Sex and Danger in Buenos Aires: Prostitution, Family, and Nation in Argentina (Engendering Latin America) [Paperback]

Donna J. Guy (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: January 28, 1991 | ISBN-10: 0803270488 | ISBN-13: 978-0803270480

A study of prostitution necessarily examines questions of power, class, gender, and public health. In Sex and Danger in Buenos Aires these questions combine with particular force. During most of the time covered in this provocative book, from the late nineteenth century well into the twentieth, prostitution was legal in Argentina. Fears and anxieties concerning the effect of female sexual commerce on family and nation were rampant.

Donna J. Guy looks at many aspects of the debate that followed an escalating demand for prostitutes by Argentines and European immigrants. She discusses the widespread fear of white slavery, the merits of medically supervised municipal houses of prostitution, the rights of local governments to restrict the civil liberties of citizens and foreigners, the censorship of literature and music dealing with the plight of prostitutes, and the potential criminality of unsupervised working women who might abandon their families. Guy also describes attempts to deal with female prostitution: rehabilitation, modifications of municipal bordello laws, and medical programs to prevent the spread of venereal disease. She makes clear that the treatment of "marginal" women by liberal politicians and doctors helped promoted policies of repression and censorship that would later be extended to other unacceptable social groups. Her study of how both local and national government in Argentina dealt with these women reveals important links between gender, politics, and economics.

Editorial Reviews

Review

"A significant contribution to the study of how marginal women (and men) have helped define social, economic, and political acceptability. . . . The author's goal-to show the relationship of female sexual commerce to family, class, and nation'-is realized in a very readable analysis of mid-nineteenth- to mid-twentieth-century Argentina from the perspective of the underworld of prostitutes, bordellos, and international white slavery rings."-Hispanic American Historical Review.  

About the Author

Donna J. Guy, a professor of history at the University of Arizona, is the author of Argentine Sugar Politics: Tucuman and the Generation of Eighty (1980).

Product Details

• Paperback: 261 pages
• Publisher: University of Nebraska Press (January 28, 1991)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0803270488
• ISBN-13: 978-0803270480
• Product Dimensions: 8.9 x 6 x 0.8 inches
• Shipping Weight: 14.4 ounces (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 3.3 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (3 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #1,123,130 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

4 of 5 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars Innovative and Strident Scholarship, June 25, 2004

By A Customer

This review is from: Sex and Danger in Buenos Aires: Prostitution, Family, and Nation in Argentina (Engendering Latin America) (Hardcover)

Donna Guy is the foremost scholar on the history of (...), and the state in Latin American history. Guy begins with the premise that states are gendered and successfully reconstructs how the Argentine state, during a propitious moment in its history, was particularly gendered. In no way does this monograph demean men, or women for that matter. Although Guy focuses our attention to porteno working classes, and does a magnificent job of bringing the reader into their social and cultural worlds, the point of the book is to demonstrate how state officials and the Buenos Aires public understood, crafted, and acted upon prevailing gender ideologies.

2 of 5 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars A Classic of Latin American History, May 12, 2004

By A Customer

This review is from: Sex and Danger in Buenos Aires: Prostitution, Family, and Nation in Argentina (Engendering Latin America) (Paperback)

This book, by the leading scholar of Latin American women's history, was one of the first works to look at sexuality in Latin America. It traces the history of the tango and links the development of the dance to prostitution.

6 of 38 people found the following review helpful:

1.0 out of 5 stars Very weak approach, September 23, 1998

By A Customer

This review is from: Sex and Danger in Buenos Aires: Prostitution, Family, and Nation in Argentina (Engendering Latin America) (Paperback)

Not exactly truthful and very demeaning to men.