Policy Seed Grant | 2004-2005
Strange Bedfellows? Feminism, the Christian Right, and Current U.S. Policies against "Trafficking in Persons"
by Elizabeth Bernstein (Barnard Sociology)
This project traces the strategies and ambitions of the unlikely coalition of feminists, conservative Christians, and bipartisan state actors who have successfully encoded their concerns about sexual slavery and forced migration into broad-ranging policies against "trafficking in persons." Drawing on ethnographic research, in-depth interviews, and oral histories, the research seeks to explain how contemporary campaigns against human trafficking have mobilized constituencies with opposing backgrounds, interests, and political agendas. The goal is the production of a book manuscript that will situate the present wave of trafficking debates within the sociological and interdisciplinary literatures on the significance of sex, gender, and evangelical Protestantism in contemporary United States political culture.
