Intimate Labors
Cultures, Technologies, and the Politics of Care
Edited by Eileen Boris and Rhacel Salazar Parreas
Stanford Social Sciences
An Imprint of Stanford University Press
Stanford, California
Stanford University Press
Stanford, California
2010 by the Board of Trustees of the Leland Stanford Junior University. All rights reserved.
No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying and recording, or in any information storage or retrieval system without the prior written permission of Stanford University Press.
Printed in the United States of America on acid-free, archival-quality paper
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Intimate labors : cultures, technologies, and the politics of care / edited by Eileen Boris and Rhacel S. Parreas.
p. cm.
Includes bibliographical references and index.
ISBN 978-0-8047-6192-5 (cloth : alk. paper)ISBN 978-0-8047-6193-2 (pbk. : alk. paper)
1. WomenEmploymentSocial aspects. 2. Intimacy (Psychology)-Economic aspects. 3. Interpersonal relations and culture. 4. Women employeesLabor unions. 5. Sex-oriented businesses. 6. WorkSocial aspects. I. Boris, Eileen, 1948II. Parreas, Rhacel Salazar.
HD6053.I65 2010
306.3'6082dc22
2010006263
Typeset by Thompson Type in 10/14 Minion Pro.
eISBN: 978-0-8047-7727-8
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
WE WOULD LIKE TO THANK EVERYONE who made possible this work on Intimate Labors. Eileen Boris is grateful for the generous gift of Blair Hull, who endowed the Hull Chair, which she holds. She also thanks the UCSB Academic Senate and her research assistants Janiene Langford and Jason Stoler. Rhacel Salazar Parrenas thanks the extraordinary staff support provided by Billie Gabriel at UC Davis and Rosanne Neri and Jean Wood at Brown University. At Stanford University Press, the enthusiastic support of our editor Kate Wahl has made all the difference, Joa Suorez has provided remarkable editorial assistance, and Margaret Pinette has saved us from numerous errors as only a superb copyeditor can. This project also benefits from the comments shared by two anonymous reviewers.
Most of all we are indebted to the talented scholars in this collection. Such intellectual community that crosses disciplines is precious, and we look at this volume as a beginning rather than an end in an ongoing and ever expanding conversation. The labor that went into editing this book was a true collaboration. We especially thank each other!
This book builds on a conference we co-organized in 2007 at the University of California, Santa Barbara, which was funded by the UC Labor and Employment Research Fund; UC Humanities and Research Institute; UCSB Interdisciplinary Humanities Center; UCSB College of Letters and Science and Division of Social Sciences; Hull Chair in Feminist Studies; UCSB Center for the Study of Work, Labor and Democracy; UCSB Instructional Grants; and the College of Humanities, Arts, and Culture Studies at UC Davis. We further thank Elizabeth Tandy Shermer for her outstanding organizational skills and Tanya Paperny for her design work, as well as the staffs of the UCSB Department of Feminist Studies and ISBER (Institute for Social, Behavioral, and Economic Research).
We dedicate this book to the women closest to us. Eileen Boris dedicates this book to her sister Rhonda Boris, the one who cares, and Rhacel Salazar Parre
as dedicates this book to her two sisters in academia, Celine Shimizu and Juno Parre
as, and her friend Malou Babilonia. Finally, we both dedicate this book to intimate workers everywhere.
CONTRIBUTORS
Rene Almeling is Assistant Professor of Sociology at Yale University. She recently finished an appointment as a Robert Wood Johnson Foundation Scholar in Health Policy Research at the University of California, Berkeley/UCSF. She is completing a book on egg and sperm donation, and she has started a new research project on how gendered ideas about bodies shape the presentation of and response to genetic knowledge.
Elizabeth Bernstein is Assistant Professor of Women's Studies and Sociology at Barnard College, Columbia University. Her publications include Temporarily Yours: Intimacy, Authenticity, and the Commerce of Sex (University of Chicago Press, 2007); and Regulating Sex: the Politics of Intimacy and Identity (Routledge, 2005), coedited with Laurie Schaffner.
Eileen Boris is Hull Professor and Chair of Feminist Studies at the University of California, Santa Barbara, where she holds affiliate appointments in History and Black Studies and directs the Center for Research on Women and Social Justice. Her publications include Home to Work: Motherhood and the Politics of Industrial Homework in the United States (Cambridge University Press, 1994); The Practice of U.S. Women's History: Narratives, Intersections, and Dialogues (Rutgers University Press, 2007), coedited with S. J. Kleinberg and Vicki Ruiz; and Caring for America: Home Health Workers in the Shadow of the Welfare State (Oxford University Press, forthcoming), coauthored with Jennifer Klein.
Laura Briggs is Associate Professor and Head of Gender and Women's Studies at the University of Arizona, where she holds affiliate appointments in History, Anthropology, and Latin American Studies. Her publications include Reproducing Empire: Race, Sex, Science, and U.S. Imperialism in Puerto Rico (University of California Press, 2002); International Adoption: Global Inequalities and the Circulation of Children (New York University Press, 2009), coedited with Diana Marre; and The Politics of Transnational and Transracial Adoption (Duke University Press, forthcoming).
Dorothy Sue Cobble is Professor of History and Labor Studies at Rutgers University, New Brunswick, New Jersey. Her publications include Dishing It Out: Waitresses and Their Unions in the Twentieth Century (University of Illinois Press, 1991); Women and Unions: Forging a Partnership (Cornell University Press, 1994); The Other Women's Movement: Workplace Justice and Social Rights in Modern America (Princeton University Press, 2004), which won the 2005 Philip Taft Book Prize and other awards; and The Sex of Class: Women Transforming American Labor (Cornell University Press, 2007).
Ariel Ducey is Associate Professor of Sociology at the University of Calgary. She is now researching the use of new medical devices in urogyneacology and how consulting firms shape health care systems. Her publications include Never Good Enough: Health Care Workers and the False Promise of Job Training (Cornell University Press, 2009).
Kimberly Hoang received her M.A. in Sociology from Stanford University and is a Ph.D. candidate in Sociology at UC Berkeley, where she works with Raka Ray. Her dissertation addresses the stratification of sex work in Ho Chi Minh City. She is the author of Vietnamese Immigration and Incorporation in the United States since 1975, forthcoming from ABC-CLIO in 2012.
Mara de la Luz Ibarra is Associate Professor of Chicana and Chicano Studies at San Diego State University. Her articles focus on Mexican migrant women employed as care workers. She currently is writing a book entitled
