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Many organizations and their members devote extensive resources to promoting themselves and being known to others. However, not all organizations want or need their identity to be recognized and not all organizational members want to have their membership or affiliation known by at least certain audiences. As we consider secret societies, anonymous support programs, hate groups, terrorist cells, covert military units, organized crime, gangs, parts of the underground economy, front organizations, stigmatized businesses, and even certain hidden enterprises tucked away in quiet office parks, we have to question what we think we know about the identity goals of organizations and their members. This book offers a framework for thinking about how a wide range of organizations and their members communicate their identity to relevant audiences. Considering the degree to which organizations strategically make themselves visible, the extent to which members express their identification with the organization, and whether the relevant audience is more mass/public or local, we can describe various “regions” in which these collectives reside-ranging from transparent and shaded to more shadowed and dark. Importantly, organizations operating in these spaces differ in how they and their members communicate identity to others. The perspective offered here helps draw attention to more shaded, shadowed, and dark collectives as important organizations in the contemporary landscape.

Wrapped in moral judgments about sexual conduct and shrouded in titillating intrigue, legal prostitutes in Nevada’s brothels frequently face oppression and unfair labor practices while managing stigma and isolation associated with their occupational identities. Rooted in organizational communication and feminist theories, this book engages with stories of women living and working in these “hidden” organizations to interrogate issues related to labor rights, stigma, secrecy, privacy, and discrimination in the current legal brothel system. Widespread beliefs about the immorality of selling sexual services have influenced the history and laws of legal brothel prostitution. Moral judgments about legal prostitutes are so pervasive that many women struggle to engage in their communities, conduct business, maintain personal relationships, and transition out of the industry. At the same time, legal brothels operate like other kinds of legal entities, and individuals must contend with balancing work and nonwork commitments, organizational cultures, and managerial relationships. Although legal prostitutes are independent contractors, they often live in their workplaces and must adhere to scheduling requirements, mundane job tasks, and emotional labor, like employees in other organizational settings. Ethnographic observations in the brothels and interviews with current and ex-brothel workers, brothel owners, madams, local police, lobbyists, and others provide a broad data set for analysis. The book includes a photo-elicitation project, featuring images captured by legal prostitutes about their lives in the brothels. Thorough archival research fills in gaps left from inconsistencies, illegal practices, and laws about brothel prostitution. In addition, the third author works as a legal prostitute, providing a deep (and deeply personal) autoethnographic insider look at the industry. As such, this book serves as both an updated resource about the laws and policies which guide legal prostitution in Nevada, and an intimate look at life and decision-making for women performing sex work.