Unmaking the Global Sweatshop: Health and Safety of the World's Garment Workers

Published by University of Pennsylvania Press 2017

Unmaking the Global Sweatshop

Health and Safety of the World's Garment Workers

Edited by: Rebecca Prentice and Geert De Neve

In the series Pennsylvania Studies in Human Rights

https://doi.org/10.9783/9780812294316

Overview
Contents

About this book

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.

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.

Author / Editor 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.

Reviews

"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."

"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."

Topics

Frontmatter Publicly Available Download PDF	i
Contents Publicly Available Download PDF	v
Abbreviations Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	vii
Introduction: Rethinking Garment Workers’ Health and Safety Geert De Neve and Rebecca Prentice Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	1
Part I. The Rise and Fall of Labor Standards
1. Sweatshops and the Search for Solutions, Yesterday and Today Jennifer Bair, Mark Anner and Jeremy Blasi Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	29
2. Voluntary Versus Binding Forms of Regulation in Global Production Networks: Exploring the “Paradoxes of Partnership” in the European Anti-Sweatshop Movement Florence Palpacuer Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	57
3. Sourcing Ethical Fashion for Collegiate Apparel: “School House” Lessons in Business and Ethics Caitrin Lynch and Ingrid Hagen-Keith Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	87
Part II. From Structures to Actors, and Back
4. Capital over Labor: Health and Safety in Export Processing Zone Garment Production since 1947 Patrick Neveling Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	123
5. Discourses of Compensation and the Normalization of Negligence: The Experience of the Tazreen Factory Fire Mahmudul H. Sumon, Nazneen Shifa and Saydia Gulrukh Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	147
6. Garment Sweatshop Regimes, the Laboring Body, and the Externalization of Social Responsibility over Health and Safety Provisions Alessandra Mezzadri Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	173
Part III. Rethinking Health as Well-Being at Work and Home
7. Limited Leave? Clinical Provisioning and Healthy Bodies in Sri Lanka’s Apparel Sector Kanchana N. Ruwanpura Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	203
8. Toward Meaningful Health and Safety Measures: Stigma and the Devaluation of Garment Work in Sri Lanka’s Global Factories Sandya Hewamanne Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	226
9. Beyond Building Safety: An Ethnographic Account of Health and Well-Being on the Bangladesh Garment Shop Floor Hasan Ashraf Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	250
Afterword: Politics After Rana Plaza Dina M. Siddiqi Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	275
List of Contributors Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	283
Index Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	287
Acknowledgments Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	291

Language: English
Publisher: University of Pennsylvania Press
Audience: College/higher education;
Pages
- Main content: 304
Illustrations
- Other: 3 illus.
Keywords: Global supply chain; health and safety; power relations; supply-chain system; factory floor; human rights law; garment industry; garment workers; outsourcing; subcontracting; labor standards; global South; fair trade

eBook

Published: July 31, 2017
ISBN: 9780812294316