"Elena Shih…makes an important contribution to critical studies of anti-trafficking. . . . an insightful read for criminology and sociology students and instructors interested in a critical approach to anti-trafficking activism."
— Journal of Human Trafficking
"An important contribution to the scholarship on human trafficking, Manufacturing Freedom reveals how market-based, anti-trafficking movements bolster the US empire and white supremacy, China’s authoritarian state power, and Thailand’s global market supremacy. . . . Highly recommended."
— CHOICE
"Elena Shih’s study of the global antitrafficking movement, weaves together insights relevant to a wide range of sociological literatures—from ethical consumption, to morality and markets, to interrogations of global, racialized capitalism and colonialism, to religion."
— American Journal of Sociology
“Shih’s book is a powerful contribution to the sociology of race and labor, shedding light on how anti-trafficking interventions are implicated in the exportation of low wage women’s labor under the guise of rescue and rehabilitation.”
— Sociology of Race and Ethnicity
“Manufacturing Freedom stands out for its important and impassioned argument, and for its superb trans-disciplinary method and approach, fluidly integrating political economy, ethnography, human rights and feminism. . . A brave critical work.” —Stephen J. Rosow, IDSS Book Award Committee Chair, State University of New York at Oswego (Emeritus)
"Manufacturing Freedom is a profound, wide-ranging, and deeply researched ethnography of the global anti-trafficking movement. Elena Shih weaves together insights from across the social sciences with extensive fieldwork in the United States, China, and Thailand to upend the taken-for-granted morality of commodified efforts to 'rescue' sex workers. A powerful and compelling contribution to scholarship on gender, markets, labor, and transnational social movements."—Rene Almeling, author of GUYnecology: The Missing Science of Men's Reproductive Health
"Sharply argued and deeply ambitious, Manufacturing Freedom provides an unflinching and sustained confrontation with the convergence of sex, labor, humanitarianism, and capital in anti-trafficking campaigns, as well as with workers’ efforts on their own behalf."⏤Mimi Thi Nguyen, author of The Gift of Freedom: War, Debt, and Other Refugee Passages
"Deeply insightful and profoundly relevant, this is a must-read for anyone curious about what it means to 'rescue' women in the global South from sex work. Manufacturing Freedom reveals the centrality of religious conversion and rigid patriarchal gender scripts to rehabilitation, and the ways that these rehabilitation projects repeat racialized tropes of white saviors and Asian sex slaves and reinscribe US imperialism."⏤Kamala Kempadoo, coeditor of White Supremacy, Racism and the Coloniality of Anti-Trafficking
“Manufacturing Freedom shows us that seemingly well-known social issues may be dangerously construed. Shih takes us into the world of human trafficking and offers surprising explanations for what is going on and what to do about it. The view from the global North has privileged the trope of 'modern-day slavery' and benefited the anti-trafficking industrial complex. What would happen, Shih asks, if we listened to those too long ignored in the anti-trafficking movement? What would happen if we studied and took seriously the experiences and expertise of those dealing with human trafficking at close range in their own countries? The answers are novel and needed.”—Frederick F. Wherry, Professor of Sociology, Princeton University
"Shih's multi-sited ethnography makes groundbreaking contributions to the scholarship on caring labor and race. Manufacturing Freedom is a must-read for its methodological innovation, empirical richness, and theoretical sophistication."⏤Sharmila Rudrappa, author of Discounted Life: The Price of Global Surrogacy in India
