Being a “Natasha”: Transnationalism, sex work and the political economy of desire in Black Sea regio...

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" Being a “Natasha”: Transnationalism, sex work and the political economy of desire in Black Sea region "
Banu Nilgun Uygun O. Starn

Document Type	:	Latin Dissertation
Language of Document	:	English
Record Number	:	55334
Doc. No	:	TL25288
Call number	:	‭3190655‬
Main Entry	:	Banu Nilgun Uygun
Title & Author	:	Being a “Natasha”: Transnationalism, sex work and the political economy of desire in Black Sea region\ Banu Nilgun Uygun
College	:	Duke University
Date	:	2005
Degree	:	Ph.D.
student score	:	2005
Page No	:	152
Abstract	:	This dissertation is an ethnographic study of the transnational sex trade that has developed between Turkey and the former Soviet Union in the post Cold War era. It is based on 16 months of field research in Trabzon, a port town on the northeastern Turkish Black Sea coast, where the sex trade stirred major controversy. The research combined interviews with observations and archival research. Drawing on this research, this study documents the experiences of migrant women and scrutinizes the pervasive image of these women as "Natashas," a generic label popularized by the media that conveniently slips back and forth between a beautiful woman from the former Soviet Union and a prostitute. I examine the usefulness of the term sex work to describe these relations. While agreeing that the sex work terminology is indispensable for political struggles around the recognition of sexual and gendered labor, I nonetheless caution against an overly rigid classification of these transactions/relations in these terms. The complexity, variety and ambiguities of the relations women from the former Soviet Union enter with local men force us to reexamine the rigid analytical and ideological distinctions between sex work and marriage, between gift and commodity, between desire and economic interests. My dissertation draws together the insights of critical studies of globalization and feminist scholarship about power and identity. It also expands the studies of transnational movements beyond a Euro-American centered focus by attending to social and cultural flows between nations outside or on the periphery of the West. My analysis is informed by the premise that the dynamics of gender, sexuality, and nationhood and hierarchies of wealth and power are best seen as interlinked social processes that are dynamic and transnational in nature.
Subject	:	Social sciences; Black Sea; Desire; Former Soviet Union; Natashas; Political economy; Sex work; Transnationalism; Turkey; Cultural anthropology; Womens studies; 0326:Cultural anthropology; 0453:Womens studies
Added Entry	:	O. Starn
Added Entry	:	Duke University