Sex, Work, and Sex Work: Eroticizing Organization

The clever title of this book is much more catchy reading than the content, which is a hard but rewarding read for those desirous of the intellectual dimensions of the teasing title. This work is not for practitioners looking for application principles or a “how to” manual. Human‐resource professionals without a strong orientation toward psychology may find the book a particularly tough slog.

The book is really two for one. Part I (chapters 1‐6) reviews the psychological roots of attitudes toward sex and the history of sex in the workplace. Sexual behavior, or perhaps more accurately, fantasy is thoroughly explained in the context of the relationship with death and the abject (dark side of desire). Part I also acquaints the reader with the intellectual heritage of well‐known topics, such as violence, power, and harassment. The progression moves to perspectives of those who work with sex offenders and sadomasochism. This is not a far‐fetched methodology.

The basic idea is to demonstrate how sex, in abject thought, is always on the periphery of organizations and in the workplace. The historical relevance is that sex has been pushed there by a capitalist system that has severed the emotional nature of humans from the economic rationality, especially in the conduct of organizations. From the capitalist view, the pervasiveness of sexual emotions must be suppressed because any overt inclusion of them into organizational functionality invites chaos and questions the authority of the masculine capitalist model. I must say at this point in my reading I began to feel that the text droned on too long and too negatively about masculinity as a social construction and ideology. There are two points I want to articulate about this approach.

First, the book appears too entrenched in the idea of social construction, exemplified by the statement, “Our sexuality is … social field through which desire moves and which affects all of our behavior” (p. 15, italics added). I found scant reflection about genetics, a field in which science is establishing strong linkages to behavior (see, for example, Pinker, 2002).

Second, I was most intrigued very early on in the book with the authors’ idea of re‐eroticizing the organization. Their meaning is clearly stated. “[M]odern organizations need to become less repressive in a sexual sense, so as to liberate more generally creative forces within them” (p. 7). This passage is consistent with the capitalist model, and I found chapter 6 a rich summarization of the best thinking on this idea. Having successfully established that humans are erotic beings and that work and many other life behaviors are organized around sex, the authors move to the question of whether organizations can be transformed by re‐eroticization.

Their review of the theory of re‐eroticization leads to the conclusion that the concept is de‐stabilizing for the modern scientific notion of organizations. They don't see this theory as fitting the capitalist model, they turn to the theory of desire and conclude from that review that a re‐eroticized organization is no organization at all as we know it in mainstream (I would advance, in any) economic thought. This seems to be a post‐post‐modern collectivist organization more dedicated to consumption than purposeful production. The authors affirm that this goes too far for any pragmatic suggestions, and halt their exploration with the conclusion that learning from or constructing transitional organizational perspectives is as far as theory can take us. Part II of the book is an attempt to articulate such a framework.

The second part of the book, chapters 7‐11 form a sort of collective metaphor for the many theories presented in part I. The paradigm is prostitution. The lesson offered is a demonstrated intersection of rational organization and eroticism. A multi‐faceted outline includes time and place management, labor market segmentation, career paths, and industry organization with reference to geographic, legal, and cultural boundaries.

I am unsure of the general relevance of this extreme example. Perhaps it is similar to a mathematical proof used in economics, whereby extreme assumptions are relied upon to generate an elegant but unrealistic solution. But the power of this approach is the demonstration of process and tendency. What sets apart the economic model from the prostitution model is predictability. Without this the latter does not lend itself to the development of a generalized framework, especially since erotic behavior is destabilizing.

In conclusion, I read this book very slowly and deliberately because I wanted to learn what I could from a peripheral intellectual perspective. The effort was worthwhile, if for nothing else, more stimulating intellectual discourse. Still, in order to attempt a review that might condense the parts into themes, I had to do a lot of re‐reading, an expectation I pass on to prospective readers. I liked most the very different and explicit way of thinking about organizations and organizing. The book was well documented and a disciplined presentation of scholarship on a subject worthy of more attentiveness. I'd recommend it as graduate level reading if being considered for a theoretical course.