ABSTRACT
This chapter illuminates the broad range of roles played by applied anthropologists. As this chapter's case study makes eminently clear, applied feminist anthropology's chief contribution to understandings of sex trafficking is an insistence that effective assistance measures must account for the complex realities of everyday life. Feminist anthropology is uniquely able to use both theory and method in understanding sex trafficking because of its long history of examining the nuances of privilege while developing methodological tools that encourage researchers to elicit multiple perspectives. Most feminist anthropologists believe that gender is a set of culturally constructed behavioral norms that vary considerably from place to place. Using an applied feminist anthropological perspective reveals that female migrants like the Uzbek women are deeply disadvantaged by definitions and characterizations of sex trafficking that are far too simplistic to take the complex realities of their lives into account. The chapter concludes with several suggestions for changes to the contemporary global antitrafficking system.
