Prostitution and Social Theory

Paper Summary:

This paper explains that, to Marx, the prostitute is forced to sell her one marketable commodity for the sake of survival; therefore, prostitution is a reflection of an immoral and oppressive economic system because, in a perfect state, there would be very few women willing to subsist upon money earned in such a fashion. The author points out that Durkheim believed that deviant behavior, such as prostitution, stems from the increasingly complex nature of the division of labor in society. The paper contends that Weber argues that there is one value that has become almost universal to modern society: the rational pursuit of economic gain; thereby, prostitution is merely one of the more immoral products of a society that only seeks individualistic economic gain.

From the Paper:

"Yet Marx was less concerned with finding the moral or legal grounds to either accept or condemn deviant activities than he was with determining their underlying roots. From Marx's standpoint, human perception is not fully capable of grasping the truth behind events; it is only able to develop some representative illustration of it. So, the scientific observations of the world and the knowledge gained from these observations enable humans to recognize and impose patterns of behavior upon the physical world, thus, to manipulate it in a manner that can never be completely comprehended."

Sample of Sources Used:

• Brown, Stephen E. et al. Criminology: Explaining Crime and its Context. Cincinnati: Anderson Publishing, 1991.
• Durkheim, Emile. The Division of Labor. New York: the Free Press, 1947. Available: http://www2.pfeiffer.edu/~lridener/courses/DIVLABOR.HTML.
• Marx, Karl. Karl Marx: Selected Works. Reader, 2006.
• Wikipedia. "Max Weber." Wikipedia the Free Encyclopedia, 2006. Available: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Max_Weber.

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