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Fieldwork on Prostitution in the Era of AIDS
CLAIRE E. STERK
Summary This article discusses ethnographic fieldwork as a processentering the field, making contact, and developing rapport, as well as ethical dilemmas and stress. Undertaking fieldwork in a Western microculture (in this case the culture of prostitute life), illustrates how participant observation, originally developed to discover the content of non-Western cultures, can be adapted for use at home. Sterk's goal was to learn about the lives of prostitutes from the women themselves. Her subjects comprised 180 "low end" prostitutes--those who worked on the streets and in the crack houses of Atlanta and New York in the 1980s and 1990s.
Sterk learned that gatekeepers (initial contacts who give you access to other informants) can become less important with time. Some self-nominated key informants had access to only part of a cultural scene. Encouraging women to have some control over the research process enhanced rapport; this meant letting informants tell their own stories and refraining from judgement. Interviews were conducted in private and required consent forms, which perhaps surprisingly Sterk was able to obtain. Abusive figures who controlled prostitutespimpssometimes presented an impediment to research. Fieldwork involved stress, which was partially relieved by being able to leave the field. Leaving the field, however, led to feelings of guilt.
The article ends with six observations about prostitutes and their culture. Prostitutes often blame past experiences for their current status and alienation from "normal" people. There are different kinds of prostitutesstreetwalkers, women who became hooked on drugs after they started in the profession, women who entered the life already addicted to drugs, and women who turned tricks as payment for drugs. Contracting AIDS was a great risk for prostitutes, but condom use was often rejected by their customers and pimps. Men are often violent toward prostitutes. Finally, women did sometimes leave this microculture, but their past often followed them.
In "Fieldwork on Prostitution in the Era of AIDS," Sterk found that it was essential to present yourself as an expert on the lives of informants before interviewing them and to use such information to design interviews.

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