The stars were still out in the field, and the child prostitutes plied their trade, the only happy ones, having learned how unhappiness sticks and will not risk being traded in for a song or a balloon. Current Literature and its Consequences. The research began with a review of available literature, organised on a regional basis. This had two justifications.
In the first place, there appears to be no universal structure of ideas informing discussions on the commercial sexual exploitation of children, which is dispersed among a variety of agencies with a number of disparate objectives and activities varying from law and advocacy to welfare, and even arguments in favour of paedophilia.
In the second place, it was clear that certain aspects dominate the discourse in specific regions of the world. The research thus began with a twofold purpose, examining existing discourses for what they might provide in the way of well argued, internally-consistent structures of ideas. Any discourse on child commercial sexual exploitation will be related to other discourses β on childhood, sexuality, exploitation and prostitution, for example. It will produce and reproduce these ideas in ways that tend to reinforce current structures of power and hierarchy.
The first task for this review, therefore, was to examine not simply the evidence about the commercial sexual exploitation of children but, more importantly, how it is being produced, reproduced and presented. The discourse derived from these two countries has set the parameters and tone of the debate. The issues debated with respect to Thailand and the Philippines have become key to the global discussion of child prostitution to the extent that it is impossible to talk about commercial sexual exploitation without reference to them.
Thailand and the Philippines have provided much of the mythology and iconography of the commercial sexual exploitation of children so that it is important to look at these two countries in detail in order to understand the origins and the boundaries of the issue. It is they who first brought the issue to public attention, set the agenda and have continued to dominate the debate. Although the countries for which they mainly campaign are Thailand and the Philippines, they are also concerned with Sri Lanka, Taiwan and Korea.
