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Disposable People: New Slavery in the Global Economy Kevin Bales 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.
All of the author's royalties from this book go to fund anti-slavery projects around the world. |
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Mauritania (Cultures of the World) Ettagale Blauer, Jason Laure |
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Brown-Sequard: An Improbable Genius Who Transformed Medicine Michael J. Aminoff MD Brown-S�guard: An Improbable Genius Who Transformed Medicine traces the strange career of an eccentric, restless, widely admired, nineteenth-century physician-scientist who eventually came to be scorned by antivivisectionists for his work on animals, by churchgoers who believed that he encouraged licentious behavior, and by other scientists for his unorthodox views and for claims that, in fact, he never made. An improbable genius whose colorful life was characterized by dramatic reversals of fortune, he was a founder-physician of England's premier neurological hospital and held important professorships in America and France.
Brown-S�guard identified the sensory pathways in the spinal cord and emphasized functional processes in the integrative actions of the nervous system, thereby anticipating modern concepts of how the brain operates. He also discovered the function of the nerves that supply the blood vessels and thereby control their caliber, and the associated reflexes that adjust the circulation to bodily needs. He was the first to show that the adrenal glands are essential to life and suggested that other organs have internal secretions. He injected himself with ground-up animal testicles, claiming an invigorating effect, and this approach led to the development of modern hormone replacement therapy.
Charles-�douard Brown-S�guard was reportedly "one of the greatest discover of facts that the world has ever seen". It has also been suggested that "if his reasoning power had equaled his power of observation he might have done for physiology what Newton did for physics." In fact, scientific advances in the years since his death have provided increasing support for many of his once-ridiculed beliefs. |
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The Western Saharans Virginia Thompson, Richard Adloff A comprehensive economic, political, and social portrait of the key constituents in the conflict over the Western Sahara. |
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Adventures in Africa Gianni Celati "In the life of a tourist who travels a bit far, I think that at a certain point, a question necessarily arises: 'But what have I come here for?' A question that sets in motion a great cinema of justification to oneself, so that one doesn't have to seriously say to oneself: 'I'm here doing nothing.'"
In 1997 the celebrated Italian novelist and essayist Gianni Celati accompanied his friend, filmmaker Jean Talon, on a journey to West Africa which took them from Mali to Senegal and Mauritania. The two had been hoping to research a documentary about Dogon priests, but frustrated by red tape, their voyage became instead a touristic adventure. The vulnerable, prickly, insightful Celati kept notebooks of the journey, now translated by Adria Bernardi as Adventures in Africa. Celati is the privileged traveler, overwhelmed by customs he doesn't understand, always at the mercy of others who are trying to sell him something he doesn't want to buy, and aware of himself as the Tourist who is always a little disoriented and at the center of the continual misadventures that are at the heart of travel.
Celati's book is both a travelogue in the European tradition and a trenchant meditation on what it means to be a tourist. Celati learns to surrender to the chaos of West Africa and in the process produces a work of touching and comic descriptions, in the lucid and ironic prose that is his hallmark. Hailed as one of the best travelogues on Africa ever written and awarded the first Zerilli-Marimó prize, Adventures in Africa is a modest yet profound account of the utter discombobulation of travel. |
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Les trajectoires d'un Etat-frontiere (French Edition) Mauritania and understandings of the historical, social, political and geostrategic trajectories of the country have suffered from a lack of in-depth study in the social sciences. Consequentially, interpretations lacking in rigour in terms of their social complexity have abounded. In order to break with the weak, clichéd and unsubtle analyses in this complex social space, this book brings together contributions from leading Mauritanian scholars engaged in a unique collaborative project with academics from outside the country. This book aims to bring new perspectives to the historically established disjuncture between the national and international environments, and local, regional and global factors. |
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Mauritania: The Struggle for Democracy (Studies on North Africa) Noel Foster Why did a clique of Mauritanian officers risk their lives to overthrow the autocrat they had served for twenty years, only to cede power to an elected civilian? And having won acclaim for their commitment to a process of democratic transition, why did most of these officers join a year later to overthrow the newly elected president? Had the international community been fooled by a military junta or was it complicit in creating an elaborate pseudo-democratic facade?
Drawing on numerous interviews and field research in an Islamic republic wracked by ethnic tensions, terrorism, dire poverty, and the living legacy of slavery, Noel Foster addresses these questions to reveal the complex forces at work in Mauritania's long struggle for better governance. |
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West African Early Towns: Archaeology of Households in Urban Landscapes (Anthropological Papers (Univ of Michigan, Museum of Anthropology)) Augustin Holl West African Awdaghost (Tegdaoust) emerged as a vital medieval trade center before its decline in the sixteenth century AD. Extensively excavated, and accompanied by a large body of published material, Awdaghost provides a unique opportunity for the application of household archaeology to a West African settlement. By examining the building sequences of the habitation complexes, with their evolving space allocations, this monograph demonstrates how the household units in Awdaghost reflect fluctuating social organization and economic conditions. |
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Historical Dictionary of Mauritania (Historical Dictionaries of Africa) Anthony G. Pazzanita Mauritania is bordered by Senegal in the south, Mali in the east, Algeria in the far northeast, and the disputed territory of Western Sahara to the north. Comprised mostly of vast stretches of desert, this young country has escaped the ravages of the violent interstate and civil conflicts that have so bedeviled Africa. Mauritanian society possesses ancient antecedents and a universal religious faith that has been practiced over several centuries. These characteristics have given the country a sometimes fragile but relatively resilient sense of national identity, which has survived into the 21st century in the face of powerful political, regional, ethnic/racial, and tribal rivalries since its independence in 1960. An economy largely centered on the export of raw materials, a weak agricultural sector, and a harsh climate in most areas further add to the challenges confronting all Mauritanians.
The third edition of the Historical Dictionary of Mauritania—through its chronology, introductory essay, maps, bibliography, and hundreds of cross-referenced dictionary entries on important persons, places, events, institutions, and significant political, economic, social, and cultural aspects—provides an important reference on Mauritania. |
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Decouverte de l'espace mauritanien (Collection Connaissance de la Mauritanie) (French Edition) Anne-Marie Frerot |