Hershatter, Gail. Dangerous Pleasures: Prostitution and Modernity in Twentieth-Century Shanghai. Berkeley: University of California Press, 1999.
Hershatter’s book on prostitution in Shanghai from the late 19th century to the 1990’s is, as she admits on the first page of the introduction, frought with difficulties in reading and interpreting sources. The fact that She has had to get most of her information about prostitutes and courtesans not from the subjects themselves, but from those who have written about them, is problematic. Still, Hershatter is clearly aware of this problem, and is able to deploy theoretical constructs by which to discuss it with ease, while constantly bringing the reader back to the fact that she believes such history can be done. Rather than giving up, Hershatter tries to find the agency of prostitutes, to give them a voice by looking for the evidence of their lives and experiences where she can find it. To do this, she has consulted a wide variety of sources, from guidebooks on the pleasure quarters to news tabloids, public and political debates about whether to license prostitutes or ban prostitution, and literature, news, and opinion on the relation of prostitution and reactions to it to China’s move into modernity in the twentieth century. The variety of sources that Hershatter uses, her sincerity about the difficulty of using those sources and her willingness to try anyway lends to this book a feel of academic honesty and integrity that makes it an interesting read, and one which is meant to be read critically. It is revealing about gender relations in China on many levels.