Slavery is illegal throughout the world, yet more than twenty-seven million People are still trapped in one of history's oldest social institutions.
All of the author's royalties from this book go to fund anti-slavery projects around the world.. "
Disposable People" is the first book to point the way to abolishing slavery in today's global economy.
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.
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 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' vivid case studies present actual slaves, slaveholders, and public officials in well-drawn historical, geographical, and cultural contexts.
And rapid economic change in developing countries has bred corruption and violence, destroying social rules that might once have protected the most vulnerable individuals.
The revolution of economic globalization and modernized agriculture has dispossessed poor farmers, making them and their families ready targets for enslavement.
The enormous population explosion over the past three decades has flooded the world's labor markets with millions of impoverished, desperate people.
Three interrelated factors have helped create the new slavery.
Instead, they are cheap, require little care, and are disposable.
The new slaves are not a long-term investment as was true with older forms of slavery, explains Bales.
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.
Kevin Bales' disturbing story of slavery today reaches from brick kilns in Pakistan and brothels in Thailand to the offices of multinational corporations.
Slavery is illegal throughout the world, yet more than twenty-seven million People are still trapped in one of history's oldest social institutions
