Disrupting the Boundaries of the Academe: Co-creating Knowledge and Sex Work ‘Academic-activism’

Abstract

In this chapter, the authors reflect on how the criminological agenda can move towards disrupting the boundaries that exist between the academe and sex work activism. The authors do so as academics who strive to affect social change outside of the academe, but do not attempt to offer a prescriptive ‘how to guide’. Indeed, they are themselves still grappling with the challenges of, and learning to be better at, ‘academic-activism’. The chapter begins by shining light on the activist underpinnings of the sex workers’ rights movement, before outlining some of the key scholarship in sex work studies, drawing particular attention to that which seeks to bring about social change. It then explores the utility of participatory action research (PAR) to sex work studies and reflects on how a PAR-inspired approach was used in the Beyond the Gaze research project. Here, the authors cast a critically reflexive eye over the unique realities, including the challenges, of integrating sex worker ‘peer researchers’ within the research team. The chapter concludes by considering how the criminological agenda must adapt if we truly want to bring truly want to bring about positive social change for sex workers, as well as how the current system of Higher Education ultimately stymies ‘academic-activist’ approaches to research.

Citation

Connelly, L. and Sanders, T. (2020), "Disrupting the Boundaries of the Academe: Co-creating Knowledge and Sex Work ‘Academic-activism’", Walklate, S., Fitz-Gibbon, K., Maher, J. and McCulloch, J. (Ed.) The Emerald Handbook of Feminism, Criminology and Social Change (Emerald Studies in Criminology, Feminism and Social Change), Emerald Publishing Limited, Leeds, pp. 203-218. https://doi.org/10.1108/978-1-78769-955-720201018