Crystal Jackson

Department of Sociology

I study the political economy of commercial sex, including legal and illegal sexual commerce such as erotic dance, Nevada’s legal brothels, queer porn, and the sale of sex. I focus on the economic conditions and legal rights of sex workers from queer and feminist sociological perspectives. My areas of expertise include the sociology of sexuality and gender, law and work, inequalities, feminist theory and methods, and qualitative methods.

My dissertation, Sex Workers’ Rights as 21st Century Labor Activism: How Contingent, Independent Laborers are Redefining Labor and Identity (in progress, Chair Barbara Brents), explores how sex workers and allies contest the legal and cultural meanings of “sex” and “work,” and on a larger scale, how this represents a re-shaping of a late capitalist labor movement. I engaged in ethnographic research from 2010 to 2012 with a national umbrella sex workers’ rights organization to investigate how activism by and for informal/flexible laborers operates in a post-industrial society.