Prostitution som konstruktion - Socionomen i spänningsfältet mellan samhälle och individ
(2010) SOPA63 20101School of Social Work
- Abstract
- Prostitution as a construction - The social worker in the tension between society and the individual
Discussions about prostitution seems to be of large interest for different feminist groups. The main discussions are about whether people sell sex as a result of free will, or if prostitution is a part of patriarchal structures, and that people selling sex, have been forced to do so in one way, or another. The Swedish society took a stand towards the second point of view in 1999, when the law that made it criminal to buy sex, came about. This led to further discussions, and some groups have accused the law of victimizing people selling sex. Institutions executing the law are foremost the police and the court. But there are also social... (More) - Prostitution as a construction - The social worker in the tension between society and the individual
Discussions about prostitution seems to be of large interest for different feminist groups. The main discussions are about whether people sell sex as a result of free will, or if prostitution is a part of patriarchal structures, and that people selling sex, have been forced to do so in one way, or another. The Swedish society took a stand towards the second point of view in 1999, when the law that made it criminal to buy sex, came about. This led to further discussions, and some groups have accused the law of victimizing people selling sex. Institutions executing the law are foremost the police and the court. But there are also social workers, that are working with people who sell, and/or people who buy sex. We find it interesting to see how they talk about prostitution because the social workers meet people every day that sells or buys sex, and are in the same time employed by a society that sees their clients as victims or perpetrators. The aim of this study was to investigate how social workers that works with people who sell and people who buy sex, talk about their own knowledge and about prostitution. We conducted semi-structured interviews with five of the above-mentioned social workers. We found that the social workers talk about prostitution in many different ways. Many of them points out that most of the people they meet gets hurt by being in prostitution, but that there are also people who do not want to quit. There is talk about the importance of meeting these people with respect, and there is talk about how they should not be afraid to state that prostitution is harmful. They talk about their knowledge as foremost based on their own and colleagues’ experiences and also on information they have received from their clients. The study is based on a constructionist perspective why we discuss the different understandings as a result of different context. In the end, we discuss consequences of the different views, and concludes with the notion that even though social work with people who sell or buy sexual services is such a small field in Sweden, social workers are still not agreeing when it comes to core questions such as how to treat them. We state that this shows one of the effects of social workers being given a wide discretion, good or bad. (Less)
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http://lup.lub.lu.se/student-papers/record/1665965
- author
- Tingåker, Emmelie LU and Björksaga, Matilda LU
- supervisor
- organization
- course
- SOPA63 20101
- year
- 2010
- type
- M2 - Bachelor Degree
- subject
- keywords
- prostitution, social worker, profession talk, social constructionism
- language
- Swedish
- id
- 1665965
- date added to LUP
- 2010-09-15 14:33:22
- date last changed
- 2010-09-15 14:33:22
@misc{1665965,
abstract = {{Prostitution as a construction - The social worker in the tension between society and the individual
Discussions about prostitution seems to be of large interest for different feminist groups. The main discussions are about whether people sell sex as a result of free will, or if prostitution is a part of patriarchal structures, and that people selling sex, have been forced to do so in one way, or another. The Swedish society took a stand towards the second point of view in 1999, when the law that made it criminal to buy sex, came about. This led to further discussions, and some groups have accused the law of victimizing people selling sex. Institutions executing the law are foremost the police and the court. But there are also social workers, that are working with people who sell, and/or people who buy sex. We find it interesting to see how they talk about prostitution because the social workers meet people every day that sells or buys sex, and are in the same time employed by a society that sees their clients as victims or perpetrators. The aim of this study was to investigate how social workers that works with people who sell and people who buy sex, talk about their own knowledge and about prostitution. We conducted semi-structured interviews with five of the above-mentioned social workers. We found that the social workers talk about prostitution in many different ways. Many of them points out that most of the people they meet gets hurt by being in prostitution, but that there are also people who do not want to quit. There is talk about the importance of meeting these people with respect, and there is talk about how they should not be afraid to state that prostitution is harmful. They talk about their knowledge as foremost based on their own and colleagues’ experiences and also on information they have received from their clients. The study is based on a constructionist perspective why we discuss the different understandings as a result of different context. In the end, we discuss consequences of the different views, and concludes with the notion that even though social work with people who sell or buy sexual services is such a small field in Sweden, social workers are still not agreeing when it comes to core questions such as how to treat them. We state that this shows one of the effects of social workers being given a wide discretion, good or bad.}},
author = {{Tingåker, Emmelie and Björksaga, Matilda}},
language = {{swe}},
note = {{Student Paper}},
title = {{Prostitution som konstruktion - Socionomen i spänningsfältet mellan samhälle och individ}},
year = {{2010}},
}