The Materiality of Everyday Sex: Thinking beyond 'prostitution'

This articles central argument is that the close association between sex and gifts--resulting in what has been called "transactional sex"--is a central factor driving multiple-partnered sexual relationships the principal cause of HIV infection in Mandeni. Transactional sex has a number of similarities to prostitution. In both cases non-marital sexual relationships often with multiple partners are underscored by the giving of gifts or cash. Transactional sex however differs in important ways: participants are constructed as "girlfriends" and "boyfriends" and not "prostitutes" and "clients" and the exchange of gifts for sex is part of a broader set of obligations that might not involve a predetermined payment. The use of the concept "transactional sex" is intended neither to maintain inflexible distinctions between the categories of "prostitution "/"transactional sex"/"non-transactional sex" (indeed sex like all embodied practices is always simultaneously material and meaningful in complex ways) nor to naturalize heterosexual sex the principal focus of this article. (excerpt)