Disposable People: New Slavery in the Global Economy, Updated with a New PrefaceSlavery is illegal throughout the world, yet more than twenty-seven million people are still trapped in one of history's oldest social institutions. Kevin Bales's disturbing story of slavery today reaches from brick kilns in Pakistan and brothels in Thailand to the offices of multinational corporations. His investigation of conditions in Mauritania, Brazil, Thailand, Pakistan, and India reveals the tragic emergence of a "new slavery," one intricately linked to the global economy. The new slaves are not a long-term investment as was true with older forms of slavery, explains Bales. Instead, they are cheap, require little care, and are disposable. Three interrelated factors have helped create the new slavery. The enormous population explosion over the past three decades has flooded the world's labor markets with millions of impoverished, desperate people. The revolution of economic globalization and modernized agriculture has dispossessed poor farmers, making them and their families ready targets for enslavement. And rapid economic change in developing countries has bred corruption and violence, destroying social rules that might once have protected the most vulnerable individuals. Bales's vivid case studies present actual slaves, slaveholders, and public officials in well-drawn historical, geographical, and cultural contexts. He observes the complex economic relationships of modern slavery and is aware that liberation is a bitter victory for a child prostitute or a bondaged miner if the result is starvation. Bales offers suggestions for combating the new slavery and provides examples of very positive results from organizations such as Anti-Slavery International, the Pastoral Land Commission in Brazil, and the Human Rights Commission in Pakistan. He also calls for researchers to follow the flow of raw materials and products from slave to marketplace in order to effectively target campaigns of "naming and shaming" corporations linked to slavery. Disposable People is the first book to point the way to abolishing slavery in today's global economy. All of the author's royalties from this book go to fund anti-slavery projects around the world. |
Contents
1 | |
Because She Looks Like a Child | 34 |
Old Times There Are Not Forgotten | 80 |
Life on the Edge | 121 |
When Is a Slave Not a Slave? | 149 |
The Ploughmans Lunch | 195 |
7 What Can Be Done? | 232 |
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Common terms and phrases
abuse Afro-Mauritanians Anti-Slavery Anti-Slavery International asked baht Baldev batteria Bilal bonded laborers Brazil brick kiln brickmaking brickworkers brothel brothel owners capital charcoal charcoal camps child commercial sex cost culture debt bondage economic enforcement enslaved escaped ex-slaves exploitation forced Free the Slaves freedom gato girls global groups Haratines human rights India keep kiln owner land landlords lives look master Mato Grosso Mauritania million modern never Nouakchott officials old slavery organizations ouguiya ovens ownership paid Pakistan percent person peshgi system pimp police political population profit prostitutes Prostitution in Thailand Punjab rehabilitation rice rupees sell sex slavery sex tourism Siri slav slave labor slaveholders social sold sometimes stop Thai Thailand things tion told trafficking United Uttar Pradesh village violence White Moors women workers