Camming: Money, Power, and Pleasure in the Sex Work Industry

by Angela Jones

Overview

Winner, Sociology of the Body and Embodiment Best Publication Award, given by the American Sociological Association

Honorable Mention, 2021 Sexualities Section Book Award, given by the American Sociological Association

The first inside look at how sex workers use webcams to make a living

The erotic webcam industry, also known as “camming,” is a thriving global business. Angela Jones takes readers inside this multi-billion dollar industry, revealing how its workers experience intimacy, community, empowerment—and, as she compellingly argues, pleasure.

Drawing on in-depth interviews, survey data, web analytics, and more, Jones highlights not only the dangers, but also the rewards, of working in one of the most taboo corners of the Internet. She provides an inside look at the public and private shows between cam models and their customers, from exotic dancing and pornographic videos, to masturbation shows and erotic chatrooms.

A fascinating, much-needed glimpse into the lives of cam models, Camming takes us behind the webcam lens to experience the power of erotic labor in the twenty-first century.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781479874873
Publisher:	New York University Press
Publication date:	02/18/2020
Edition description:	New Edition
Pages:	344
Sales rank:	947,891
Product dimensions:	6.00(w) x 9.00(h) x (d)

About the Author

Angela Jones is Professor of Sociology at Farmingdale State College, SUNY. They are the author Camming: Money, Power, and Pleasure in the Sex Work Industry and African American Activism and Political Engagement.

Table of Contents

List of Figures vii

List of Tables ix

Preface xi

Introduction 1

1 The Pleasure Deficit: Toward a Sociological Theory of Pleasure 19

2 Introduction to Camming: Technology, Embodied Authenticity, and the Demystification of Porn 41

3 The Contemporary Camming Market: Moral Entrepreneurs, Sex Entrepreneurs, and Cam Models 61

4 Global Motivations to Cam: Challenging Alienation and Recapturing Pleasure in Work 87

5 "I Get Paid to Have Orgasms": Pleasure, Danger, and the Development of Resiliency 109

6 We Are Camily: Community, Social Capital, and the Problem of Exclusion 134

7 Performing in a Sexual Field: Display Work, Manufactured Identities, and Gender Performance 153

8 For Black Models Scroll Down: Sexual Racism and the Camming Field 183

9 Getting Kinky Online: The Diffuse Life and BDSM Play 203

Conclusion 229

Acknowledgments 251

Appendix A Cam Models in the Study 253

Appendix B Methods 269

Appendix C Ethical Considerations 275

Notes 283

Bibliography 297

Index 313

About the Author 321

Editorial Reviews

"This book lies at the intersection of feminist legal and psychology. It provides a serious and honest appraisal of the sex work industry as it manifests in camming, which is the live videocam performance of sex to a remote paid audience. The analysis here challenges contemporary regulatory ideas that sex work should be criminalized and that the law, at least in the way it is currently focused, should regulate this emerging industry."

Criminal Law and Criminal Justice Books - David Schultz

"Camming signifies a brilliant sociological analysis of race, ethnicity, class, nationality, gender, and sexuality while providing a detailed portrait of how cam models earn money and gain power and pleasure in the adult webcam industry."

Teaching Sociology

"Finally, a smart and profoundly feminist analysis of the webcamming industry. Readers get an inside look at what is worth celebrating about the emergence of erotic camming—namely that it is a relatively safe, often pleasurable, and accessible source of income during a time of tremendous global economic disparity. Angela Jones also shows us the ways that camming remains subject to broader social, political, and economic forces, such as racial hierarchies of desirability and transphobia/fetishization. This is a fascinating and deeply ethical and de-stigmatizing account of an understudied form of sex work. Sociology has never been this sexy!"

Jane Ward

"A groundbreaking book by the leading expert on the erotic webcam industry. Jones illuminates key structural features of the business as well as the lived experiences of the performers. She shows that commercial webcamming is not only profitable but also safe and quite pleasurable for most of those engaged in this kind of sex work."

Ronald Weitzer

"Sex work and desire are complicated issues for a technologically mediated society. In Camming, Jones documents how pleasure is refracted through social structures that reproduce inequality, but also how pleasure and sex work may 'crack' capitalism by resisting alienation and other forms of inequality."

Men and Masculinities

"A thorough examination of the online sex-work industry and a theoretical treatise about pleasure, a topic long neglected in sociology [...] As quarantines resulting from the recent coronavirus pandemic have temporarily shut down most physical sex-work venues, Jones’s analysis of online sex work is an even more timely contribution to the field."

Choice

"Camming is an important study that offers an innovative paradigm for examining not only sex work but other intimate industries."

Social Forces

"Angela Jones’s Camming offers a roller-coaster ride through the often and, according to mainstream norms, necessarily hidden world of online erotic performances and relationships, camera-guided sex work, and the joys and downsides of its many professional possibilities ... Jones’s book provides a lens through which we can witness what happens on both sides of cameras in the (online) sex industries as well as contemplate our taken-for-granted norms and biases about sexualities, as triggers of both consumption and discrimination or exclusion (e.g., via criminalization)."

American Journal of Sociology

"A groundbreaking book by the leading expert on the erotic webcam industry. Jones illuminates key structural features of the business as well as the lived experiences of the performers. She shows that commercial webcamming is not only profitable but also safe and quite pleasurable for most of those engaged in this kind of sex work."

"Finally, a smart and profoundly feminist analysis of the webcamming industry. Readers get an inside look at what is worth celebrating about the emergence of erotic camming—namely that it is a relatively safe, often pleasurable, and accessible source of income during a time of tremendous global economic disparity. Angela Jones also shows us the ways that camming remains subject to broader social, political, and economic forces, such as racial hierarchies of desirability and transphobia/fetishization. This is a fascinating and deeply ethical and de-stigmatizing account of an understudied form of sex work. Sociology has never been this sexy!"

From the Publisher