Book Reviews   669

campaign, these business strategies would lead to greater productivity and

more profit.
For those interested solely in gender, there are two chapters that aren’t
about gender per se. Nevertheless, they provide a larger economic context
about the legitimation of, and challenges to, the growth of the industry.
For example, one chapter describes how labor organizers and activists
were somewhat successful in decreasing negative aspects of temporary
work. Another discusses overall transformations in the economy.
Hatton concludes that we need a new asset model of work that allows
both management flexibility and eliminates exploitation of workers. Given
recent blows to labor organizing in the United States and benefit cuts
across most industries, this solution might seem overly optimistic. Hatton
notes that moving to a new asset model is “utopian.” Her conclusions do
suggest that labor organizers should consider new strategies to access this
exploited group of workers.
This interesting book is useful for scholars interested in gender, work
and occupations, labor organizing, the economy, and research methods.
It would also be effective in graduate or advanced undergraduate courses
on work as a contemporary application of Weberian and Marxist frameworks.
Finally, the book is ideal for showing the explanatory power of content
analyses. Although Hatton did not interview temp workers, owners,
managers, or temp industry leaders, the use of various documents and
media show the influence of media in shaping economies and culture.

PATTI A. GIUFFRE
Texas State University–San Marcos

The Politics of Trafficking: The First International Movement to Combat

the Sexual Exploitation of Women. By Stephanie Limoncelli. Stanford,
CA: Stanford University Press, 2010, 217 pp., $39.95 (cloth).
DOI: 10.1177/0891243211423658

Sex trafficking has taken contemporary scholars, state officials, policy

makers, nongovernmental organizations, and religious organizations by
storm. However, by tracing the construction and diffusion of the very first
national and international antitrafficking movement from its beginnings
in Great Britain to key European countries and their colonial territories,
Limoncelli reminds us that sex trafficking is not a recent phenomenon. The
Politics of Trafficking examines historical archives of the International

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670   GENDER & SOCIETY / August 2012

Abolitionist Federation and the International Bureau, two competing voluntary

associations involved in the trafficking movement, as well as the League of
Nations to uncover debates that took place more than 100 years ago.
Limoncelli poignantly argues that the expansion of prostitution markets
was not the result of spontaneous entrepreneurship but rather was produced
by concerted state efforts to regulate and control women’s bodies. At the
intersection of national, ethnic, and classed divisions, states engaged in
nation-building projects to maintain their white superiority by constructing
racial hierarchies in relation to their colonized subjects. She provides a
critical analysis of the International Abolitionist Federation and the
International Bureau. The International Abolitionist Federation sought to
mobilize women by creating international alliances on the basis of their
common gender identity. They engaged in efforts to abolish prostitution
and sex trafficking (regardless of whether the women moved voluntarily or
forcefully) and worked against increased state regulation of prostitution.
In contrast, the purity reformers who comprised the International Bureau
worked closely with state officials and sought to institutionalize the
antitrafficking movement in order to maintain state sovereignty, legitimate
their authority, and regulate rather than abolish prostitution to protect the
state from undesirable women. The League of Nations, founded in 1919,
was an intergovernmental organization that worked closely with the
International Bureau, raising the ire of the abolitionists. However, working
closely with International Bureau, the League of Nations focused mainly on
controlling the movement of bodies between nations, repatriating foreign
women, and maintaining the right to regulate women’s sexual behaviors.
Although Limoncelli briefly discusses the tensions within the International
Abolitionist Federation and the International Bureau, I would have liked to
see an extended analysis of these tensions. It is clear that the two organizations
are inherently gendered. The International Abolitionist Federation’s push to
reach women across national borders outside of state regulation aligns with
feminist ambitions while the International Bureau’s alignment with the
state makes it structurally masculine. However, I would like to see a deeper
analysis of the individuals involved in the two associations. I find it troubling
that Limoncelli only refers to the women aligned with the abolitionist
perspective as feminists. Are the women who disagree with a staunch
abolitionist perspective not feminists because they are constrained within a
masculinist association? What about the feminists who did not align with
either the abolitionists or the regulationists?
Chapters five, six, and seven are the most empirically rigorous as
Limoncelli not only examines the Netherlands, France, and Italy where
feminists and the state played different roles in the trafficking movement

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 Book Reviews   671

but also critically extends her analysis to each country’s colonial territories.
The International Abolitionists Federation in the Netherlands developed
an antitrafficking movement led by women that was autonomous from
the state. As such, the Netherlands effectively abolished state-regulated
prostitution and was able to uniformly apply abolitionist antitrafficking
measures in the colonies. France, on the other hand, had a long history of
state-regulated prostitution, coupled with differing feminist views, which
weakened the abolitionist movement, thereby allowing the French government
to enforce an agenda that favored regulation rather than abolition. In their
colonies, French officials defended the implementation of brothels to
provide services to French troops abroad. Like France, Italy adopted a
system of state-regulated prostitution in 1860. However, Italy’s top-down
fascist government made it difficult for both the International Abolitionist
Federation and the International Bureau to advance their respective
agendas. The Italian government did little to combat prostitution in their
territories and promoted state-regulated prostitution of European and
Ethiopian migrant women. The comparative reach of Limoncelli’s analysis
provides the reader with a deeper understanding of the successes of
women’s organizations to abolish prostitution and the constraints they
faced in countries with heavy state involvement.
This is the first book to provide a rich analysis of the history of trafficking
and is therefore a must-read for undergraduate and graduate students in
sociology, gender studies, and history. Limoncelli’s multicountry analysis
in the metropole and its colonial territories is impressive. As one of the first
books to provide us with a historical backdrop to the contemporary debates
occurring between scholars of sex work and sex trafficking, the book is
extremely timely.

KIMBERLY KAY HOANG

Rice University

Making Their Place: Feminism after Socialism in Eastern Germany. By

Katja Guenther. Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press, 2010, 264 pp.,
$65 (cloth); $24.95 (paper).
DOI: 10.1177/0891243212440504

The fall of the Berlin Wall in 1989 and the re-unification of Germany
meant for women in former East Germany severe changes in their work-
places, reproductive rights, gender ideologies, and social policies. Making

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