Tourist Attractions
Performing Race and Masculinity in Brazil's Sexual Economy
While much attention has been paid in recent years to heterosexual prostitution and sex tourism in Brazil, gay sex tourism has been almost completely overlooked. In "Tourist Attractions", Gregory C. Mitchell presents a pioneering ethnography that focuses on the personal lives and identities of male sex workers who occupy a variety of roles in Brazil's sexual economy. Mitchell takes us into the bath houses of Rio de Janeiro, where rent boys cruise for clients, and to the beaches of Salvador da Bahia, where African American gay men seek out hustlers while exploring cultural heritage tourist sites. His ethnography stretches into the Amazon, where indigenous fantasies are tinged with the erotic at eco-resorts, and into the homes of "kept men", who forge long-term, long-distance, transnational relationships that blur the boundaries of what counts as commercial sex. Mitchell asks how tourists perceive sex workers' performances of Brazilianness, race, and masculinity, and, in turn, how these two groups of men make sense of differing models of racial and sexual identity across cultural boundaries. He proposes that in order to better understand how people experience difference sexually, we reframe prostitution – which Marxist feminists have long conceptualized as sexual labor – as also being a form of performative labor".Tourist Attractions" is an exceptional ethnography poised to make an indelible impact in the fields of anthropology, gender, and sexuality, and research on prostitution and tourism.
About the Author
Gregory C. Mitchell is assistant professor in the Women's, Gender and Sexuality Studies program and affiliate faculty in the Department of Anthropology and Sociology at Williams College.
Reviews
"A valuable and insightful book about how sex works to both frame encounters between foreign tourists and Brazilian sex workers, and also to complicate and extend the impressions and the relationships that result from those encounters. The focus on male sex workers is welcome and overdue, and the attention to eco-tourism, African-American 'roots tourism,' and the way that some client-sex worker relationships develop into transnational queer families is eye-opening, fresh, and fascinating" – Don Kulick, author of "Travesti: Sex, Gender, and Culture among Brazilian Transgendered Prostitutes"
"Melding current theories of affective labor, queer kinship, and racialized desire with his own intimate, ethnographic accounts, Mitchell offers bold and fresh insights into a range of contemporary touristic cultures in Brazil. This is a fascinating addition to the literatures on global sex work, sex tourism, and neoliberal sexualities" – Elizabeth Bernstein, author of "Temporarily Yours: Intimacy, Authenticity, and the Commerce of Sex"
"'Tourist Attractions' not only holds its own, but in fact stands out as a new and innovative study within a field that is noteworthy for its strength. Mitchell brings the legacy of this scholarly tradition into meaningful dialogue with a range of other literatures that have emerged on issues like sex work, tourism, and race relations. He offers rare insight into the context of commercial sex and gives readers the lived experience of a social system in all its richness and complexity. This book is a tour de force" – Richard Parker, director, Center for the Study of Culture, Politics and Health, Columbia University
