Heidi Hoefinger
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​Cambodia Daily,  Reporter and weekend editor, Hannah Hawkins, wrote a piece about the Hooters chain of restaurants coming to Phnom Penh.  I    
                               was asked to comment.  Some, but not all of my commentary was included:  "Risqué Business"” July 9, 2016:

                               "Heidi Hoefinger, an academic who authored 'Sex, Love and Money in Cambodia,' about the country’s sex and entertainment industry, is                                 more direct in her criticism....Describing the opening of Phnom Penh’s first Hooters branch as 'the globalization and corporatization of
                                the hostess bar scene...'"
READ HERE

​Global Post,
  Senior Correspondent, Patrick Winn conducted an interview with Hoefinger: "Why Cambodian Sex Workers Don't Need to Be Saved"  
                               March 23, 2016:

                               "Most sex workers in Cambodia, Hoefinger says, are not trapped by brothel overlords. They’re instead trapped in a shattered economy                                    where alternative options include back-breaking toil in the field or stitching jeans for export to America."
READ HERE
 
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​Voice of America,  Khmer Correspondent, Ten Soksreinith wrote a piece based on a second interview with Hoefinger:  "Understanding Intimacy and                                   Economic Pragmatism in Cambodia" | February 26, 2016:
                                  "For Cambodian women with foreign partners, Hoefinger said that love and material needs are inevitably intertwined. 'For the women,                                     emotionality and love are attached to material needs and economic pragmatism,' she said, noting that Cambodian culture has its own                                     ideas about reciprocal exchange linked to marriage."
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READ HERE


​​Cambodia Daily
,  Reporter, Ben Paviour quoted Hoefinger's research in "Cambodians Warm to Smartphone Dating Apps" | February 15, 2016: 
                                   “Traditionally, most marriages were arranged and therefore most relationships were deprived of the ‘romance’ associated with the                                            individual autonomy of choosing one’s partner,” writes anthropology academic Heidi Hoefinger in “Sex, Love, and Money in                                                      Cambodia.”
                                   Pop songs, karaoke videos, films and magazines have edged aside older cultural mores, according to Ms. Hoefinger. “The dominant                                        sex­­ual culture for contemporary young people in Cambodia is filled with strong themes of romance, love, and heartache.”
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READ HERE

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Voice of America,  Khmer Correspondent, Ten Soksreinith wrote a piece based on an interview with Hoefinger:  "For Some Women, Sex Work is a                                      Matter of Choice, Not Trafficking" |  November 20, 2015: 
                                   “The work that they do in the bars is often conflated with trafficking, and it’s assumed they are exploited victims that have not made a                                      decision to do this,” Hoefinger said.  Many women are making “active decisions” to participate in sex work within their constrained                                            circumstances, she said. “Bar work is a viable means of labor and employment for some of them—that they choose—and what they                                        are calling for is recognition and respect for their decision.”  To conservative Cambodians, sex workers are defying traditional values.                                      But they are also often valued for their work in supporting their families.  “They experience this double value system, where they are                                        heavily stigmatized as broken women and as criminals,” she said. “But at the same time they are highly praised in their family if they                                        can contribute to their family’s economic wellbeing.”  A movement to abolish sex work in Cambodia then becomes “problematic,” she                                      added.

READ HERE

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Voice of America,  Khmer Correspondent, Ten Soksreinith interviewed Heidi Hoefinger:  "US Professor Examines the Idea of 'Professional                                                    Girlfriends' in Cambodia"  |  November 13, 2015: 
                                     "Editor’s note: A new book from a US professor looks at the world of “professional girlfriends,” Cambodian women who have gift-                                              based relationships with foreign men. In her book “Sex, Love, and Money in Cambodia: Professional Girlfriends and Transactional                                          Relationships,” Professor Heidi Hoefinger, who teaches in the Science Department of Berkeley College, in New York, looks at the                                            intimate lives of Cambodian women and the idea of “transactional relationships.” Women are often praised for these relationships,                                          which bring in money to support their families, but also stigmatized for breaking social codes. In an interview with VOA Khmer                                                  Hoefinger said the women are often seeking respect and recognition for their choices, something they don’t always get."
READ HERE


​The Times Higher Education,
British sociologist and criminologist, Laurie Taylor, discusses Hoefinger’s Sex, Love and Money in Cambodia, 
                                      shortlisted (top 6) for the BBC 4 / British Sociological Association's inaugural “Ethnography of the Year Award,” in his article:
                                     "Laurie Taylor on the Endangered Art of Ethnography"                              
                                     In a very similar manner, Heidi Hoefinger’s Sex, Love and Money in Cambodia: Professional Girlfriends and Transactional    
                                     Relationships (2013), one of the studies shortlisted for the award, began from the common belief that encounters in the so-called 
                                     “sex bars” of Cambodia would be entirely cash-based and essentially sleazy. Only after spending long periods of time talking to 
                                     the women who worked in the bars and their male clients was she able to show that the relationships fashioned in the bars also                                              had an important emotional component. Another stereotype had been exploded.

READ HERE

BBC 4 Thinking Allowed Ethnography of the Year Shortlist Announcement  Listen to the podcast as host Laurie                                            Taylor announces the shortlist of the 2014 Ethnography of the Year award, while discussing Sex, Love and Money in Cambodia                                                with award committee members Bev Skeggs and  Dick Hobbs  |  April 23, 2014

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Letter to the Editor of Phnom Penh Post
 Heidi Hoefinger's response to the problematic Valentine's Day study of youth sexuality in 
                                      Cambodia, and the resulting media attention and moral panic it spurred  |  February 18, 2014. 

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Read here



Huffington Post   Interview with Dr Heidi Hoefinger about Sex, Love and Money in Cambodia  |  October 18, 2013                                   
                                        'I think the most important thing I learned is that no matter how women identify, and no matter what circumstances they happen
                                         to be in, they are capable of -- and should be valued for -- the decisions they make and that includes their decisions to sell 
                                         sex, trade sex, and have sex with the people of their choosing. It's my hope that public understanding of the issues outlined in
                                         the book might ultimately help to reduce the stigma that most bar workers experience there, which is really at the root cause 
                                        of all the 
discrimination and violence they experience.'   --Heidi Hoefinger

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READ HERE


Voice of America, Daybreak Asia   Interview with Dr Heidi Hoefinger about Sex, Love and Money in Cambodia, 2013
                    I was featured on Voice of America's 'Daybreak Asia' radio program with Jim Stevenson.  The interview
                                     can be heard here at minute 16.14 on the VOA Daybreak Asia 
website.  |  September 4, 2013

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Southeast Asia Globe Magazine    Interview with Dr Heidi Hoefinger about Sex, Love and Money in Cambodia, 2013

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Read on globe website here



Time Out London       Sex Worker Open University Spread
                                                      Interview with Heidi Hoefinger, Co-Organiser of SWOU, 2011
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London Metro          Showing the Pros and Cons  |  June 6, 2011
                                                Hoefinger dismisses people's preconceptions about prositution being synonymous with violence, murder, trafficking and 
                                                drug addiction as products of media sensationalism. 'They sell stories,' she says. 'It's less interesting to cover sex 
                                                workers working towards decriminalization.' 

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READ here



Londonist  
     
   
Interview with Heidi Hoefinger: The Sex Worker Film Festival 2011  |  June 3, 2011
                                                'In order to fight the stigma and stereotypes of the sex industry, which either victimise or demonise sex workers, we 
                                                wanted to put together a programme of films and documentaries, by and about sex workers, which instead offers a more 
                                                nuanced look at the diversity, contradictions and even pleasures of the industry.  Specific themes include self 
                                                determination and empowerment, identity, sexuality, intimacy, migration and the global movement for sex workers’ rights.' 
                                                                                                                                                                                                        --Heidi Hoefinger
Read HEre




Good Time Girl 
  A dirty job? The London Sex Worker Film Festival                                                      
                                                Exploitative and degrading? Empowering and lucrative? A little bit boring? The life of a scarlet woman (or man, or 
                                                transgendered individual, as it goes) can be all this and more, according to Sex Worker Film Festival organiser Heidi 
                                                Hoefinger.
Read Here
   


Sarah Cope's Blog  
Review of the Sex Worker Film Festival  |  June 15, 2011                                                 
                                                  The festival also included a panel discussion. The directors of several of the films, the coordinator of the festival (Dr 
                                                  Heidi Hoefinger), plus a sex worker and a stripteases artist attempted to answer some very tough questions from the 
                                                  audience. 
read here




Global Post         Evangelicals offer redemption at Cambodia's girlie bars  |  December 27, 2010
                                                 'Moralism is dangerous — particularly when one group or another is pathologized as 'good' or 'bad,'' Hoefinger said.
Read Here



Maggie McNeil: The Honest Courtesan             
                                   Bad Fantasy, Good Reality   |  October 27, 2011  
                                                 Western female academic [Heidi Hoefinger] studied Asian hostess bars and discovered that the women there are neither 
                                                 “degraded” nor “victimized”, but rather following a deliberate strategy.

Read Here



Frieze Art Fair    
Prostitution Notes, by Suzanne Lacy  |  August 3, 2011
                                                 
                                                In a rare solo performance, Suzanne did a dramatic reading from The Prostitution Notes, with a guest appearance from 
                                                Heidi Hoefinger (as the voice of the prostitute), for the annual Serpentine Gallery Marathon. Curated by Hans Ulrich Obrist
                                                and Julia Peyton-Jones, the multi-dimensional Map Marathon featured non-stop live presentations by over 50 artists, 
                                                poets, writers, philosophers, scholars, musicians, architects, designers and scientists, including Gilbert and George, 
                                                Marina Abramovic, Rirkrit Tiravanija and Ai Weiwei. Lacy created a new video with Peter Kirby, comprised of photographic
                                                stills from the original Prostitution Notes project (1974), for this Frieze Art Fair week event.
                                                *Heidi's voice interjects at min 3.29, and approximately every 3 minutes after that.*

video here
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