Brazilian erotic dancers in New York: Desire and national identity.
Item
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Title
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Brazilian erotic dancers in New York: Desire and national identity.
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Identifier
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AAI3284399
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identifier
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3284399
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Creator
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Maia, Suzana.
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Contributor
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Advisers: Ida Susser | Louise Lennihan
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Date
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2007
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Language
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English
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Publisher
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City University of New York.
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Subject
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Anthropology, Cultural | Women's Studies
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Abstract
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This dissertation examines the lives of Brazilian women who work as erotic dancers in New York City. Contrary to the view of immigrants, particularly those in the sex industry, as powerless victims, the women in my research are educated women from the Brazilian middle-classes. Their migration is the result of a series of interconnected events such as the restructuring of the world economy, the massive entrance of women into the labor market, changes in consumption behavior, as well as changes in gender relations, sexuality, and life-styles. It is the argument of this dissertation that their motivation to migrate and to work as erotic dancers must also be understood in the context of a representational system, inaugurated in colonial times, that portrays Brazilian women in terms of their sexuality and bodies. In a global and postcolonial context, women are able to use such representations as resources with which they articulate their migratory experiences. In New York gentlemen's bars selected elements of the Brazilian nation become the props that Brazilian women use to construct their performance, and the language through which they negotiate their relationships to clients and other dancers.;Based on fieldwork conducted in New York between 2003 and 2004, this work focuses on nine Brazilian dancers with whom I developed a relationship of trust over the years. Rather than studying a professional category of sex workers, my relationship to these women gave me insight into how Brazilian women enter and leave this market depending both on socio-economic contexts and on their own desires. I understand erotic dancing as representing certain moments in these women's lives as I see them negotiating this social position with competing worldviews and life-projects, which take place in a transnational context. By choosing to present the life history of nine women, I wish to highlight some of the constraints and possibilities of border crossing migratory experiences as delineated by women's social location in terms of class, sexuality, gender, and race/ethnicity and nationality. The structure of this dissertation follows a spatial and temporal logic, tracing the lives of these Brazilian women as they move back and forth between two worlds.
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Type
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dissertation
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Source
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PQT Legacy Restricted.xlsx
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degree
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Ph.D.