Bureaucracy: Sex Worker Activists' Highest Vulnerability Factor in Fighting AIDS in Brazil

• In Event: Securitization and the Effective Criminalization of Sex Work in Brazil

Abstract

Based on ethnographic research conducted with three prostitutes' organizations of, this presentation discusses the limits of activism sanctioned by the state and the deleterious effects of bureaucracy. I focus on two aspects of the daily violence of bureaucracy in the context of prostitute activism: 1) In structuring the interactions between state actors and activists implementing prevention and denouncing violence, and 2) in forming and fragmenting organizations. Field work included 36 months of ethnography in three cities: Corumbá, Bethlehem and Rio de Janeiro. One part of the research was conducted via participant observation; a second involved 21 oral histories with activists of three prostitutes' organizations and 44 in-depth interviews with NGO leaders and managers and technicians of various state institutions that have frequent contact with prostitutes. Both activists as public managers and technicians expressed deep frustration with bureaucracy, looking at it as something that inhibits their actions and ability to achieve goals. I present examples of how bureaucracy suppresses and silences prostitute activism in the fields of human rights and health, illustrating how bureaucracy is a technology used to block actions that challenge conservative sex policies and neoliberal agendas.

Author

• Laura R Murray, UFRJ