Economies of Violence by Jennifer Suchland

In order to argue this claim, Suchland looks at the rhetoric that is used to talk about sex trafficking: she focuses on the solidification of the “violence against women” paradigm at the UN (a paradigm that included trafficking) and the post-Cold War reframing of sex trafficking in the US. Suchland’s book, thus, attempts to show that sex trafficking is indeed part and parcel of the global capitalism that constantly demands cheap and often unregulated labor. For the author, the losers are best exemplified by people working in sweatshops, whose labor is seen as “unfortunate but necessary aspect of global capitalism” (3), whereas victims – such as victims of trafficking – are seen as “an aberration from the dominant economic order” (4). Arguing against the predominant view that regards sex trafficking as “an aberration of capitalist systems” (1), Suchland emphasizes that such a view “focuses on locating individual rather than structural violence” (3) and creates a false dichotomy of the victims and the losers of capitalism. Suchland situates sex trafficking within the economy of global capitalism. Jennifer Suchland’s Economies of Violence is an extensive and innovative study of the discourse of transnational sex trafficking and its relationship to the global feminism and postsocialism.

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

Economies of Violence by Jennifer Suchland