Product Description
Slavery 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. ... Read more

Customer Reviews (25)

great book
Really a great eye opener.Also reflects on culture and sociology.I also like how the author showed us different countries: Indian, Pakistan, Brazil, Thailand, and Mauritania.I have loaned this to a few people and two have purchased it to show to their children.

The World of the Disposed
Kevin Bales takes the reader on an emotional and heartfelt journey to several places throughout the world including India, Tailand, and Brazil among others where we met people who are being used and then disposed of when they have no use anymore because the man can always get another sex slave from Taiwain or another charcol maker from Brazil because conditions of poverty and a desperate wanting of a better life for their family will always lure more people into the new slavery. I like books that can mix statistics with actual human stories because it is one thing to say x is a problem because xx percent of people live like y. It is quite another to look at a girl like Siri or a family of charcol workers and Brazil and not say that slavery is still a problem.

Heartbreaking, Gut-wrenching, and Way Too Important to be Ignored
If I had my way, everyone in America playing video games, complaining about their jobs, or having drinks with friends, would do so with the knowledge that at that very moment someone was being enslaved.

The various topics discussed in 'Disposable People' has been well-covered by other reviews, so I'll just add my accolades.

I wish this book was a standard on high school reading lists.

It hurts to know the truth, but that is no excuse.

Excellent - It'll make you understand how we are all part of this.
It is almost impossible to find a corporation with international reach that has not been somewhat involved in any sort of human rights abuse in a wide range of industries: Manufacturing, Telecommunication, Extractive, Food and Beverages, Infrastructures, Pharmaceutical and Composite of all the above. In each of these industries, there has been a wide range of human rights infringements in the form of:torture, disappearances, hostage-taking, harassment of human rights defenders, forced labor, bonded labor, child labor, relocation, denial of women's rights, arrest and detention.

The vendors and all consumers, to a certain extend, are also responsible because they are complicit by purchasing the products. If we haven't participated by investments, we have by consumption. Kevin Bales writes it entirely on page 243 of his book, and at the end, : I believe that when people know that their purchasing and investing can actually help free slaves, they will do the right thing. Unfortunately, today most of us are in ignorance about slave/made goods or how our pensions or stocks and shares may be investments in slavery.(This is part true. I still have my doubts about whether people would really do the right thing. They know about Global Warming but it doesn't stop them from driving huge cars. Every pack of cigarettes says that "Smoke causes cancer" yet they still smoke!...)

However, this book will shed light into your lifestyle. It'll make you realize and hopefully change your ways, slowly, but surely.

Globalization's step children
I had no idea of the extent of "modern" slavery.This book reveals some of globalization's losers: how people become slaves and what keeps them enslaved.Jesus wept . . .
The book was delivered quickly and on time.Read it and find out how multi-national corporations, unregulated markets, and greed propigate the new slavery.>Sam ... Read more