Description
Book SynopsisJennifer Suchland argues that human trafficking should be understood as symptomatic of complex economic and social dynamics rather than as a criminal activity, and that treating trafficking as a crime and by focusing on victims is insufficient to combatting it.
Trade Review"
Economies of Violence's exploration of trafficking's economic and social causes is . . . useful not only for decoding the genealogy of sex trafficking discourse, but also as an appeal to governments and societies and to develop more robust methods for combatting not only human trafficking but also precarious labor together with the social exclusion and legal inferiority it ensues." -- Shulamit Almog * International Journal for the Semiotics of Law *
"Suchland’s attention to the erasure of capitalism’s violence provides a refreshing way to rethink the role of law, order, and the police in the context of human betterment. . . . Suchland’s book offers an innovative contribution to the emerging field of critical feminist trafficking studies." -- Julietta Hua * Law, Culture and the Humanities *
"
Economies of Violence untangles dense discursive webs around sex trafficking by showing precarious labor as the lynchpin of sex trafficking and the U.S.S.R.’s postsocialist transition. . . . Importantly centering the neglected postsocialist world, Suchland allows readers to imagine and contemplate the structural economic inequities of global capitalism that produce precarious labor and undergird global violence." -- Jennifer A. Zenovich * Women's Studies in Communication *
"[
Economies of Violence] offers a timely, wide-ranging and provocative reconceptualization of trafficking discourses, especially of the ways in which the prohibitionist position has come to inform global anti-trafficking policy. . . . [Suchland's] excellent book not only provides an important challenge to prohibitionist arguments, but also offers sex workers and advocates many profound and important analytical resources." -- Robert Heynen * International Feminist Journal of Politics *
"Suchland makes great strides for our understanding of counter-trafficking with her genealogical analysis. . . . This book is a deep well from which to draw multiple and complex discussions." -- Leyla J. Keough * Slavic Review *
"Lively and thought-provoking, Suchland’s book challenges us to consider the alternative interpretations of sex trafficking that have been displaced by contemporary notions of human rights, bodily autonomy and victimhood." -- Celia Donert * Slavonic and East European Review *
Table of ContentsAcknowledgments ix
Introduction. Trafficking as Aberration: The Making of Globalization's Victims 1
Part I. Global 25
1. Sex Trafficking and the Making of a Feminist Subject of Analysis 29
2. The Natasha Trade and the Post-Cold War Reframing of Precarity 53
Part II. Postsocialist 85
3. Second World/Second Sex: Alternative Genealogies in Feminist Homogenous Empty Time 89
4. Lost in Transition: Postsocialist Trafficking and the Erasure of Systemic Violence 121
Part III. Economies of Violence 159
5. Freedom as Choice and the Neoliberal Economism of Trafficking Discourse 163
Conclusion. Antitrafficking beyond the Carceral State 187
Notes 195
References 219
Index 247
