Overview

Recent human rights campaigns against sex trafficking have focused on individual victims, treating trafficking as a criminal aberration in an otherwise just economic order. In Economies of Violence Jennifer Suchland directly critiques these explanations and approaches, as they obscure the reality that trafficking is symptomatic of complex economic and social dynamics and the economies of violence that sustain them. Examining United Nations proceedings on women's rights issues, government and NGO anti-trafficking policies, and campaigns by feminist activists, Suchland contends that trafficking must be understood not solely as a criminal, gendered, and sexualized phenomenon, but as operating within global systems of precarious labor, neoliberalism, and the transition from socialist to capitalist economies in the former Soviet Union and Eastern Bloc. In shifting the focus away from individual victims, and by underscoring trafficking's economic and social causes, Suchland provides a foundation for building more robust methods for combatting human trafficking.

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9780822359616

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Reviews

Economies of Violence is a refreshing intervention into the global anti-trafficking discourse. Smart, timely, politically relevant, and convincingly argued, it will appeal to audiences both inside and outside of academia. Jennifer Suchland's book is a clarion call to academics, activists, and policy makers to radically rethink the way we talk about trafficking. -- Kristen Ghodsee, author of The Left Side of History: World War II and the Unfulfilled Promise of Communism in Eastern Europe Jennifer Suchland's reframing of the sex trafficking debate in the context of precarious labor is powerful, and has important academic and political implications. Offering an original perspective on the feminist debate about sex trafficking, Suchland explains how and why the sex trafficking debate acquired its rhetorical tropes. Economies of Violence is a significant and important contribution to feminist studies. -- Kristin Bumiller, author of In an Abusive State: How Neoliberalism Appropriated the Feminist Movement Against Sexual Violence 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

Jennifer Suchland's reframing of the sex trafficking debate in the context of precarious labor is powerful, and has important academic and political implications. Offering an original perspective on the feminist debate about sex trafficking, Suchland explains how and why the sex trafficking debate acquired its rhetorical tropes. Economies of Violence is a significant and important contribution to feminist studies. --Kristin Bumiller, author of In an Abusive State: How Neoliberalism Appropriated the Feminist Movement Against Sexual Violence

Author Information

Jennifer Suchland is Associate Professor of Slavic and East European Languages and Cultures and Women’s, Gender and Sexuality Studies at Ohio State University.

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