Introduction : sex and sexuality in African colonial encounter -- "This is a city of bubbles" : Lagos and the phenomenon of colonial urbanism -- "The vulgar and obscene language" : prostitution, criminality, and immorality -- Childhood innocence, adult criminality : child prostitution and moral anxiety -- The sexual scourge of imperial order : race, the medicalization of sex, and colonial security -- Sexualized laws, criminalized bodies : anti-prostitution law and the making of a new socio-sexual order -- Men, masculinities, and the politics of sexual control -- Lagos elite women and the struggle for legitimacy -- Epilogue. Prostitution and trafficking in the age of HIV/AIDS
Summary
Breaking new ground in the understanding of sexuality's complex relationship to colonialism, this book illuminates the attempts at regulating prostitution in colonial Nigeria. It shows, British colonizers saw prostitution as an African form of sexual primitivity and a problem to be solved as part of imperialism's "civilizing mission."
Notes
Expanded Revision of the author's thesis (doctoral)--University of Texas at Austin, 2010
