Working in the other Square Mile: performing and placing sexualized labour in Soho’s sex shops

an article by Melissa Tyler (University of Essex, UK) published in Work Employment & Society Volume 26 Number 6 (December 2012)

Abstract

Drawing on an ethnographic study of an empirically neglected sector and setting of employment, namely sales-service work in sex shops located in London’s Soho, this article develops the sociological analysis of sales-service work in two ways.

First, it emphasises the inter-relationship between emotion, aesthetics and sexuality underpinning the performance of sexualised labour, shaping the way in which the latter is enacted and embodied.

Second, it highlights the importance of locating, or placing sexualised labour, teasing out the ways in which it is encoded and embedded in the particular place in which it is performed, a theme that remains under-developed in the study of sales-service work to date.

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