TY - JOUR
T1 - Putting sexualized labour in the picture
T2 - encoding ‘reasonable entitlement’ in the lap dancing industry
AU - Hales, Sophie
AU - Riach, Kathleen
AU - Tyler, Melissa
PY - 2019/11
Y1 - 2019/11
N2 - This article is based on a semiotic analysis of corporate websites in the lap dancing industry. Forming part of a larger ethnographic study of the UK lap dancing industry, it focuses on how the exchange relationship between dancers and customers is shaped by the industry’s online presence. Methodologically, it draws on Hancock’s semiotic approach to the analysis of organizational artefacts and Brewis’s writing on the importance of understanding how sex work is constructed and perceived. The article shows the importance of corporate websites as virtual spaces that landscape customer expectations of the exchange relationship emphasizing how these expectations perpetuate, on the one hand, a very prescriptive range of body images shaping the performance and consumption of lap dancing work, and on the other, an ambiguous suggestion of open-ended possibility. The article argues that, in combination, this landscaping of prescription and possibility constitutes a powerful organization of anticipation underpinning perceptions of reasonable entitlement within the lap dancing exchange relationship considering how this impacts upon the dancers’ experiences of this relationship. The analysis highlights both the importance of virtual corporate spaces in landscaping interactive service exchanges, as well as the intensification that results from the ambiguity encoded within these spaces, requiring service providers to reconcile anticipation and experience, prescription and possibility, within the exchange relationship.
AB - This article is based on a semiotic analysis of corporate websites in the lap dancing industry. Forming part of a larger ethnographic study of the UK lap dancing industry, it focuses on how the exchange relationship between dancers and customers is shaped by the industry’s online presence. Methodologically, it draws on Hancock’s semiotic approach to the analysis of organizational artefacts and Brewis’s writing on the importance of understanding how sex work is constructed and perceived. The article shows the importance of corporate websites as virtual spaces that landscape customer expectations of the exchange relationship emphasizing how these expectations perpetuate, on the one hand, a very prescriptive range of body images shaping the performance and consumption of lap dancing work, and on the other, an ambiguous suggestion of open-ended possibility. The article argues that, in combination, this landscaping of prescription and possibility constitutes a powerful organization of anticipation underpinning perceptions of reasonable entitlement within the lap dancing exchange relationship considering how this impacts upon the dancers’ experiences of this relationship. The analysis highlights both the importance of virtual corporate spaces in landscaping interactive service exchanges, as well as the intensification that results from the ambiguity encoded within these spaces, requiring service providers to reconcile anticipation and experience, prescription and possibility, within the exchange relationship.
KW - Anticipation
KW - corporate websites
KW - interactive service work
KW - landscaping
KW - lap dancing industry
KW - semiotics
KW - sexuality
UR - http://www.scopus.com/inward/record.url?scp=85058705644&partnerID=8YFLogxK
U2 - 10.1177/1350508418812560
DO - 10.1177/1350508418812560
M3 - Article
AN - SCOPUS:85058705644
VL - 26
SP - 783
EP - 801
JO - Organization
JF - Organization
SN - 1350-5084
IS - 6
ER -