Sweatshop Regimes in the Indian Garment Industry

Sweatshop Regimes in the Indian Garment Industry
Author: Alessandra Mezzadri
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
Total Pages: 259
Release: 2017
Genre: Business & Economics
ISBN: 1107116961

"Analyses the politics of production and labour control characterizing the Indian readymade garment industry since its entry into the global arena"--

Unmaking the Global Sweatshop

Unmaking the Global Sweatshop
Author: Rebecca Prentice
Publisher: University of Pennsylvania Press
Total Pages: 304
Release: 2017-08-25
Genre: Business & Economics
ISBN: 0812249399

Unmaking the Global Sweatshop gathers the work of leading anthropologists and ethnographers studying the global garment industry's impact on workers' well-being and examines the relationship between the politics of labor and initiatives to protect workers' health and safety.

The Sweatshop Regime

The Sweatshop Regime
Author: Alessandra Mezzadri
Publisher:
Total Pages: 246
Release: 2017
Genre: Clothing trade
ISBN: 9781316675236

"Analyses the politics of production and labour control characterizing the Indian readymade garment industry since its entry into the global arena"--

Unmaking the Global Sweatshop

Unmaking the Global Sweatshop
Author: Rebecca Prentice
Publisher: University of Pennsylvania Press
Total Pages: 300
Release: 2017-07-31
Genre: Political Science
ISBN: 0812294319

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.

Labor, Global Supply Chains, and the Garment Industry in South Asia

Labor, Global Supply Chains, and the Garment Industry in South Asia
Author: Sanchita Saxena
Publisher: Routledge
Total Pages: 298
Release: 2019-06-27
Genre: Business & Economics
ISBN: 0429771754

This book argues that larger flaws in the global supply chain must first be addressed to change the way business is conducted to prevent factory owners from taking deadly risks to meet clients’ demands in the garment industry in Bangladesh. Using the 2013 Rana Plaza disaster as a departure point, and to prevent such tragedies from occurring in the future, this book presents an interdisciplinary analysis to address the disaster which resulted in a radical change in the functioning of the garment industry. The chapters present innovative ways of thinking about solutions that go beyond third-party monitoring. They open up possibilities for a renewed engagement of international brands and buyers within the garment sector, a focus on direct worker empowerment using technology, the role of community-based movements, developing a model of change through enforceable contracts combined with workers movements, and a more productive and influential role for both factory owners and the government. This book makes key interventions and rethinks the approaches that have been taken until now and proposes suggestions for the way forward. It engages with international brands, the private sector, and civil society to strategize about the future of the industry and for those who depend on it for their livelihood. A much-needed review and evaluation of the many initiatives that have been set up in Bangladesh in the wake of Rana Plaza, this book is a valuable addition to academics in the fields of development studies, gender and women’s studies, human rights, poverty and practice, political science, economics, sociology, anthropology, and South Asian studies.

Labour Control and Union Agency in Global Production Networks

Labour Control and Union Agency in Global Production Networks
Author: Tatiana López
Publisher: Springer Nature
Total Pages: 323
Release: 2023-03-15
Genre: Science
ISBN: 3031273877

This book puts Indian garment workers and their organisations at the centre of the analysis. Taking the Bangalore export-garment cluster as a case study, the book explores the conditions that enable but also constrain the capacities of garment workers’ unions to build collective power vis-à-vis employers and thereby improve their conditions. Drawing on theoretical concepts from labour geography, relational economic geography, and Global Production Network (GPN) analysis, the book highlights, on the one hand, how the complex labour control regime in the Bangalore export-garment cluster poses manifold challenges and constraints for workers’ and unions’ collective agency. On the other hand, the book illustrates the various networked agency strategies that local garment unions in Bangalore have developed over the years to overcome these constraints by tapping into coalitional power resources from worker, consumer and labour rights organisations in the Global North. This book is therefore highly relevant for economic geographers and other scholars interested in dynamics of labour and development in GPNs as well as for unionists and labour rights activists committed to improving working conditions in the global garment industry. This is an open access book.

Class Dynamics of Development

Class Dynamics of Development
Author: Jonathan Pattenden
Publisher: Routledge
Total Pages: 264
Release: 2018-12-07
Genre: Social Science
ISBN: 1351740296

This book argues that class relations are constitutive of development processes and central to understanding inequality within and between countries. It does so via a transdisciplinary approach that draws on case studies from Asia, Latin America and sub-Saharan Africa. Contributors illustrate and explain the diversity of forms of class relations, and the ways in which they interplay with other social relations of dominance and subordination, such as gender and ethnicity as part of a wider project to revitalise class analysis in the study of development problems and experiences. Class is conceived as arising out of exploitative social relations of production, but is formulated through and expressed by multiple determinations. By illuminating the diversity of social formations, this book illustrates the depth and complexity present in Marx’s method. This book was originally published as a special issue of Third World Quarterly.

Handbook on Social Structure of Accumulation Theory

Handbook on Social Structure of Accumulation Theory
Author: McDonough, Terrence
Publisher: Edward Elgar Publishing
Total Pages: 424
Release: 2021-12-07
Genre: Business & Economics
ISBN: 1788975979

This pioneering Handbook offers a state-of-the-art exploration of the social structure of accumulation theory, a leading theory of stages of capitalism, expertly summarising its development to date. It breaks new ground in several areas, including econometric evidence for the theory and developing institutional analyses of technology and the environment.

Women’s Productive and Reproductive Labour

Women’s Productive and Reproductive Labour
Author: Ayşe Arslan
Publisher: Taylor & Francis
Total Pages: 151
Release: 2023-07-27
Genre: Business & Economics
ISBN: 1000909786

This book looks at the dynamic relationship between women’s productive and reproductive work in a Global South country from a Global South perspective. Applying a feminist political economy and historical materialist approach and building on an ethnographic extended case study, it analyses the relationships between class and gender across both the productive and reproductive realms at the macro and micro levels in the case of women garment workers in Turkey. Overall, it shows that the material and social conditions of women’s productive and reproductive work co-constitute each other. It suggests that productive and social reproductive labour should be examined as an integrated process and an interrelated social relation, in constant dialogue with other social relations. This book is of interest to researchers and students in the disciplines of gender studies, labour studies, feminist economics, sociology and development studies. Given that most studies on social reproduction have largely focused on the Global North, this book is of particular interest to those in search of a more comprehensive and holistic understanding. It is also of great relevance to policymakers concerned with gender and labour issues as well as labour and feminist activists.