About the Author

Meredith Ralston teaches in the Departments of Women's Studies and Political Studies at Mount Saint Vincent University in Halifax, Nova Scotia. Her work has been in the areas of women and politics, and homeless women and prostitution in Canada. She is the author of Nobody Wants to Hear our Truth: Homeless Women and Theories of the New Right. She is also an award-winning filmmaker, and her latest film, Hope in Heaven (about sex tourism in the Philippines) is narrated by Kiefer Sutherland and has just been broadcast to great acclaim on CBC in Canada. She also wrote and directed two documentaries with the National Film Board of Canada on women in politics. Edna Keeble is an Associate Professor in the Department of Political Science at Saint Mary's University, in Halifax. Edna's work has centered on issues of security, particularly from a feminist perspective. She is the coauthor of (Re)defining Traditions: Gender and Canadian Foreign Policy, and has maintained her commitment to policy-relevant research. She currently sits on the Cross-Cultural Roundtable on Security, a 15-member national body that advises the Ministers of Justice and Public Safety in Canada. She also served on the Minister's Advisory Board for former Foreign Affairs Minister Lloyd Axworthy for four years.

Reviews

"Addressing a spectrum of social attitudes to prostitution in Canada and in the Philippines, from those that condemn it as a social ill to those that defend it as an economic necessity, the authors bring to light the complexity of attitudes and practices that inform representations of this oldest profession . In so doing, they draw on an impressive range of material from film to interviews to feminist theory and practice in an analysis that is pertinent well beyond the specific locations of its primary material. This book is a must read: it will play an important part in shaping social and academic understandings of the politics of sexuality in the twenty-first century and in offering new directions to feminist theory and practice."

"I'm hard pressed to name another book of its kind that explores so passionately the question of ethics and morality in regard to transnational feminist action and the problems that drive a wedge between women of differing citizenship, privilege and culture... critical and compassionate."

"Provides a much-needed practical intervention into debates that tend to become overly theoretical."

"The book is commendable for its insightful portrayal of the authors pains but more so gains as they put to action the ideologies of transnational feminism and transversal politics."

"Theoretically rich and highly practical for those who want to participate in overseas development work, yet are afraid of reproducing ethnocentric and neocolonial values. Also useful to those who teach on the subjects of gender, development studies and human rights."

"This is a bold intervention in the highly politicized field of prostitution studies. The authors fearlessly take on the identity politics and post-colonial positions that frequently immobilize feminist activism and northern involvement around not only prostitution, but wider issues of gender and development in the global south. This is a moving call for re-invigorating feminist activism and northern responsibility to address the often profound suffering of women in the global south that persists as a legacy of colonial and imperialist histories, and ongoing exploitative north-south relationships."

"To answer postcolonial feminist objections about having Western feminists theorize about women elsewhere or bring them practical help, Keeble and Ralston have boldly done both. From their work on prostitution in the Philippines, they report a number of practical successes, incremental but nonetheless theoretically significant... Keeble is a Filipina by origin, but both she and Ralston are established, privileged Canadian academics; and if they can surmount analysis paralysis, others can, too."