Reviewed by:

• Contemporary Slavery: The Rhetoric of Global Human Rights Campaigns ed. by Annie Bunting & Joel Quirk
• Kerry Ward (bio)

The cover of Contemporary Slavery signals to readers that this is not one of the usual books on modern slavery—there are no images of chains, no photos of distressed or undressed young women, no snapshots of exploited laborers. Instead, Beth W. Stewart's enigmatic painting resistance with its layers of text and color woven together with slashes of red seemingly carved into the surface draw attention to the book title and subtitle The Rhetoric of Global Human Rights Campaigns. Stewart's inspiration for the painting invoke the challenges of interpreting contemporary slavery: "Sometimes, what we feel and sense lose meaning as soon as the threads are untangled and made legible in the formulaic ways expected for public consumption."¹ Annie Bunting and Joel Quirk, two leading scholars on gender and contemporary slavery, have brought together a wide range of human rights scholars and scholar-activists to focus on this problem. The twelve chapters offer case studies of contemporary exploitation that are defined as "slavery" and examine the implications of this conceptualization for the way these forms of exploitation are understood, described, analyzed, and dealt with in law, policy, and in the public sphere. What makes this collection unique is its unflinchingly critical approach to the rhetorical framing of "contemporary slavery" in global human rights discourse and campaigns.

In her Foreword, Gulnara Shahinian, first United Nations Special Rapporteur on contemporary forms of slavery gets to the heart of the current political dilemma inherent in the politics of human trafficking and contemporary slavery.² While governments and the global organizations to which they belong, including the United Nations, enthusiastically make proclamations, treaties, laws, and policies condemning human trafficking they are less willing to acknowledge slavery as a separate category for analysis and action. Decades of fighting against human trafficking have not resulted in the abolition of forms of exploitation that can [End Page 237] be defined as slavery and which are based on multiple forms of discrimination and abuses of personal and political authority aimed at vulnerable groups of people within societies and those who attempt to flee their exploitation and abuse by crossing borders.

Contemporary slavery is examined through three lenses: Cause, Rhetoric, Practice. Four chapters in each three parts examine case studies from around the world. These structural divisions aren't definitive as many of the chapters explore all three themes. The authors come from a range of disciplines including anthropology, business, gender studies, history, law, political science, and sociology, and they critique various methodologies applied to contemporary slavery. Most authors practice at the intersection between scholarship and activism on human rights and contemporary slavery. The editors have not enforced conceptual or thematic consistency so readers will identify some contradictions in critiques and use of terminology and concepts between the chapters. The Bellagio-Harvard Guidelines on the Legal Parameters of Slavery are appended to the book. Both editors, Bunting and Quirk, and a contributing author, Jean Allain (one of the world's leading experts on the legal definition of slavery in international law) were coauthors of the Guidelines.

In the opening chapter Bunting and Quirk ask the obvious but rarely answered question—Why has the fight against "modern" or "contemporary" slavery, often defined as the "fight against human trafficking," not resulted in a significant decrease in these forms of exploitation? Modern slavery as human trafficking has become the most widespread human rights issue of the twenty-first century. Anti-slavery and anti-human trafficking campaigns permeate every level of politics and activism from grassroots to global and yet the "problem" seems to be increasing on every front with only minimal success at alleviation. Bunting and Quirk argue that this dilution of the concept of slavery into a general term for exploitation is part of the problem. Moreover, they are highly critical of the "sensationalist, self-serving, and superficial interventions" employing common rhetorical strategies and images that permeate contemporary activism which achieves very shallow support and results.^3...

审核人：

• 当代奴隶制：全球人权运动的修辞版。安妮·邦廷（Annie Bunting）和乔尔·奎克（Joel Quirk）
• 凯里·沃德（生物）

《当代奴隶制》的封面向读者传达了这不是关于现代奴隶制的常见书籍之一–没有锁链的图像，没有苦恼或脱衣服的年轻女性的照片，没有被剥削的劳工的快照。取而代之的是，贝丝·斯图尔特（Beth W. Stewart）的神秘绘画抗拒性，其文字和颜色层与表面似乎刻有红色的斜线交织在一起，引起了人们对书名和副标题《全球人权运动的修辞》的关注。斯图尔特的画作灵感激发了对当代奴隶制的诠释挑战：“有时，一旦线程被缠结并且以预期的公共消费方式变得清晰可辨，我们的感觉和感觉就会失去意义。” ^1个性别与当代奴隶制方面的两位主要学者安妮·邦廷和乔尔·奎克，汇集了各种各样的人权学者和学者活动家来关注这个问题。十二章提供了被定义​​为“奴隶制”的当代剥削案例研究，并研究了这种概念化对法律，政策和公共领域中对这些剥削形式的理解，描述，分析和处理方式的含义。 。该系列之所以与众不同，是因为它坚定不移地采用了批判性的方法来处理全球人权话语和运动中“当代奴隶制”的修辞框架。

联合国第一位当代形式奴隶制问题特别报告员古纳拉·沙希尼安（Gulnara Shahinian）在其序言中谈到了人口贩运和当代奴隶制政治固有的当前政治困境。²虽然各国政府及其所属的全球组织，包括联合国，热情地发表谴责贩运人口的声明，条约，法律和政策，但他们不太愿意承认奴隶制是进行分析和采取行动的单独类别。几十年来，与人口贩运作斗争并未导致废除一切形式的剥削，这些剥削可以[End Page 237]被定义为奴隶制，其基础是针对社会中的弱势群体以及企图通过边界逃脱其剥削和虐待的人们的多种形式的歧视和滥用个人和政治权威。

当代奴隶制从三个方面进行考察：因果，修辞，实践。每三部分中的四章介绍了来自世界各地的案例研究。这些结构划分并不确定，因为许多章节都探讨了这三个主题。作者来自人类学，商业，性别研究，历史，法律，政治学和社会学等众多学科，他们对适用于当代奴隶制的各种方法进行了批评。大多数作者在人权与当代奴隶制的学术与行动主义的交汇处进行实践。编辑人员并没有强制概念或主题上的一致性，因此读者将在各章之间的批评以及术语和概念的使用中发现一些矛盾之处。《奴隶制法律参数的贝拉吉奥-哈佛指南》附在书后。邦廷和古尔克（Bunting and Quirk）这两位编辑以及特约作者让·艾伦（Jean Allain）（国际法上关于奴隶制的法律定义的全球领先专家之一）都是《准则》的合著者。

在开头一章中，邦廷和古克（Bunting and Quirk）提出了一个显而易见但很少回答的问题：为什么与“现代”或“当代”奴隶制作斗争，通常被定义为“打击人口贩运”，但并未导致这些形式的奴隶制大幅度减少开发？作为人口贩运的现代奴隶制已成为二十一世纪最普遍的人权问题。从基层到全球，反奴隶制和反人口贩运运动渗透到各个层次的政治和行动主义之中，然而在各个方面，“问题”似乎都在增加，而缓解方面的成功却微乎其微。Bunting和Quirk认为，将奴隶制概念简化为剥削的通用术语是问题的一部分。而且，他们对“煽情主义者，^{3 ...}