Isabelle Johansson
Doctoral student
In My Secret Life : Stigma, Moral Work, and Intimacy Among Swedish Men Who Pay for Sex
I mitt hemliga liv : Stigma, moraliskt arbete och intimitet bland svenska män som betalar för sex
Author
Summary, in English
This dissertation examines how Swedish men who pay for sex make sense of their actions and orient themselves within a moral landscape marked by criminalization, stigma, and public condemnation. Drawing on anthropological approaches to morality, stigma, and secrecy, the study conceptualizes the men’s accounts as forms of “moral work”: the ongoing, situated labor through which individuals seek to sustain themselves as ethically intelligible persons within worlds that define them as deviant. Following Korsby and Vigh’s (2025) call for a “non-moralizing anthropology” of transgression, the dissertation approaches these men not as moral outliers but as actors embedded in shared normative frameworks, revealing how responsibility, care, and legitimacy are negotiated under conditions of secrecy and moral scrutiny.
Empirically, the dissertation consists of four interrelated studies. The first introduces the “stigma engagement strategy,” an interview approach that brings condemning media portrayals of paid sex into the interview encounter, rendering processes of stigma negotiation visible in real time. The second study analyzes how men classify paid sexual encounters as “good” or “bad,” showing how moral work unfolds through affective attunement, uncertainty, and self-scrutiny. The third examines how men narrate intimacy, using the concept of “relational authenticity” to capture how closeness in paid sex is achieved, maintained, or undone from the men’s perspectives. The fourth study broadens the analysis through a comparative examination of public attitudes toward paid sex across the Nordic countries, demonstrating Sweden’s distinctive moral consensus against the practice.
Methodologically, the project combines in-depth interviews and long-term ethnographic engagement with a quantitative analysis of survey data from the European Values Study (2017) and the World Values Survey (2020). This mixed-methods design traces moral reasoning across intimate and collective domains, linking individual accounts of lived practice to broader Nordic societal climates. The dissertation argues that Sweden’s criminalization of paid sex operates not only as a legal prohibition but as a powerful moral condition that reshapes intimate life. A pronounced tension between public moral representations of paid sex and the men’s experiences renders moral work particularly visible. Within this space, the men engage in secrecy, boundary-work, and repair to defend integrity, articulate care, and sustain coherent selves under condemnation. By foregrounding these everyday ethical negotiations, the dissertation contributes to the anthropology of morality by showing how moral life is maintained and negotiated under regimes of public condemnation, illuminating the entanglements of intimacy, law, and ethical self-formation in contemporary Sweden.
Empirically, the dissertation consists of four interrelated studies. The first introduces the “stigma engagement strategy,” an interview approach that brings condemning media portrayals of paid sex into the interview encounter, rendering processes of stigma negotiation visible in real time. The second study analyzes how men classify paid sexual encounters as “good” or “bad,” showing how moral work unfolds through affective attunement, uncertainty, and self-scrutiny. The third examines how men narrate intimacy, using the concept of “relational authenticity” to capture how closeness in paid sex is achieved, maintained, or undone from the men’s perspectives. The fourth study broadens the analysis through a comparative examination of public attitudes toward paid sex across the Nordic countries, demonstrating Sweden’s distinctive moral consensus against the practice.
Methodologically, the project combines in-depth interviews and long-term ethnographic engagement with a quantitative analysis of survey data from the European Values Study (2017) and the World Values Survey (2020). This mixed-methods design traces moral reasoning across intimate and collective domains, linking individual accounts of lived practice to broader Nordic societal climates. The dissertation argues that Sweden’s criminalization of paid sex operates not only as a legal prohibition but as a powerful moral condition that reshapes intimate life. A pronounced tension between public moral representations of paid sex and the men’s experiences renders moral work particularly visible. Within this space, the men engage in secrecy, boundary-work, and repair to defend integrity, articulate care, and sustain coherent selves under condemnation. By foregrounding these everyday ethical negotiations, the dissertation contributes to the anthropology of morality by showing how moral life is maintained and negotiated under regimes of public condemnation, illuminating the entanglements of intimacy, law, and ethical self-formation in contemporary Sweden.
Department/s
- Department of Sociology
- Social Anthropology
Publishing year
2026-02
Language
English
Full text
Document type
Dissertation
Publisher
Department of Sociology, Lund University
Topic
- Sociology
Keywords
- moral work
- criminalization
- stigma
- intimacy
- paid sex/sex purchase/commercial sex
- mixed- methods ethnography
Status
Published
Project
- In My Secret Life: Stigma, Moral Work, and Intimacy Among Swedish Men Who Pay for Sex
Supervisor
- Malin Åkerström
- David Brehm Sausdal
ISBN/ISSN/Other
- ISBN: 978-91-8104-806-3
- ISBN: 978-91-8104-807-0
Defence date
6 March 2026
Defence time
10:00
Defence place
Edens hörsal, Allhelgona Kyrkogata 14, Lund
Opponent
- Geir Henning Presterudstuen (Associate Professor)