Brokered Subjects: Sex, Trafficking, and the Politics of Freedom

Brokered Subjects digs deep into the accepted narratives of sex trafficking to reveal the troubling assumptions that have shaped both right- and left-wing agendas around sexual violence. Drawing on years of in-depth fieldwork, Elizabeth Bernstein sheds light not only on trafficking but also on the broader structures that meld the ostensible pursuit of liberation with contemporary techniques of power. Rather than any meaningful commitment to the safety of sex workers, Bernstein argues, what lies behind our current vision of trafficking victims is a transnational mix of putatively humanitarian militaristic interventions, feel-good capitalism, and what she terms carceral feminism: a feminism compatible with police batons.

• Carceral Capitalism (Semiotext(e) / Intervention Series)
• Wayward Lives, Beautiful Experiments: Intimate Histories of Social Upheaval
• Revolting Prostitutes: The Fight for Sex Workers' Rights
• The Origins of Totalitarianism
• Temporarily Yours: Intimacy, Authenticity, and the Commerce of Sex (Worlds of Desire: The Chicago Series on Sexuality, Gender, and Culture)
• Sex Workers, Psychics, and Numbers Runners: Black Women in New York City's Underground Economy (New Black Studies Series)
• Dealing in Desire: Asian Ascendancy, Western Decline, and the Hidden Currencies of Global Sex Work
• City of Women: Sex and Class in New York, 1789-1860
• Screw Consent: A Better Politics of Sexual Justice
• Making Motherhood Work: How Women Manage Careers and Caregiving