Student essay recognised in global awards

A Lancaster University geography student has been highly commended in the world’s leading undergraduate awards for her essay on the commodification of the female body in the Bangkok sex trade. Catherine Purkiss was looking for an ‘outside the box’ idea for an essay in her final year module on Cities and Globalisation.

‘We were given a lot of free rein to choose an issue in a developing city. We were looking at globalisation and commodification at the time and it occurred to me that it would be really interesting to look at how we treat females as a commodity, at its impact and all the politics surrounding that.’

Despite never having been to Bangkok, or even to Asia, Catherine decided to focus on the sex trade in the city.

‘That made it more interesting in a way, in my mind I have all these stereotypical images of big Asian cities, of bright neon signs and big sky-scrapers. I wanted to go a bit deeper and say what is behind all of these scenes. It is quite a taboo subject so that also made it interesting.’

Catherine looked at the historical, cultural and political context behind the sex trade using – Marxist Urban and Urban Assemblage theories, which she had been studying in her course.

‘There is an expectation in Thailand that the female provides for the family, but how is she supposed to get that money in a nation that often doesn’t treat women as equal and where economic opportunities for women are quite limited.’

She also looked at the influence of American soldiers fighting in the Vietnam War in the 1970s, who would visit Bangkok for rest and recreation, and at the impact of Thai ‘Buddhist beliefs about female sexuality requiring control by spiritually superior males.’ She explored the health impact on the sex workers, who often suffer from violence, sexually transmitted infections and mental health issues, including depression and post-traumatic stress disorder. But she also focussed on the positive work being done by NGOs, charities and individuals to remove the stigma attached to the trade and to support the workers.

Catherine submitted her essay to the Anthropology and Cultural Studies category of the Global Undergraduate Awards, which ‘celebrate original and creative thinking amongst students’. Any undergraduate studying at a tertiary education institution anywhere in the world can send in an essay which received an A grade or above.  Catherine’s essay was ‘highly commended’, meaning it was in the top 10% of the 4148 submissions from 380 institutions in 50 countries.

Catherine, who graduated with a first this summer, chose to study geography at Lancaster because ‘I’ve always liked learning about the natural world about people and about different cultures: that’s geography in a nutshell.’

She took politics as her minor subject during her first year and quickly realised that politics and human geography are inseparable. ‘politics drives climate change, populations and human issues, you can’t achieve a lot of success without looking at the political aspect.

Her interest in politics deepened when she went to study abroad for a year at Iowa State University in America.

 

‘They didn’t have geography as a subject, so I had to branch out and take modules in anthropology and political science including the politics of the Middle East, the politics of war and humanitarianism, and global development.’

Her ultimate ambition is to work for the UK Foreign Office as a diplomat, or in counter terrorism, and she hopes that a potential opportunity to work at the Home Office next year will allow her to pursue her ambitions. In the meantime, she has a six-month contract working for the Environment Agency as a climate change regulatory officer, monitoring companies to make sure they are doing what they have pledged to do to reduce carbon emissions.

Catherine is very happy that she chose to study geography at Lancaster. ‘I made really good friends, I’ve done some work I am really proud of and found really interesting and I have much better idea of what I am interested in and want to do in future.’

(Text by Alison Cahn)