Drawing on Foucault's genealogy, this presentation will describe how sex tourism has emerged and evolved as a political and moral problem. First mobilized in the 1970s by feminists to denounce "sexual exploitation" of local women in Asia, the category has shifted to child prostitution first and, most recently, to human trafficking, narrowing the notion and reducing its critical potentiality. Professor Roux will analyze the historical transformation of Western discourses on sex tourism, and describe its political and practical consequences.

Sebastien Roux is a CNRS researchers at the EHESS, in Paris. His research focuses on sexuality, gender, affects, and family. In 2011 he published "No Money, No Honey: Intimate Economies of Sex Tourism in Thailand," which investigates the relationship between affect, love, sex work and power, based on ethnographic fieldwork in Bangkok.