Caribbean Pleasure Industry: Tourism, Sexuality, and AIDS in the Dominican Republic (Worlds of Desire: The Chicago Series on Sexuality, Gender, and Culture) [Paperback]

Mark Padilla (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: September 15, 2007 | ISBN-10: 0226644367 | ISBN-13: 978-0226644363 | Edition: 1

In recent years, the economy of the Caribbean has become almost completely dependent on international tourism. And today one of the chief ways that foreign visitors there seek pleasure is through prostitution. While much has been written on the female sex workers who service these tourists, Caribbean Pleasure Industry shifts the focus onto the men. Drawing on his groundbreaking ethnographic research in the Dominican Republic, Mark Padilla discovers a complex world where the global political and economic impact of tourism has led to shifting sexual identities, growing economic pressures, and new challenges for HIV prevention. In fluid prose, Padilla analyzes men who have sex with male tourists, yet identify themselves as “normal” heterosexual men and struggle to maintain this status within their relationships with wives and girlfriends. Padilla’s exceptional ability to describe the experiences of these men will interest anthropologists, but his examination of bisexuality and tourism as much-neglected factors in the HIV/AIDS epidemic makes this book essential to anyone concerned with health and sexuality in the Caribbean or beyond.

(20060928)

Editorial Reviews

Review

"Mark Padilla’s Caribbean Pleasure Industry is a first-rate analysis of the ways local constructions of identity and lifestyles of male sex workers in the Dominican Republic are influenced by the ideas and practices of their foreign male clients who live in far-away places. This wonderfully nuanced study challenges readers to think simultaneously about the cultural and structural aspects of cross-cultural sexual interactions across international borders, and how those interactions impact local and global constructions of sexuality."—Héctor Carrillo, San Francisco State University

 

(H�ctor Carrillo 20070522)

“Caribbean Pleasure Industry is a major new work on the political economy of gender and sexuality. Mark Padilla’s detailed ethnographic study of male sex work in the Dominican Republic opens up new insights in relation to masculinity and male sexuality more generally. Few studies have so carefully documented the impact of changing social and economic forces on intimate experience—or the ways in which this intersection shapes the evolving HIV epidemic.”—Richard Parker, Columbia University

(Richard Parker )

“Padilla’s thorough, nuanced research gives an up-close account of male hustling in the Dominican Republic. In delving into straight-identified sex workers’ lives, motivations, and relationships, it also throws new light on old questions about gender norms, sexual identities, and, of course, how these relate to a globally-connected political economy. A very useful antidote to the current rage for one-sided denunciations of sex work as exploitation, trafficking, and slavery.”—Roger Lancaster, George Mason University

(Roger Lancaster )

"Extremely well-crafted and accessible, Caribbean Pleasure Industry strikes a successful balance between ethnographic evidence and theoretical analysis. It will prove useful to a wide range of audiences that include scholars of Latin America and the Caribbean, medical anthropologists, public health specialists, and theorists of gender and sexuality. Mark Padilla raises the bar for studies of same-sex practices in Latin America, and his work will rightly serve as a critical new starting point for studies of Latin American masculinity and sex tourism in the Caribbean."

(Noelle M. Stout Journal of Latin American Studies )

"A captivating, scholarly, outstanding ethnographic study  . . . interweaving themes of sexuality, globalization, commodification, gender, political economy, and HIV and AIDS. This monograph covers a broad range of subjects that crosscut social science disciplines

(Teela Saunders American Journal of Sociology )

"The particular strength of Padilla''s work is how it apprehends the intrinsic relation between local identities and global processes. Moreover, what makes this work stand out . . . is how Padilla lucidly indicates the implications of his findings for various different fields (public health, Latin American gender, and sexuality studies) and shows how they trouble some of their prevalent assumptions."

(Maja Horn The Historian )

About the Author

Mark Padilla is assistant professor in the Department of Health Behavior and Health Education in the School of Public Health at the University of Michigan.

Product Details

• Paperback: 304 pages
• Publisher: University Of Chicago Press; 1 edition (September 15, 2007)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0226644367
• ISBN-13: 978-0226644363
• Product Dimensions: 8.8 x 5.8 x 0.8 inches
• Shipping Weight: 12.8 ounces (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 4.0 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (1 customer review)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #541,045 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)
  • #32 in Books > Gay & Lesbian > Travel
  • #89 in Books > Health, Fitness & Dieting > Disorders & Diseases > AIDS

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Customer Reviews

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4 of 4 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars Sanky Panky Meets the Rainbow Flag, March 8, 2010

By 

Jeffery Mingo (Homewood, IL USA) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: Caribbean Pleasure Industry: Tourism, Sexuality, and AIDS in the Dominican Republic (Worlds of Desire: The Chicago Series on Sexuality, Gender, and Culture) (Paperback)

Most studies of sex tourism focus on female sex workers with foreign male clients. Even some studies look at men involved in sex work with foreign women. This book tries to fill in a gap by discussing Dominican men who sell sex to foreign male tourists. This book tries to break a rigid hetero/homo dichotomy by showing the many men who engage in hustling but with no desire for other males.

There is a rare but excellent anthology called "Caribbean Masculinities" and the author's contribution is reprinted here. Really, I hope this book is a sign that the author got tenure somewhere. The info in this book is similar to another study about "pingueros" in Cuba. Those who saw the French-language film "Vers le Sur" may also enjoy this.

The book NEVER mentions "the down-low" and this is understandable as the study takes place outside the United States. Nevertheless, for those interested in reading about Black men who get busy with men on the hush-hush, they'll want to read this book. The interviewees here never suggest that kicking it with men means they don't have women at home and desire women all the time. There's a lot of "don't ask, don't tell" here too. Relatives of these men don't question how men who are penniless on Friday afternoon can now pay the rent on Monday morning. There's also machismo here where women are conditioned not to question their male partners and these male sex workers can lie about getting with women when they are actually selling to men.

Let me mention the most important comment to me in this book: "[The Zona Colonial] also stands as the most vivid symbol of what has been described as a kind of Dominican "hispanophilia"--an exaggerated identification with all things of Spanish origin, and a simultaneous denial (and repression) of the African cultural influences on contemporary Dominican society" (81). A whole mess of books and word-of-mouth mention how Dominicans go out of their ways to downplay or deny being Black. While the author brings this up only once, I really wish he would have spoken about race more. He dances around it as many people in that nation do. A student could write an awesome paper comparing this book and "What's Love Got to Do with It?" and they will note how the latter is explicit about Blackness when the former plays into the denial.

Sometimes the book felt long-winded. However, this was not another anthropological text in which a writer just recalls, "First I did this, then I did that." This was an informative book about Black bisexuality in a transnational context.