Kevin Bales

A series of case studies of modern-day slavery in five different countries: Thailand, Mauritania, Brazil, Pakistan, and India.

In each instance book thoroughly examines the social, political, and economic factors that facilitate slavery. The primary mechanism used to enslave people is debt bondage, where a person is forced to work until they pay off a debt claimed by the slaveholder. The one exception is Mauritania, which practices a traditional form of chattel slavery with a racial component.

One critique I had was that, despite the book's subtitle, the connection between slave production and the global economy was not explored in depth. In most of the examples studied, the products and services produced by slave labor served a primarily local market, with the exception of charcoal production in Brazil which feeds into the steel industry. In fact, it seemed to be not the global economy per se, but rather the global spread of Western capitalist culture, and the accompanying social and economic changes, which contributed most to these examples of modern slavery. It would have been interesting to compare an example where slave labor is used to produce commodities primarily for international export, such as in the fashion industry.

Another limitation of the book was that there was a fair amount of redundancy among the case studies. For example the mechanisms of slavery in the Brazil and Pakistan studies seemed quite similar, despite surface differences. Conversely, some forms of modern slavery such as government use of compulsory labor were not covered by any of the studies. Again, perhaps choosing a different example for one of the studies could have rounded out the book a bit more.

Despite these shortcomings, this proved to be an interesting read about a little-known facet of the modern world.… (altro)