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This anthology takes an international and cross-cultural approach to discussions about friendship by curating a set of diverse contributions situated in a transnational context. These interdisciplinary contributions take friendship seriously as a subject of feminist and legal study and hone in specifically on polyamory, polygamy, and Platonic affinities, considering the sexual and non-sexual ties of affect and affinity that link a diverse range of contemporary friendships that exist cross-culturally. This highly original book teases out commonalities between experiences of affinity that are enmeshed with the differences between social, national, legal, and cultural frameworks that surround these relationships of affinity and affect, and troubles forms of government and legal regulation that prohibit or fail to recognize the consensual interdependence connecting diverse forms of human friendship.

Mothers and mothering have been a longtime focus of research and study in various academic disciplines, and common topics of interest in mainstream press and popular culture, yet the experiences of mothers and mothering in the area of sport have been less explored. This innovative, interdisciplinary collection provides a space for exploration of the complex dimensions of intersections between mothers, mothering, and sport, as athletes, players, participants, parents and discursive figures. Topics discussed are wide-ranging, from motherwork in sport, mothers as athletes, the athlete mother in sports, representations and expectations of motherhood and health, legal regulation of sports and parenting, as well as sexuality and gender in sports and gaming.

Exploring the shared intersections of mothering, motherhood and sex work, Mothers, Mothering and Sex Work weaves together a range of voices from academic and sex-worker communities around the world. It features interdisciplinary contributions, scholarly essays, academic research, artwork, poetry, photography and experiential narratives. Notable among these are two modern masterpieces from literary leg- ends: “Voices,” a short story by Alice Munro and excerpts from Maya Angelou's autobiography Gather Together in my Name. In the spirit of the adage “nothing about us without us,” Mothers, Mothering and Sex Work brings together unique and controversial viewpoints defying con- ventional wisdom to provide fresh insights into sex workers and their rights. Beginning with the political, legal and social context of sexuality and gender in Canada, the book's focus widens to explore issues affect- ing sex workers worldwide.

Exploring the shared intersections of mothering, motherhood and sex work, Mothers, Mothering and Sex Work weaves together a range of voices from academic and sex-worker communities around the world. It features interdisciplinary contributions, scholarly essays, academic research, artwork, poetry, photography and experiential narratives. Notable among these are two modern masterpieces from literary legends: “Voices,” a short story by Alice Munro and excerpts from Maya Angelou's autobiography Gather Together in my Name. In the spirit of the adage “nothing about us without us,” Mothers, Mothering and Sex Work brings together unique and controversial viewpoints defying conventional wisdom to provide fresh insights into sex workers and their rights. Beginning with the political, legal and social context of sexuality and gender in Canada, the book's focus widens to explore issues affecting sex workers worldwide.

The 2007 death by self-induced strangulation in prison of nineteen year old inmate Ashley Smith drew a great deal of public attention. The case gave rise to a shocking verdict of homicide in the 2013 inquest into the cause of her death. In this book, I inquire into questions about of what social problem or phenomenon Ashley Smith is a “case,” and what governmental work is done by prevalent constructions of her as an exemplar. This book performs a critical discourse analysis of figures of Ashley Smith that emerge in her case, looking at those representations as technologies of governance. It argues that the Smith case is read most accurately not as an isolated system failure but an extreme result of routine, everyday brutality, of a society and bureaucracies'gradual necropolitical successes. It critically analyzes how representations of Ashley in the case leave intact, and even reinforce, logics and systems governing gender, motherhood, security, risk, race thinking and exclusion, in power and knowledge that make it predictable for similar deaths in prison to recur. It argues that, in the logics underlying constructions through which Ashley Smith was celebritized and sacralized, mothers', girls'and women's subjectivities and agencies are made unknowable and even unthinkable while the racialized social boundaries of a white settler society are maintained. This book attempts to intervene in those logics to help make alternative outcomes possible and to take steps towards questioning the raced, classed and heteronormative boundaries of commonly assumed figures of the “noble victim”, “good girl” and “good mother” while supporting the agencies of adolescent girls in actively playing a part in the authoring of their lives.