Publication Review of Illicit and Illegal

Abstract

Signalling an important contribution to the field, Phoenix and Oerton’s ‘Illicit and Illegal: Sex, Regulation and Social Control’ offers a critical account of contemporary efforts to regulate sex. The book begins with the paradox that cannot have escaped the attention of many readers in the field: that the apparent increase in freedom, choice, and diversity in sexual matters is conversely and simultaneously matched by a ‘proliferation of laws, policies and guidelines which seek to determine the complex, vast and ever-increasing rules of engagement’ (2005:13).