Suchland, Jennifer Economies of Violence: Transnational Feminism, Postsocialism, and the Politics of Sex Trafficking (review)

Abstract

REVIEWS 791 Suchland, Jennifer. Economies of Violence: Transnational Feminism, Postsocialism, and the Politics of Sex Trafficking. Duke University Press, Durham, NC and London, 2015. xiii + 260 pp. Illustrations. Tables. Notes. Bibliography. Index. $24.95: £16.99 (paperback). During the 1990s, sensationalized media representations of the apparent explosion of sex trafficking from the former Soviet Union and Eastern Europe coalesced around the image of the ‘Natasha’, an innocent Slavic woman duped into the sex trade. Deprived of agency in these narratives, Natashas appeared as ‘the “lost girls” of failed democratization’ in Russia after the collapse of socialism (p. 65). But the sudden and startling visibility of the innocent female victim of trafficking, writes Jennifer Suchland, rendered invisible the ‘everyday violence’ experienced by all citizens in the precarious economic conditions of postsocialism. Since the end of the Cold War, Suchland argues, sex trafficking has been defined primarily as a violation of human rights. Rather than tackling the structural causes of trafficking — such as poverty and precarity — the international community has framed it as a problem of transnational organized crimeandthusfocusedonsavingindividualvictimsandprosecutingtraffickers. Economies of Violence suggests that there was nothing inevitable about this. Our contemporary understanding of trafficking has been shaped by two events in particular: the collapse of state socialism and the institutionalization at the United Nations of a ‘liberal feminism’ centred around preventing violence against women rather than protecting women’s economic and social rights. The first part of the book charts a shift in definitions of sex trafficking at the UN since 1945. Chapter one focuses on second-wave feminist critiques of trafficking since the 1970s. Radical US feminists redefined the older notion of ‘traffic in women’ as ‘sexual slavery’ sadistically imposed on women by a decontextualized patriarchy, thus adopting an anti-prostitution stance that was at odds with advocates for sex workers’ rights. Others saw sex work as the consequence of tourism-driven development or structural adjustment programmes which failed to take account of the needs of women. These critical economic theories emerging from the Women in Development (WID) agenda were displaced in the 1990s by liberal feminist campaigns focused on violence against individual women. Chapter two argues that as a result the UN redefined trafficking as an element of organized crime and thus sought solutions primarily through the application of criminal justice. Thesecondsectionturnsawayfromfeministnetworkstoaskhowthecollapse of state socialism influenced global definitions of trafficking. During the Cold War, Second World representatives at the UN had framed women’s rights as a critique of capitalism and a weapon against the West. Chapter three argues that the silencing of these voices in the 1990s in turn downgraded ‘feminist SEER, 94, 4, October 2016 792 economic responses to violence, including trafficking’ (p. 22). Chapter four suggests that the discourse of economic ‘transition’ has normalized structural violence experienced by post-socialist citizens. Here Suchland draws on scholarship that emphasizes the domestic origins of neoliberalism in late socialist societies, and suggests that the fetishization of hyper-femininity in the new market economies was a backlash against the failed imposition of ‘equality’ during socialist rule. Feminist organizations in Russia made limited gains by politicizing sexual harassment as well as trafficking in terms of violence against women. However, this language ultimately weakened economic critiques of transition by privileging individual over structural violence. Trafficking was not seen as a consequence of ‘precarious labor, problematic migration laws, and decimated social welfare programs. It was viewed as a pathology of postsocialism’ (p. 88). In the third and final section, titled ‘Economies of Violence’, Suchland argues that contemporary solutions to trafficking are governed by a ‘neoliberal’ economic logic that sees trafficking as a ‘measurable market — in terms of workers/victims, profit making and lost wages’ (p. 160). Anti-trafficking programmes governed by this logic ignore the structural conditions that push people into sex work and instead focus on ‘empowering’ individuals to solve their own problems through entrepreneurship. In conclusion, Suchland urges a shift from the ‘three Ps’ (prevention, protection and prosecution) that currently dominate US and global antitrafficking policy to an approach defined by three Rs: rights, research and responsibility. This fascinating book makes a significant contribution to the critical study of human rights, transnational feminism, gender and sexuality, as well as state socialism...