Duke University Press Economies of Violence: Transnational Feminism, Postsocialism, and the Politics of Sex Trafficking

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. Review " 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." Author: Kristen Ghodsee, author of Source: 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." Author: Kristin Bumiller, author of Source: 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." Author: Shulamit Almog Source: 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." Author: Julietta Hua Source: 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." Author: Jennifer A. Zenovich Source: 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." Author: Robert Heynen Source: International Feminist Journal o