Overview

Anthropologists and ethnographers examine the global garment industry's impact on workers' well-being The 2013 collapse of Rana Plaza, an eight-story garment factory in Savar, Bangladesh, killed over a thousand workers and injured hundreds more. This disaster exposed the brutal labor conditions of the global garment industry and revealed its failures as a competitive and self-regulating industry. Over the past thirty years, corporations have widely adopted labor codes on health and safety, yet too often in their working lives, garment workers across the globe encounter death, work-related injuries, and unhealthy factory environments. Disasters such as Rana Plaza notwithstanding, garment workers routinely work under conditions that not only escape public notice but also undermine workers' long-term physical health, mental well-being, and the very sustainability of their employment. Unmaking the Global Sweatshop gathers the work of leading anthropologists and ethnographers studying the global garment industry to examine the relationship between the politics of labor and initiatives to protect workers' health and safety. Contributors analyze both the labor processes required of garment workers as well as the global dynamics of outsourcing and subcontracting that produce such demands on workers' health. The accounts contained in Unmaking the Global Sweatshop trace the histories of labor standards for garment workers in the global South; explore recent partnerships between corporate, state, and civil society actors in pursuit of accountable corporate governance; analyze a breadth of initiatives that seek to improve workers' health standards, from ethical trade projects to human rights movements; and focus on the ways in which risk, health, and safety might be differently conceptualized and regulated. Unmaking the Global Sweatshop argues for an expansive understanding of garment workers' lived experiences that recognizes the politics of labor, human rights, the privatization and individualization of health-related responsibilities as well as the complexity of health and well-being. Contributors: Mark Anner, Hasan Ashraf, Jennifer Bair, Jeremy Blasi, Geert De Neve, Saydia Gulrukh, Ingrid Hagen-Keith, Sandya Hewamanne, Caitrin Lynch, Alessandra Mezzadri, Patrick Neveling, Florence Palpacuer, Rebecca Prentice, Kanchana N. Ruwanpura, Nazneen Shifa, Dina M. Siddiqi, Mahmudul H. Sumon.

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9781512826937

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Reviews

"""[A] welcome contribution to debates on how to achieve decent working and living conditions in the current system of transnational production. The editors are to be congratulated on bringing together leading anthropologists and scholars from across the social sciences who are renowned for their research on workers’ roles in the global garment industry...[T]his book will interest academics, activists and other practitioners in the garment industry who seek fresh ideas in thinking about the way forward."" * South Asia: Journal of Asian Studies * ""Unmaking the Global Sweatshop offers important insights on the issue of health and safety in the garments industry. The book successfully shows the need for a broader understanding of the issue of health and safety beyond the crucial but insufficient focus on building safety and design. The book shows the need to go beyond focusing only on the physical aspects of health and safety in the workplace into a broader understanding of mental and physical health and well-being in the workplace and beyond...In addition to researchers and students working on labour issues, the book can be useful for trade unionists, NGOs and labour activists dealing with the issue of labour in GVCs."" * Competition & Change * ""A first-rate and necessary book. In compiling the analyses of northern and southern scholars across the social sciences, Unmaking the Global Sweatshop provides original insights into the global supply chain and innovative approaches to general questions of power relationships and workers' health and safety writ large."" * Lance A. Compa, Cornell University * ""Using the unifying theme of health and safety, the editors open a wide-ranging study of power relations in the supply-chain system and on factory floors. Each chapter brings a unique perspective to these issues and provokes new ways of thinking about them."" * Susan L. Kang, City University of New York *"

"""Using the unifying theme of health and safety, the editors open a wide-ranging study of power relations in the supply-chain system and on factory floors. Each chapter brings a unique perspective to these issues and provokes new ways of thinking about them.""-- ""Susan L. Kang, City University of New York"" ""Unmaking the Global Sweatshop offers important insights on the issue of health and safety in the garments industry. The book successfully shows the need for a broader understanding of the issue of health and safety beyond the crucial but insufficient focus on building safety and design. The book shows the need to go beyond focusing only on the physical aspects of health and safety in the workplace into a broader understanding of mental and physical health and well-being in the workplace and beyond...In addition to researchers and students working on labour issues, the book can be useful for trade unionists, NGOs and labour activists dealing with the issue of labour in GVCs.""-- ""Competition & Change"" ""[A] welcome contribution to debates on how to achieve decent working and living conditions in the current system of transnational production. The editors are to be congratulated on bringing together leading anthropologists and scholars from across the social sciences who are renowned for their research on workers' roles in the global garment industry...[T]his book will interest academics, activists and other practitioners in the garment industry who seek fresh ideas in thinking about the way forward.""-- ""South Asia: Journal of Asian Studies"" ""A first-rate and necessary book. In compiling the analyses of northern and southern scholars across the social sciences, Unmaking the Global Sweatshop provides original insights into the global supply chain and innovative approaches to general questions of power relationships and workers' health and safety writ large.""-- ""Lance A. Compa, Cornell University"""

Author Information

Rebecca Prentice is Senior Lecturer in Social Anthropology at the University of Sussex. Geert De Neve is Professor of Social Anthropology and South Asian Studies at the University of Sussex.

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