitution and trafficking. Furthermore, the manner in which this book approaches the issue of globaliza- tion is different from what is familiar to the majority of mainstream international relations (IR) literature, by addressing how globalization manifests itself in everyday lives.

In most IR literature, globalization is simplified into economic, political or cultural terms and discussed and debated upon in two ways. First, there is the assumption that globalization takes place in the world out there. It follows from this assessment of globalization that there is debate on where exactly globaliza- tion takes place, what counts as globalization and what drives the globalization processes. As somewhat distinct from the first debate on globalization, I see the debate on how globalization is theorized. Of course, this is related to the assess- ment of where globalization is seen to take place and, accordingly, the theoriz- ing of globalization falls also easily into isolationist camps. Therefore, in the theories of globalization, it is conceptualized as an economic or a politico- ideological or a cultural process (see also Berndtson 2000). Therborn (2000: 152–153) categorizes the discourses in similar terms, identifying them as competition economics, “sociocritical,” state (im)potence, cultural and planetary ecology.3 These different perspectives have opposed each other and have com- peted with one another; and only a few theorists have worked to find a synthesis of the different aspects characteristic of globalization (Appadurai 1996).

Instead of debating over where globalization takes place and what globaliza- tion is, I want to emphasize the connection between theories and practices of globalization. I see the discussion on globalization as a form of discourse by which is considered to be globalization is constructed. Therefore, by discussing globalization, we are also constructing globalization (see Peterson 1996). The weakness I identify in much writing on globalization in the context of IR is that the focus is most often on macrolevel agents and events. Globalization is dis- cussed in the context of the global economy from a critical theory perspective4

2 Introduction

or as competition economics,5 relations of states6 or in terms of politico- ideological developments such as democratization and the universalization of human rights.7 Therefore, the debate on who generates globalization is also cen- tered on these macrolevel agents. What I find missing for the most part are the concerns of questions of power and the individual. As portrayed in so much IR literature, it would appear as though there are no individuals who are affected or who do globalization and as though globalization is something that happens above and beyond individuals; and the issues of gender and ethnicity are most often overlooked in defining and theorizing what globalization is.

However, feminist approaches to globalization bring together, for critical review, most of what has been said about globalization. Still, even in the feminist debate on globalization, the focus is on gendered effects of globalization, rather than on the question of a gendered construction of globalization (see Chow 2003). Yet, it is in the feminist-oriented discussion that the questions of the theory and practices of globalization that inform my own analysis have been raised.

The definitions of globalization point to the interconnectedness of distant locations in shaping events and consequences, namely, the space-time compres- sion due to technological innovations and cultural flows. Globalization is some- times seen as universalization and homogenization of culture in the American style consumer society (Berndtson 2000)8 or instead, taking form through fragmentation and localization as well as through marginalization of peripheries by the affluent centers. Along with the word “globalization,” which has become part of everyday usage, there are also terms which attempt to describe the com- plexity and contradictions of globalization by saying the world is going through “fragmegration” or “glocalization.” Globalization can be seen as the continuity of world politics or as a fundamental transformation from the past. Although there are many different and contradicting accounts of globalization, I agree with Jens Bartelson (2000: 180) that, although “there is no agreement on what globalization is, the entire discourse on globalization is founded on the agree- ment that globalization is.” (italics original). And, as McCormack (2002: 105) argues, “Globalization attracts so much current theoretical attention because it is a simple (perhaps the simplest) way of defining the messy and all-too-often violent conflict of human interaction.” He also argues that the name “globaliza- tion” has itself become a category that contains all the different elements of globalization. Therefore, the name and the meaning attributed to it are being continuously contested in various fora (McCormack 2002).

The term “globalization” resists and eludes any easy or simple definition. It is also often stated that one cannot talk of globalization in singular, but instead, globalization should be assessed in plural as it takes many forms and thus “glob- alizations” is a more appropriate term (Therborn 2000).9 What is singular about globalization is rather the different discourses on globalization, which do not engage in dialogue with each other (Therborn 2000; see also Maclean 2000). However, these authors seem to have left feminist conceptualizations of global- ization off their lists and do not address questions of method in researching or writing about globalization.

Introduction 3

Feminist conceptualization of globalization

The feminist debate on globalization rounds up the different discussions pre- sented above by gendering the economic, cultural and politico-ideological analy- ses of globalization. The feminist approaches to globalization in IRs can be roughly categorized into standpoint feminism and postmodern feminism.10 The first line of questioning involves, “Where are the women in globalization?” focusing on the gendered impacts of globalization as in the marginalization and relative impoverishment of women, but also the manner in which women con- tribute to globalization by their cheap labor in the global assembly line. The postmodern feminists also focus on how sex and gender are produced through globalization processes by bringing into question the masculinist bias inherent in systems of power and knowledge that contribute to globalization (see Chow 2003).

I want to elaborate in a few words on how globalization is conceptualized by using feminist lenses. Important texts, for example, are Anne Sisson Runyan and V. Spike Peterson’s (1993) Global Gender Issues; Jan Jindy Pettman’s (1996) Worlding women; and Meyer, Mary K. and Elisabeth Prügl (eds) Gender Poli- tics in Global Governance (1999). The main theme that arises from these texts in terms of globalization is the focus on how neoliberal economic restructuring has affected women in discriminating ways. The criticism is directed at the inherent masculine bias and gender blindness in neoliberal practices, but also, on a deeper level, at matters concerning science and modern epistemology11 accord- ing to which economic restructuring processes have been legitimated. In this way, the feminist criticism is extensive, for it addresses masculinism in the recent economic processes in terms of questions of power and knowledge that underline principles and practices of globalization. In this respect, feminist critics have also been skeptical about the triumph of liberalism and have on many occasions pointed to the unsustainability of economic growth as a means for progress or development. Feminists have criticized the triumph of liberalism being inherently based on a relationship of exploitation and criticized its inher- ent euro-centrism and gender bias.

Feminists argue that globalization, perceiving it to mean the globalization of production and consumption, could not have happened, had not the women been the silent contributors in “maquiladoras” and sweatshops (see e.g., Peterson and Sisson Runyan 1993, Pettman 1996, Wichterich 1998). Therefore, it is exactly women’s cheap labor that has enabled globalization to take place as female workers have been essential for transnational corporations that want to maxi- mize profits. However, exploitation of women as cheap labor is based on mas- culinist bias and the institution of patriarchy. Women are considered not to need the same level of income as men since they are assumed to bring only secondary income to the family or else to be so young that they will soon marry, start a family and leave the workplace. Therefore women are paid less than the minimum wage on many occasions (Wichterich 1998, Ehrenreich and Russell Hochschild 2002). In addition, women are attractive workers for global produc-

4 Introduction

tion since they are assumed not to unionize and to accept oppressive working conditions so as to gain any income at all.

However women’s cheap labor in the global assembly line is not the only type of work that has been represented as attractive. An important part of the discourse is also the large numbers of women working in organized prostitution. It has been shown how important prostitutes are in attracting tourists, business- men and transnational business. Pettman (1996) has followed Cynthia Enloe’s12

(1988) lead in extensively covering the links with sex tourism, hospitality ser- vices and trafficking in women for purposes of prostitution, mail-order brides and domestic servants. The feminist analysis also relates to colonialism, eco- nomic restructuring, growing internationalization and indebtedness in state economies due to the imposed policies of the International Monetary Fund (IMF) and World Bank. Pettman calls this system “the International Political Economy of Sex” as the gendered impacts of international and national policies so evidently shape women’s position and possibilities to deal with economic restructuring, thus constituting sex work also as a means for coping with global- ization. This aspect of the sex specificity of forms of agency, as a constituting factor of the international political economy of sex, will be taken up in the following chapter on the construction of gender and ethnicity in the globalized sex market.

The feminist criticism of globalization as a form of power and knowledge aims to deconstruct and reconstruct how globalization is produced as a form of discourse. The criticism addresses the masculine bias in knowledge production through valorized dichotomies, reductionism and gender-blind empiricist methods (see e.g., Harding 1991). It is acknowledged that, as globalization poses theoretical and practical challenges to IRs, it may also open space for remapping these fields in more gender-sensitive ways. This is grounded in the arguments of the integral nature of discourses in reshaping world politics and vice versa. Peterson (1996) argues that the feminist project is important in responding to the empirical and epistemological weaknesses of IR theory in analyzing globaliza- tion. What feminists propose is to acknowledge the relational quality of world politics instead of its separation into states-markets, public-private and internal- external binary oppositions. Moreover, Peterson claims that postmodern femin- ism can account for the complexity and contingency of the globalizing world, for its strategy is in contextualizing, comparing and critically reflecting rather than in the search for objective truth and origin or ahistorical methods and theories.

An important part of the feminist project is not only the deconstruction of Western masculine-biased knowledge production but also the aim to give voice to those who have been marginalized (Krause 1996). This is important since feminism is not only an academic debate but also a political project, connected with political women’s movements, that aims at ending women’s discrimination in all forms. Globalization, as it is understood in terms of interconnectedness and overcoming of the tyranny of distances and borders, also enables the transnationalization of the feminist political project. This is evident in global

Introduction 5

women’s movements, in transnational collaboration of women’s non-govern- mental organizations and also in the attention and recognition that feminist issues have received at the level of the UN, such as its observance of 1976–1985 as the United Nations Decade for Women and also the holding of the 1995 United Nations World Conference for Women in Beijing. Women’s rights form an important part of a more general “human rights” discourse and, within this debate also, the violence against women in the globalized world has received strong emphasis and weight (Krause 1996). The best means to achieve the goals are also questioned and, therefore, participating in male-dominated institutions, such as the UN, is seen as futile from the point of view of the feminist project.13

What is probably one of the most important things that comes through the feminist academic and political (if these can be separated) projects is the open- ness and sensitivity toward different kinds of knowledge and voices. The femi- nist project, as it maintains that there is no ungendered experience, also makes interdisciplinary and multidisciplinary approaches possible in academic research. The result is that, with these streams of feminist inquiry and interven- tions, a new kind of space for plurality of voices and discourses opens, making also the remapping of theories and practices of globalization possible. My own project stems from these feminist-informed perspectives on the study of global- ization, thus making it possible also to address the question of agency and sex specificity in the theory and practices of globalization.

Globalization as corporeal politics

This book addresses prostitution and sex-trafficking in the context of globaliza- tion as corporeal politics. In this book I take the familiar question, “Where are the women in international relations?” presented by feminist scholars in IR, and I present it in terms of, “Where are the sex-specific and ethnicized bodies in the context of globalization?” I am going to address globalization as a form of bio- power, drawing on Michel Foucault and Judith Butler; this is discussed in more detail in Chapter 2. I will argue that globalization subjectivates, that is, produces sex-specific and ethnicized subject positions that are incorporated and embodied. In other words, I am going to be looking at how globalization concretizes at the level of the body and how, in turn, the sex-specific and ethnicized bodies enact and reiterate globalization. I will be exemplifying the corporealities of globaliza- tion by looking at the operations of the global sex industry. I will develop from the basis of Arjun Appadurai’s framework of landscapes of globalization, creat- ing a framework of sexscapes of globalization in Chapter 3 in order to show how the global sex industry feeds on the complex global flows. These complex flows form global conjunctures in which new forms of agency and subjectivity are created. This is developed further in the narratives of corporeal globalization presented in Chapters 4–6, in which I explore the new forms of subjectivity and agency enacted in the global conjunctures of Finnish sex bars, brothels and parking lots where the sex trade takes place.

In this book, I will show how the global sex industry operates through a

6 Introduction

complex system of global flows and how it operates in correlation with the processes of globalization, in turn benefiting from them and also how it accord- ingly subjectivates in a gendered and ethnicized manner. Conceptualizing the global sex industry as a part of the globalized world economy implies several things. First of all, the global sex industry can be conceptualized as shadow globalization. What I mean by shadow globalization relates partly to how the shadow economy is theorized and defined as comprising illicit, informal, domestic and unrecorded activity (Fleming et al. 2000). However, by shadow globalization I also mean activities that have been made possible by global flows of information, technology, finance and people, that are taking place in informal and illegal ways, but in the shadows in terms of otherness of the domain of subjectivity of global world economy.

My aim is to conceptualize the global sex industry in the context of the overall processes of globalization. In this respect, I see it as shadow globaliza- tion, operating in relation to globalization of the world economy and also reiter- ating and reinventing it, but from the shadows by taking advantage of disjunction and construction of otherness.14 Globalization of the world economy, then, is seen marking the domain of subjectivity established by power/ knowledge, which takes shape through global governmentality. I will discuss this further in the following chapter.

Second, both these forms of globalization, the global village kind and shadow globalization, operate as forms of subjectivating power, producing and requiring certain kinds of subjectivities, which result in agency and also in the incorporation of the position of the subject. This means that subjectivity acts on and activates bodies, is performed through bodies and constrains bodies. These embodied posi- tions exemplify the bio-politics of globalization. They result in incorporation and embodiment of gendered, economic, cultural and social as well as ethnicized rela- tions that are shaped by globalizing processes. I argue that these embodied subject positions are gendered and ethnicized, resulting in different forms of agency, chal- lenge and opportunity along gender and ethnic divides.

However, I also follow Appadurai in arguing that globalization is fundament- ally disjunctive. I see the global sex industry as representing shadow globaliza- tion, a zone that the “abject of globalization” inhabit. For the abject bodies of prostitutes and other sex workers, globalization does not open up new opportun- ities or possibilities of agency, but instead, it creates concrete constraints and controls. I am going to show that the category of the abject, of the ethnicized other woman engaged in sex work, needs to be maintained in order for the cat- egory of the subjects of globalization to exist. Still, the position of the abject is seen as a form of limited agency, as this position is one that disrupts order and can destabilize the domain of subjects. These sex-specific and ethnicized embodiments and enactments of globalization are investigated by the case study of foreign sex workers in Finland. From the fieldwork that I have done in the places where the sex trade takes place in Finland, I construct narratives which exemplify the corporealities of globalization and the sex-specific forms of agency that have developed.

Introduction 7

The narrative turn (in International Relations)

I have argued elsewhere (Penttinen 2004) that the discipline of IR operates as a form of exclusionary power that excludes voices and forms of expression outside the sphere of IR. Indeed, maintaining the boundaries of the discipline in place requires power. These boundaries have to be established time and again, which means that the boundaries are not beyond contestation and challenge (see also Enloe 1996). The feminists and post-structuralists have done a lot to stretch the boundaries of IR so that the “unsaid” of IR has been highlighted and brought under critique and reconstruction (see Ashley 1989 and Der Derian in the same volume).

This stretching of IR has also been the motivation to write this book by using the possibilities offered by the narrative turn. I have wanted to avoid the writing of IR in the familiar hierarchic and inherently masculinist logico-scientific form. Instead, I propose to write IR in an open and subjective form, that is, in a narrat- ive form that is both embodied and the embodiment of IR.

Bochner (2001) sees the narrative turn as both turning away and turning toward. He summarizes these narrative turns as follows:

The narrative turn moves away from a singular monolithic conception of social science toward a pluralism that promotes multiple forms of representation and research; away from facts and toward meanings; away from master narratives and toward local stories; away from idolizing cate- gorical thought and abstracted theory and toward embracing the values of irony, emotionality, and activism; away from assuming the stance of disin- terested spectator and toward assuming the posture of feeling, embodied and vulnerable observer; away from writing essays and toward telling stories.

(Bochner 2001: 135)

This turning does not mean, however, that the logico-scientific form of writing and analytical approach to stories and texts would be excluded. The narrative turn is not about new forms of exclusion. Instead, the narrative turn, as men- tioned at the beginning of Bochner’s list, is about turning toward plurality. In this way, the narrative turn does not imply that the normative social science writing should be eliminated. On the contrary, with the narrative turn, the differ- ent forms of privilege that have been established in the scientific community are challenged and sensitivity for these privileges is called for. This means the sen- sitivity of the position of privilege of the researcher as well as the privilege of the exclusionary scientific community. One thing that the narrative turn emphas- izes is to avoid such positions of privilege and hierarchy as those established in mainstream social science.

The narratives of corporeal globalization that I write arise exactly from these points that stress plurality instead of a master narrative of IR and by the acknowledgment of the power that is required to control the role of the scientist

8 Introduction

as well as to assess what counts as science. I do not want to be taking on the position of privilege of a distanced spectator-scientist in relation to data and pretend that this kind of position would even be possible.

The narratives I write are as much about doing research as they are the stories of the people involved in sex traffic between Finland and Russia and thus illus- trate how globalization is incorporated by the people involved in the sex indus- try. In the narratives of corporeal globalization, I combine information gathered during fieldwork and my own observations of the relationships between clients and prostitutes, erotic dancers and pimps. The fieldwork I have done is very much researching the impossible. In fact, while doing my fieldwork, it has become obvious that I am involved in researching the silent point of globaliza- tion. Therefore, the way in which I have done my research, the limitations I have faced and the manner in which these have affected the research process have to be brought into the text.

What I have wanted to do is to write about the experiences of women, espe- cially women regarded as social others, and reveal how the international or political world is inscribed on their lives and their bodies. In one sense, the objective of my research has been to show the micro-physics and bio-power of globalization. Thus, I have wanted to challenge by this example the issues which are deemed worthy of attention in the context of the discipline of IR. Writing the research in a narrative form also challenges the genre of writing in mainstream IR that has relied on logico-scientific writing, which, however, has been chal- lenged by postmodernists, especially by feminist postmodernists (see Ashley 1996, Sylvester 1996).

My own personal quest involves the will to stretch the boundaries of IR research discipline. The stretching I wish to accomplish is in terms of what can be researchable in IR, what kind of methods are used in IR research and how the research is written/reported. The need for new kinds of approaches in terms of research topics and methods calls for bringing gender sensitivity into IR, or making visible the sex specificity of research questions, methods, producers and users of knowledge in IR. Darby (2003) raises these similar issues and argues that IR has operated as a colonizing discipline that colonizes different forms of knowledge. He criticizes the practices of exclusion of knowledge in IR and the lack of interdisciplinary research and mentions how mainstream IR is closed to other disciplines of research, such as development studies and postcolonial studies. He claims that IR has taken over the concept of the “international” and separated it from the ordinary and lived experiences of people who are neverthe- less affected by and live in the international society as is the case of people living in, for example, postcolonial societies.

Not only has the discipline of IR separated the concept of the “international” from ordinary lives, but also from bodies or corporealities of individuals. I want to reflect here in a few words how Grosz (1993) explains the development of dualism in modern science in relation to the conceptualization of the body. Grosz’s interest has been in addressing the question of the body in philosophy and looking for reasons for its exclusion and neglect. Grosz (1993: 6) argues that

Introduction 9

the dualist thinking, institutionalized by Cartesian tradition, has dominated modern science for the last 300 years. Descartes has established not only dualism between mind and body – this had already been done by Plato – but, rather more importantly, also the separation of mind/soul from nature and con- versely detaching the body as separate from the mind and as belonging to the realm of nature. This has several consequences. Whereas the body belongs to the natural world following its natural laws, it is also deemed secondary to the mind. The human mind, as it is capable of reasoning, is separated from the natural world and is thus capable of producing objective and pure knowledge from the natural world. Indeed, Grosz argues that the dualist thinking is much to blame also for the separation of natural sciences from the social sciences. It is respons- ible for the elevation of consciousness above corporeality (Grosz 1993: 8). The body has been relevant only in terms of being the object of knowledge in natural science (ibid.), but has not been relevant in terms of production of knowledge.

The narrative turn responds to this issue of separation between mind and body by aiming to produce knowledge where the embodied position of the researcher is acknowledged and made visible. Additionally, the aim is to write in such a way that the texts can be felt, thus provoking an emotional response (see Ellis and Bochner 1993, Bochner 2001). This is one way how the narrative turn aims to overcome the hierarchic binary opposition of mind and body as estab- lished by the Cartesian tradition.

It is important to note here that when the hierarchic dichotomy of mind and body had been accepted, this had consequences on other binary pairs that go alongside the mind and body. As the female is associated with the secondary term, it implies that woman cannot be a subject of knowledge. The female, being perceived as associated with nature and the private sphere, is categorically outside the possibility of producing knowledge that could be acknowledged as science. Grosz (1993) argues that it is as though the female body is more biolog- ical, more natural than the male body, and indeed, as though the male body is free from biology “as it represents the realm of the mind.” The important element of this criticism has been the focus on dualisms and the hierarchies that have been used to explain the “natural” inequality between men and women and which has been used to deny women’s access to public and knowledge produc- tion. Here, then the feminist point is emphasized that the identity of the knower in modern epistemology is most often a male mind (Sylvester 1998).

Bochner (2001) also discusses how the valorization by a distanced analyst in relation to data shows a strong male ethos. The qualities of the scientist that are valued and regarded as the requirements of good research, that is, research that counts as science, show a strong binary that valorizes the masculine over the feminine. Bochner (2001: 144) claims that the call for “methodological purity and disengaged reason” is “unmistakably macho.” The scientist as “cool, under control, detached and analytical” (ibid.) clearly represents masculine qualities, which gain their valorized position in making the feminine as a secondary cat- egory. In this manner, the feminine qualities are excluded from what counts as science. Bochner (2001: 146) brings forward Jane Tompkins’ point on ongoing

10 Introduction

war waged “against feeling, against women, against what is personal” in the academy. In this way, the emphasis of objectivist, distanced research implies that the scientific community looks down upon forms of knowledge that are associated with women and the feminine, such as emotion and the private.

Writing autoethnography: writing subjective and situated narratives

No textual staging is innocent.15

(Foucault)

All texts are personal statements. Denzin and Lincoln (1998: 413)

The narrative turn is grounded in the ontological statement that “people live by stories,” that our lives are storied (see e.g., Whitebrook 2001). Then stories are closely linked with how identity and subjectivity are formed. If the stories are limited and limiting, so are different expressions of life and possible lived spaces limited (Richardson 1990, 1997). Whitebrook explains that, “The polit- ical aspect of identity rests on an understanding of the self as social, ‘situated’, and narratives of identity as embedded in others stories, including the wider stories of social and cultural settings” (2001: 4).

Inclusion of the writer’s self into the text is informed by the feminist thesis that “our politics start with our feelings” (Grosz 1993: 20). In terms of the narrative turn, this refers also to the understanding of narrativity and identity construction. Following the ontological assumption that people live by stories and that our lives are storied, it entails that the personal narrative that reveals the situatedness and subjectivity of the author is connected to the larger cul- tural narratives. The feminist thesis of the “personal” being political relates also to the acknowledgment of the role of sex-specific bodies in knowledge production.

Personal narratives are not simply about revealing the inner self to the audi- ence, thus being confessional, but through the personal one can also reveal something about the larger structures of power. This means that the personal is constructed in relation to the cultural settings, that personal selves are not iso- lated from the world and others, but are formed in relation to the others and are so formed especially through the different narratives of the self, others and the world. The personal is then related to the public and not categorically separate from it. Therefore, personal narratives are necessarily already filled with meta- narratives and narratives by others. Personal narratives can also offer ideas of boundaries of possible narratives, which again, convey the possibilities of lived spaces.

Sparkes (2002) discusses how autoethnography rests on the assumption that it is possible to learn about the general through the particular and therefore, writing individual experience is also about writing social experience. Subjective

Introduction 11

experiences are part of the world and so these experiences are not private. In this way, writing autoethnography also challenges the hierarchic binary pairs intrin- sic to modern epistemology, such as subjective and objective, self and other. Sparkes (ibid.) writes how the self has become the silenced other in the practices of modern epistemology. It is something that has been excluded and made sec- ondary to the objective, public and rational. What is important here is that these two aspects, the personal and emotional and the rational and objective, do not cancel each other out. Instead, autoethnography does not merely try to bridge the gulf between these two sides, but rather demonstrates how these two sides are not opposites at all, but overlap and coexist.

The attention that Grosz gives to the body as a mediator between psychical inner space and what is publicly observable is closely related to the goals of the autoethnographic project of knowledge production. For Grosz, overcoming the dualism between mind and body means thinking of subjectivity through the concept of corporeality. This means regarding the body as something which is between nature and culture. Grosz explains that this means that we cannot regard the body as a kind of natural raw material nor as a purely social and cul- tural product which would lack “its own weighty materiality” (Grosz 1993: 21). Then, in terms of the question of the body, moving between binary opposition, between nature/culture and mind and body means thinking in terms of embodied subjectivity and psychical corporeality (Grosz 1993: 22). Approaching the body as such, as a mediator between inside and outside, helps to overcome dualistic thinking that is characteristic of modern epistemology in terms of methodology and representation of data. Moreover, Grosz stresses that the body must be stressed as a cultural product. This argument is linked to the basis of autoethnog- raphy, that is to say, learning about the general from the particular. This is also crucial in writing my own research of corporeal globalization. Grosz does not mean by the understanding of the body as a cultural product, that the body is purely social. Rather, for her, the body is a pivotal point in binary pairs. Grosz explains that the body is not part of the binary pairs, instead it is both sides of the dichotomies between “self and other, private or public, psychical or social, instinctive or learned, genetically or environmentally determined” (ibid.: 23). Therefore, Grosz argues, we also need new terms to be able to discuss the body outside and beyond binary pairs (ibid.: 24).

In the narratives of corporeal globalization, I am writing about bodies that are out of place, homeless or marginalized and, in this case, writing openly about sexual difference. The bodies that represent different sexes and ethnicities that interact in the global sex industry are acknowledged as political sites as well. Bodies are seen then as sites, points of mediation between private and public, self and other, and not immutable raw material that follows the laws of nature. In this respect the body of the prostitute, whore, sex worker or stripper is an exemplary body. It is in itself a site that is politicized in debates for and against prostitution, but more importantly, in terms of my own research, the body is a site onto which power is inscribed, drawing on Foucault (1980). Focusing on particular bodies is a way to learn about the general, that is, the powers involved

12 Introduction

in determining the domain of subjectivity in the context of globalization. In order to grasp this particular and to be able to tell through the particular about the general, the methods of new ethnography (Richardson 1990, Ellis and Fla- herty 1992, Bochner 2001, Ellis and Berger 2002, Sparkes 2002) have been employed, involving intimate detail, concrete experience and literary strategies, including examples of poetry, fiction and personal narratives and drawing the reader into an active relationship with the text.

The narratives I write are about corporeal shadow globalization in the back- ground of the zone of the abject, and by doing this I try to move between the binary opposition between mind and body as discussed by Grosz. Here also, Butler’s (1993) investigation on the position of the abject body and the social abject is crucial, as is Irigaray’s theory on the mechanics of fluids (Irigaray 1985). Thus, the purpose is to extend the investigation of IRs beyond the divi- sion between private and public and national and international by discussing the corporeal politics of globalization. In this way this book aims to transcend boundaries between subject and object. At a particular level, it means also tran- scending or extending those boundaries which determine what is researchable within the discipline of IR, what kinds of topics count as worthy of attention and how knowledge about such issues is gained.

This also means that I want to be sensitive about my own authority as the author, which leads me to follow the narrative turn and write the results of my research in the way enabled by the new ethnography. Thus, by employing the narrative mode in writing, I want to let go of the form of writing that reproduces the binary opposition and position of otherness of the object of research. In this case I want to also refrain from reproducing the social otherness of the sex workers in writing about their embodied subjectivities in the context of global- ization. Instead, what I try to do by the method of narratives is to describe the corporeal globalizations as sites of agency, which are positions of “subjectivity” for the abject. I have already expressed my objection to boundaries between subject and object and between passive and active. I am keen not to portray the trafficked woman as a victim that needs to be saved by those who are situated in a more privileged western position (see also Pettman 1997). This includes prob- lematizing my own embodiment of globalization along with that of the inter- national sex workers and also includes my own position of subjectivity into the text.

I acknowledge that the boundaries which mark domains of the subject and the abject are human constructs, discourses and texts that inhere relations of power. This exclusionary power is also present in the meta-narratives of modern epis- temology and logico-scientific forms of writing. In my own writing, I want, at least, not to reinforce these boundaries. I want to wonder about them, question them and question my own position and prerogatives in the process. This is why I decline in this book to use common positivist methods and forms of representation so familiar to main(male)stream IR.

Writing in a narrative form is both a political and ethical choice, but most importantly, a bridge between objective and subjective knowledge, science and

Introduction 13

literature, fact and fiction. The aim is to bring forth an alternative form of writing in the field of social sciences and thus overcome the hierarchies, mas- culinities and power positions that are central to mainstream writing. The narrat- ive turn is a means by which the researcher can be open about the context and situatedness of the knowledge produced and about her own biases and values that she brings to the text. Nevertheless, it is also a matter of offering something that the reader can associate with. In one sense, what is offered here is what the reader can feel, without assuming that these feelings represent raw material and discarding the baggage that comes along with the notion of experience. It is also a matter of writing texts that move and thus slightly chip away the valorized binary between mind and body.

14 Introduction