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.

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

Reviews
"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 *



Book Information
ISBN 9780822359616
Author Jennifer Suchland
Format Paperback
Page Count 280
Imprint Duke University Press
Publisher Duke University Press
Weight(grams) 408g