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Written with uncommon grace and clarity, this extremely engaging ethnography analyzes female agency, gendered violence, and transactional sex in contemporary Papua New Guinea. Focusing on Huli "passenger women," (women who accept money for sex) Wayward Women explores the socio-economic factors that push women into the practice of transactional sex, and asks how these transactions might be an expression of resistance, or even revenge. Challenging conventional understandings of "prostitution" and "sex work," Holly Wardlow contextualizes the actions and intentions of passenger women in a rich analysis of kinship, bridewealth, marriage, and exchange, revealing the ways in which these robust social institutions are transformed by an encompassing capitalist economy. Many passenger women assert that they have been treated "olsem maket" (like market goods) by their husbands and natal kin, and they respond by fleeing home and defiantly appropriating their sexuality for their own purposes. Experiences of rape, violence, and the failure of kin to redress such wrongs figure prominently in their own stories about becoming "wayward." Drawing on village court cases, hospital records, and women's own raw, caustic , and darkly funny narratives, Wayward Women provides a riveting portrait of the way modernity engages with gender to produce new and contested subjectivities.

Women, Huli --- Bride price --- Courtship --- Courting --- Wooing --- Betrothal --- Love --- Love-letters --- Marriage --- Bride purchase --- Bridewealth --- Lobola --- Lobolo --- Dowry --- Huli women --- Sexual behavior --- Social conditions. --- Economic conditions. --- Tari District (Papua New Guinea) --- Femmes Huli --- Prix de la fiancée --- Amours --- Sexualité --- Conditions sociales --- Conditions économiques --- Tari (Papouasie-Nouvelle-Guinée : District) --- anthropologists. --- bridewealth. --- capitalist economy. --- contemporary papua new guinea. --- court cases. --- ethnography. --- female agency. --- gender issues. --- gender studies. --- gendered violence. --- huli women. --- marriage. --- modern world. --- new guinea society. --- nonfiction. --- papua new guinea. --- passenger women. --- personal experiences. --- prostitution. --- rape. --- sex workers. --- sexuality. --- social institutions. --- socioeconomic factors. --- transactional sex. --- village law. --- women and families. --- women. --- womens roles.