Gargi Bhattacharyya
Traffick : The Illicit Movement of People and Things
(London: Pluto Press; 2005, 220pp.)

The moral of Gargi Bhattacharyya's study of the dark underside of globalization is set out clearly: "All accounts of progress rest on some untold human cost - the sacrifices of those whose labour transforms society but who do not enjoy the benefits of this transformation." 

Globalization is generally seen as the integration on a world scale of goods, money,  ideas, and people.  She notes that "This work argues that we are all living through some wondrous and horrific world changes - and that attempts at understanding what is happening must make space for both the wonder and the horror of our times."  She quotes  from Marshall Berman's groundbreaking account of cultural change All That Is Solid Melts Into Air "To be modern is to find ourselves in an environment that promises us adventure, power, joy, growth, transformation of ourselves and the world - and, at the same time, that threatens to destroy everything we have, everything we know, everything we are."

Bhattacharyya's study stresses more the horrific than the joyous.  As she stresses "recent rumblings from international institutions have suggested that there exists a criminal and illegitimate set of global networks that threatens to destabilise the more celebrated transactions of the global economy proper.  It is this parallel world that forms the focus for this volume."

She then analyses that trade in drugs from what have become 'narco-states' such as Afghanistan and Burma as well as the impact on states that serve as transit such as Russia, Haiti or Nigeria.  The United Nations World Drug Report states that the "apparently neat division among producer, transit and consumer states has clearly broken down since the late 1980s.  Over the last decade we have witnessed an increasing globalization of drugs markets, which has enveloped parts of the developing world, especially with regard to heroin and cocaine.  At least 134 countries and territories were faced with a drug abuse problem in the 1990s.  Three quarters of all countries report abuse of heroin and two thirds abuse of cocaine."

Money from the drug trade must often be 'laundered' to be invested in other, often legal, sectors of the economy.  Money laundering is part of the vast flow of money world wide, some for longer-term investment but part as speculation on the exchange value of currency.

There is also a vast flow of arms, often those called 'light weapons' used in internal conflicts as well as for crime.

Bhattacharyya has a powerful chapter on "Circulating Bodies in the Global Marketplace" on migration for work.  As she writes "The traffick in human beings reveals the hunger of the global economy for human labour and   disrespect for human dignity." She goes on to write "Drugs, guns, illegal immigrants and organised crime - these form a nightmare vision of how the poor world becomes integrated into the global economy, in ways that endanger individuals and disrupt societies."

While there is no doubt that drugs, guns and the traffick in persons endanger and harm individuals, she does not show that this shadow economy can destablise or disrupt societies or that such illegal trade is harmful to the global economy.  Those involved in the illegal economies are not opponents of globalization.  They share the same values of making money and gaining enough power so as not to be disturbed as other businessmen.  As Bhattacharyya writes " I have tried to explain that each new demon - gangsters, drugs, guns, migrants - establishes a global reach only by hitching a ride on the formal processes of globalisation… No one believes that things can go on as they are.  After all the painful and turbulent stories related in this book, in the end each one suggests that some kind of change is almost upon us.  These seemingly solid structures are melting into air again.  The only question is - what comes next?"

I would suggest that many believe that things can go on as they are.  While there may be moral reasons to counter drugs, weapons and the trafficking of persons, there are no economic reasons, and Bhattacharyya makes her appeal on economic, not moral grounds.  She quotes a telling observation of Manuel Castells in End of Millenium "There is no doubt that the criminal economy represents a sizable, and most dynamic, segment of Latin American economies in this end of millennium.  Moreover, unlike traditional patterns of internationalization of production and trade in Latin America, this is Latin American controlled, export-oriented industry, with proven global competitiveness."

Thus, I think that the illegal trading patterns need to be watched closely not because of their destabilizing impact on the world economy but because they often debase the individual and prevent his potential growth as a person.

Rene Wadlow