Moral Order Underground: An Ethnography of the Geylang Sex Trade

Abstract

In Moral Order Underground, attention is cast not only on sex workers but on actors such as punters, pimps, lookouts, gangsters in the red light district Geylang. Grounded in an interactionist approach and using a reflexive methodology, this thesis explores the stratified underground economy that these actors are embedded in. It discusses the field of social relationships in this economy and focuses on the routine, everyday interactions and experiences of its participants as they navigate in it. Routines examined include how social control agents regulate Geylang, how criminal actors manage risk and resolve conflicts between themselves and how streetwalkers transform men into punters. Through examining these activities, Moral Order Underground shows how the underground economy in Geylang, along with a moral order that is both enabling and constraining for its participants, is organized and structured, with the state complicit in its production.