The Sociology of Prostitution

O THE THEORETICAL even more than to applied sociologist, prostitution sets a profound problem: Why is it that a practice so thoroughly disapproved, so widely outlawed in Western civilization, can yet flourish so universally? Social theorists, in depicting power of collective representations and mores as determinants of human conduct, have at times implied that institutions are maintained only by favorable attitudes and sentiments. But prostitution is a veritable institution, thriving even when its name is so low in public opinion as to be synonymous with the social evil. How, then, can we explain its vitality? A genuine explanation must transcend facile generalizations both of those who believe that prostitution can be immediately abolished, and of those who think vaguely that human nature and lessons of history guarantee its immortality. In what follows I have tried to give a sociological analysis-to describe main features of interrelational system binding prostitution to other institutions (particularly those involving sexual relations). Such an analysis, though brief and tentative, seems to carry us a long way toward explaining not only heedless vitality of commercial promiscuity, but also extreme disrepute in which it and its personnel are held.' II