博客來Modern slavery does not look like chains.
It looks like law.
Invisible Chains examines how ancient legal structures, institutional authority, and financial systems evolved into a form of coercion so normalized that it no longer registers as domination. There is no single owner, no overseer with a whip, and no visible point of control. Instead, participation is compelled through courts, contracts, debt, housing, employment, and administrative penalties that make exit functionally impossible for most people.
Drawing on legal history, political economy, and institutional analysis, this book argues that slavery did not disappear-it transformed. Ownership of the person was replaced by ownership of access: access to land, money, shelter, healthcare, mobility, and legitimacy itself. Banks do not need to command labor directly; courts enforce compliance. Employers do not need to threaten violence; survival does the work for them.
The elite do not rule openly. They operate behind institutions that appear neutral, procedural, and lawful. Responsibility is diffused. Accountability evaporates. The system enforces itself.
This is not a book about villains. It is a book about structure-how systems designed for order quietly became mechanisms of control, how freedom was reduced to formal choice without practical alternatives, and how an entire population can be coerced without a single illegal act.
Invisible Chains is written for readers who sense that something is fundamentally wrong with modern society but cannot quite name it-and for those willing to follow the evidence wherever it leads.
