2005 0-7734-6114-0 Presents an original and significant contribution to the study of female and male prostitution. It challenges common assumptions about prostitution embedded in scholarly and public discourses, especially the idea that the prostitute is an affront to private respectability and public order. Drawing upon Michel Foucault’s genealogical method, the author uses historical and contemporary materials to document the ways in which female and male prostitution have been constructed, contrived and imagined as ‘social problems’ over the course of two centuries.