Playing the Supporting Role

"""Law delivers a groundbreaking study of the power relations and working conditions in strip clubs. Weaving together data collected and analysed through qualitative interviews, symbolic interactionism, and institutional ethnography, she provides a provocative analysis of the worker-manager-customer triangle of interactive service work. Her findings challenge the misleading and incomplete cultural representations of the sex industry. The book is a must-read for anyone interested in a fuller understanding of the industry."" - Frances M. Shaver, Professor Emeritus, Sociology and Anthropology, Concordia University ""Third parties in sex industries are rarely a topic of serious analysis and research, yet Tuulia Law successfully turns our attention away from salacious depictions and stereotypes to examine the everyday operations of people who organize, supervise, manage, and coordinate Ontario's erotic dance sector. The study is a vital contribution to sex work studies, as it complicates our understandings of erotic dance as sexual labour and probes deeply into work relations and conditions within the strip club industry. Playing the Supporting Role is an immensely readable and informative book, which humanizes not only strippers but also other employees, managers, and business owners, all of whom are equally as central to the industry. A very timely and highly commendable study."" - Kamala Kempadoo, Professor Emerita, York University, and co-editor of Global Sex Workers: Rights, Resistance, and Redefinition and White Supremacy, Racism and the Coloniality of Anti-Trafficking ""Tuulia Law's masterful new book debunks stereotypical narratives about strip clubs by engaging directly with erotic dancers and workplace managers, bouncers, and DJs. It is an invaluable contribution that foregrounds the voices and lived experiences of people who are too often stigmatized, dramatized, and sensationalized. Playing the Supporting Role is an essential read for anyone interested in socio-legal and labour-oriented perspectives on sex work."" - Emily van der Meulen, Professor of Criminology, Toronto Metropolitan University"