Kevin Bales on Slavery in the Economy of the Anthropocene: Barbara Weinstock Lectures on the Morals of Trade

March 14, 2023, 4:10 pm – Lecture with Kevin Bales

March 15, 2023, 4:10 pm – Panel Discussion

About this Lecture:

Crucially, in the 20th century, the links between slavery, conflict, environmental destruction, economics, and consumption, began to both strengthen and evolve. The availability of people who might be enslaved dramatically increased in line with population growth, generating the parallel collapse in the acquisition cost of slaves. The increase in the number of small scale conflicts led to a sharp uptick of the use of slaves in war.

What is just now coming to light, and is critical to the understanding of both slavery and the Anthropocene, is the very large and negative environmental impact of this very small number of slaves worldwide. The 40 million in slavery worldwide have a vast and negative environmental impact. Slave-based activities (brick making, deforestation, etc.) are estimated to generate 2.54 billion tonnes of CO2 per annum – this is greater than the individual emissions of all the world’s nations except China and the USA. Globally, slaves are forced to do work that is highly destructive to the environment. This work feeds directly into global consumption in foodstuffs, in minerals – both precious and for electronics – construction materials, clothing, and foodstuffs. Most of this work is unregulated leading to extensive poisoning of watersheds, the clear-cutting of forests, and enormous and unregulated emissions of carcinogenic gases as well as CO2. Political corruption supports this slave-based environmental destruction and its human damage. We are clearly in a biologically and geologically new situation, hence the push to rename our current epoch the ‘Anthropocene’. So my last points will be conjectures – what are the possible futures for slavery, for our environment, for our economies, and for us?

About Kevin Bales:

Kevin Bales, CMG, FRSA is Professor of Contemporary Slavery and Research Director of the Rights Lab, University of Nottingham. He co-founded the American NGO Free the Slaves. His 1999 book Disposable People: New Slavery in the Global Economy has been published in twelve languages. Desmond Tutu called it “a well researched, scholarly and deeply disturbing expose of modern slavery.” The film based on Disposable People, which he co-wrote, won the Peabody Award and two Emmys. The Association of British Universities named his work one of “100 World-Changing Discoveries.” In 2007 he published Ending Slavery: How We Free Today’s Slaves (Grawemeyer Award). In 2009, with Ron Soodalter, he published The Slave Next Door: Modern Slavery in the United States. In 2016 his research institute was awarded the Queens Anniversary Prize, and he published Blood and Earth: Modern Slavery, Ecocide, and the Secret to Saving the World. Check out his TEDTalk.

Panelists:

Arlie Hochschild, Professor Emerita, Department of Sociology, UC Berkeley

Enrique Lopezlira, Ph.D., Director, Low-Wage Work Program, Center for Labor Research and Education, UC Berkeley

Eric Stover, Adjunct Professor of Law, Faculty Director, Human Rights Center, UC Berkeley