This article examines how exotic dancers strategically use music in two exotic dance clubs in the New England area. Music functioned as a form of resistance for dancers in three ways: as a direct form of protest against owners, as a covert strategy of reappropriation, and as an overt expression of discontent in their interactions with regular customers. I also analyze the ways in which “buying against” gender inequality, through the use of music, falls short as a form of protest. For example, dancers often unwittingly fetishized the racial politics undergirding the genre of music. This research is informed by four years of ethnographic research in the New England area.
Atkinson, P., and M. Hammersley. 1994. Ethnography and participant observation. In The handbook of qualitative research, ed. N. Denzin and Y. S. Lincoln, 248-261. Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage.
2.
Baker, H. A.1993. Black studies, rap and the academy. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.
3.
Barton, B.2002. Dancing on the mobius strip: Challenging the sex war paradigm. Gender & Society16 (5): 585-602.
4.
Berg, B.2001. Qualitative methods for the social sciences. 4th ed.Boston: Allyn & Beacon.
5.
Bhabha, H.1994. The location of culture. New York: Routledge.
6.
Chapkis, W.1997. Live sex acts: Women performing erotic labor. New York: Routledge.
7.
Costello, M., and D. Foster Wallace. 1990. Signifying rappers: Rape, race and the urban present. New York: Ecco Press.
8.
Cross, B.1993. It’s not aboutsalary: Rap, race and resistance in Los Angeles. New York: Verso.
9.
Dimitriadis, G.2001. Performing identity/performing culture: Hip hop as text, pedagogy and lived practice. New York: Peter Lang.
10.
Egan, R. D.2003. I’ll be your fantasy girl if you’ll be my money man: Desire, fantasy and power in an exotic dance club. Journal of the Psychoanalysis of Culture and Society8 (1): 109-120.
11.
Egan, R. D.2004. Eyeing the scene: The uses and (re)uses of surveillance cameras in an exotic dance club. Critical Sociology30 (2): 299-320.
12.
Egan, R. D.2006. Dancing for dollars and paying for love: The relationships between dancers and their regular customers. New York: Palgrave Macmillan.
13.
Egan, R. D., K. Frank, and M. L. Johnson. 2006. Flesh for fantasy: Producing and consuming exotic dance. San Francisco: Thunders Mouth Press.
14.
Fiske, J.1989. Reading the popular. London: Routledge.
15.
Flint, A.1996. Skin trade spreading across US: High tech fuels boom for $10 billion dollar industry. Boston Globe, December 1, A1-A4.
16.
Foucault, M.1981. The history of sexuality Vol. 1: An introduction. New York: Vintage.
17.
Frank, K.1998. The production of identity and the negotiation of intimacy in a gentleman’s club. Sexualities1 (2): 175-201.
18.
Frank, K.2002. G-Strings and sympathy: Strip club regulars and male desire. Durham, NC: Duke University Press.
19.
Funari, V.1997. Naked, naughty and nasty: Peep show reflections. In Whores and other feminists, ed. J. Nagle, 19-35. New York: Routledge.
20.
Geertz, C.1983. Local knowledge. New York: Basic Books.
21.
Gordon, A.1997. Ghostly matters: Haunting and the sociological imagination. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press.
22.
Haenfler, R.2004. Rethinking subcultural resistance: Core values of the straight edge movement. Journal of Contemporary Ethnography33 (4): 406-436.
23.
Hanna, J. L.1998. Undressing the First Amendment and corsetting the striptease dancer. Drama Review42: 38-69.
24.
Hausbeck, K., and B. Brent. 2002. McDonaldization of the sex industry? The Business of sex. In McDonaldization: The reader, ed. G. Ritzer, 91-107. Thousand Oaks, CA: Pine Forge Press.
25.
Hebdige, D.1979. Subculture: The meaning of style. London: Methuen.
26.
Hechter, M.1978. Group formation and the cultural division of labor. American Journal of Sociology84:293-318.
27.
Herman, N. J., and G. R. Musolf. 1998. Resistance among ex-psychiatric patients: Expressive and instrumental rituals. Journal of Contemporary Ethnography26 (4): 426-449.
28.
Hill-Collins, P.1990. Black feminist thought: Knowledge, consciousness, and the politics of empowerment. London: HarperCollins.
29.
hooks, b.1992. Black looks: Race and representation. Boston: South End Press.
30.
Kates, S., and R. W. Belk. 2001. The meanings of lesbian and gay pride day: Resistance through consumption and resistance to consumption. Journal of Contemporary Ethnography30 (4): 392-429.
31.
Law, L.1997. Dancing on the bar: Sex, money and the uneasy politics of third space. In Geographies of resistance, ed. S. Pile and M. Keith. London: Routledge.
32.
Law, L.2000. Sex work in Southeast Asia: The place of desire in a time of AIDS. New York: Routledge.
33.
Leblanc, L.1999. Pretty in punk: Girls’ gender resistance in a boys’ subculture. New Brunswick, NJ: Rutgers University Press.
34.
Levi-Strauss, C.1966. The savage mind. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.
35.
Liepe-Levinson, K.2002. Strip show: Performances of gender and desire. New York: Routledge.
36.
Martinez, T.1997. Popular culture as oppositional culture: Rap as resistance. Sociological Perspectives40 (2): 265-286.
37.
Marx, K.1906/1971. Capital. Vol. 1. New York: Modern Library.
38.
Mitchell, B. L., and J. R. Feagin. 1995. America’s racial-ethnic cultures: Opposition within a mythical melting pot. In Toward the multicultural university, ed. B. Bowser, T. Jones, and G. A. Young, 35-52. Westport, CT: Praeger.
39.
Montemurro, B.2001. Strippers and screamers: The emergence of social control in a noninstitutionalized institution. Journal of Contemporary Ethnography30 (3): 275-304.
40.
Murphy, A.2003. The dialectical gaze: Exploring subject-object tension in the performances of women who strip. Journal of Contemporary Ethnography32 (3): 305-335.
41.
Negron-Muntaner, F., and R. Grosfoguel, eds. 1997. Puerto Rican jam: Rethinking colonialism and nationalism. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press.
42.
Pratt, R.1990. Rhythm and resistance: The political uses of American popular music. Washington, DC: Smithsonian Institutional Press.
43.
Ronai-Rambo, C.1992. The reflexive self through narrative: A night in the life of an erotic dancer/researcher. In Investigating subjectivity: Research on lived experience, ed. C. Ellis and M. G. Flaherty, 112-132. Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage.
44.
Ronai-Rambo, C.1998. Sketching with Derrida: An ethnography of a researcher/dancer. Qualitative Inquiry4 (3): 405-420.
45.
Ronai-Rambo, C.1999. The next night sous rature: Wrestling with Derrida’s mimesis. Qualitative Inquiry5 (1): 1-13.
46.
Ronai-Rambo, C., and C. Ellis. 1989. Turn-on’s for money: Interactional strategies of the tabledancer. Journal of Contemporary Ethnography18 (2): 271-298.
47.
Rose, T.1994. Black noise: Rap music and black culture in contemporary America. Hanover, NH: Wesleyan University Press.
48.
Scott, J.1990. Domination and the arts of resistance. New Haven, CT: Yale University Press.
49.
Smitherman, G.1997. The chain remains the same: Communicative practices in the hip hop nation. Journal of Black Studies28 (1): 3-25.
50.
Stapleton, K. R.1998. From the margins to mainstream: The political power of hip hop. Media, Culture and Society20:219-234.
51.
Strauss, A., and J. Corbin. 1998. Basics of qualitative research: Techniques and procedures for developing grounded theory. Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage Press.
52.
Stuckey, S.1987. Slave culture. New York: Oxford University Press.
53.
Wesely, J.2003. Where am I going to stop? Exotic dancing, fluid body boundaries, and effects on identity. Deviant Behavior24:483-503.
54.
Williams, P. J.1991. The alchemy of race and rights: A diary of a law professor. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.
55.
Wood, E. A.2000. Working in the fantasy factory: The attention hypothesis and the enacting of masculine power in strip clubs. Journal of Contemporary Ethnography29 (1): 5-31.
