Review of: Rebecca Pates, Daniel Schmidt: Die Verwaltung der Prostitution. Eine vergleichende Studie am Beispiel deutscher, polnischer und tschechischer Kommunen. Bielefeld: transcript Verlag 2009.

Abstract

The publication stemming from the research project “Governing Prostitution” at the University of Leipzig approaches the question as to which problems of definition, categorization, and inventories of knowledge local administrators in Germany, Poland, and the Czech Republic use as a basis for regulating prostitution. The study shows that law not only implements partially autonomous governing acts but also produces them. The monograph enters into uncharted territory with its local focus on the regulation of prostitution as its subject and its state-based ethnographical approach. A little more information as to methodology as well as a more explicit take on the theoretical concepts in the format of the empirical materials would have been desirable.