Rate this book

Sex Trafficking: Inside The Business Of Modern Slavery (2008)

by Siddharth Kara(Favorite Author)

4.2 of 5 Votes: 1

ISBN

0231139608 (ISBN13: 9780231139601)

languge

English

genre

Nonfiction

publisher

Columbia University Press

review 1: I read this as a contextual follow-up to a book our book club read called Sold, a fictional YA novella about a young girl from Nepal sold into sex slavery in India. I wanted more information on why and how this could happen, and what was being done to stop it.This book is an academic's multi-year journey to understand the current workings of human trafficking, examining how the sickening business thrives in particular areas of the world. He discusses the root causes of how girls get enslaved, and follows the money trail, and rather naively goes under cover to get inside brothels and interview women everywhere from India to Central Europe. This academic book is not really a wholly scientific study, nor quite a satisfying piece of investigative journalism, though the author ... moreaims for it to be a bit of both. The book reads like a big sprawling report on this heartbreakingly massive worldwide black market, which thrives in countries where women are so culturally degraded that their disappearance or being sold for sex seems not to be much cause for concern among families, towns or governments. In the end, the author can't provide much in the way of hope or actionable ways to curb trafficking. He ultimately suggests laws are the only weapon, but acknowledges that the real problem lies in cultures that place no value on women as citizens with rights, and poverty so debilitating that selling a child is a family's only option for survival. i finished the book thinking both the author and I remain saddened and befuddled on how such practices might ever end, and I felt no closer to finding ways I might be able to help, or how to identify effective agencies worth supporting.
review 2: Anyone with even a shred of respect for human dignity should read this book. Slavery, illegal in every country in the world, also exists in every country in the world, and one of its most insidious forms is women trafficked for prostitution. The stories presented here do not make happy reading, but this is the reality for over a million girls and women on our planet today. One of the best parts of this book is its explanation about how trafficking continues; instead of appealing to the heart alone, as most books of this ilk do, it also uses an economic model of supply and demand and resultant reward. Simply put, if it wasn't so profitable, it wouldn't be nearly so widespread. Kara also clearly demonsrates how the rise of globalisation, especially the actions of the IMF, which have resulted in sustained poverty for most of the developing world as governments struggle to pay off their artificially imposed debts, has created a perfect environment in which people trafficking can thrive, feeding off economic desperation. The only intellectual downside to this book is the naïvely optimistic solution suggested in the last chapter, for which I've deducted one star - it assumes virtually unlimited funds for the setup of an independent NGO, a vast incorruptible army of helpers willing to work against trafficking, and completely ignores the incredibly strong role of culture in stifling the basic rights of women in the societies in which trafficking is most pervasive. He does acknowledge the effects of patriarchal culture earlier in the book, but in his enthusiasm to stick with the mathematics of economic models, forgets it at the end. Nevertheless, it's still worth reading: if enough people are aware of and disturbed by the problem, maybe somebody somewhere will come up with a workable solution. less

Download links for: Sex Trafficking: Inside the Business of Modern Slavery

Advertising