Comforts of Home: Prostitution in Colonial Nairobi / Edition 1

by Luise White

Overview

This book is about the history of prostitution in a city in British colonial Africa. Nairobi, women saw prostitution as a reliable means of capital accumulation, not as a despicable fate or a temporary strategy. Indeed, whether a woman invested in urban real estate for herself or bought goats for her father did not seem to have been a personal or a cultural decision. The work of prostitutes was family labor.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	2900226895078
Publisher:	University of Chicago Press
Publication date:	10/15/1990
Edition description:	1
Pages:	300
Product dimensions:	6.00(w) x 1.25(h) x 9.00(d)

About the Author

Luise White is assistant professor of history at the University of Minnesota.

Table of Contents

List of Maps
Acknowledgments
A Note on Currencies
1. Introduction: Prostitution in Comparative Perspective; or, Casual Sex and Casual Labor
2. Livestock, Labor, and Reproduction: Prostitution in Nairobi and the East African Protectorate, ca. 1900-1918
3. Prostitution and Housing in Nairobi, 1919-29
4. Malaya Prostitution, 1930-39
5. Prostitution, Production, and Accumulation: The Origins and Development of the Wazi-Wazi Form in Pumwani, 1936-45
6. Constructing Classes: Gender, Housing, and the State in Kenya
7. Prostitution in Nairobi during World War II, 1939-45
8. Prostitution, Crime, and Politics in Nairobi, 1946-63
9. Women, Wage Labor, and the Limits of Colonial Control
Notes
References
Index