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Economies of Desire: Sex and Tourism in Cuba and the Dominican Republic. By Amalia L. Cabezas. Philadelphia: Temple University Press, 2009. Pp. xii, 219. Notes. References. Index. $22.95 paper.
In this brief, ambitious book, Amalia Cabezas theorizes about the lives and hardships of women in Cuba and the Dominican Republic who engage in what she terms sexual-affective relations or tactical sex to escape economic distress as well as domestic abuse. While the book is to a large extent theoretical and informed by existing studies, Cabezas's arguments are enhanced by numerous personal interviews over a ten-year period with mostly women engaged in the tourist industry and also by her own work in an all-inclusive hotel in Varadero, Cuba. The interviews and work experience are quite suggestive and add substantial insight and personal narrative to her theoretical constructions.
The author makes four important arguments. Her first argument is that sex work is to a large extent the byproduct of the exploitative, global capitalist system, and more specifically the neoliberal economic policies that...