Kimberly Walters

Kimberly  is a cultural anthropologist and Associate Professor of International Studies at California State University, Long Beach. She began conducting ethnographic research in Hyderabad, India in 2002 and lived in the city from 2009 to 2013. While there she worked with several HIV prevention and sex workers’ rights organisations in the area. Her research explores the economic and social precarity created by India’s market for women’s labour and the consequent risks and rewards for women who sell sexual services. She writes about the complex interaction between international anti-trafficking efforts and Indian sex workers, supporting a broader critique emanating from local sex worker organisations of the harms inflicted by India’s current anti-trafficking law and policies. She contributes to WorkFREE’s Ethics and Advisory Board.

 

• K. Walters (Forthcoming) ‘Pathivratha Precarity: Marriage and the Seeming Inevitability of Sex Work in South India’. In Opting Out: Women Outside of Marriage Around the World. Dinah Hannaford and Joanna Davidson, eds. Rutgers University Press.

• K. Walters (2020) "Moral Security: Anti-trafficking and the Humanitarian State in South India." Anthropological Quarterly, 93(3), 289-320.

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Email: Kimberly.Walters@csulb.edu