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

1126028738
Unmaking the Global Sweatshop: Health and Safety of the World's Garment Workers
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.

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

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

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

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

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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.


Product Details

ISBN-13: 9780812249392
Publisher: University of Pennsylvania Press, Inc.
Publication date: 08/25/2017
Series: Pennsylvania Studies in Human Rights
Pages: 304
Product dimensions: 6.20(w) x 9.10(h) x 1.10(d)

About the Author

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.

Table of Contents

Abbreviations vii

Introduction: Rethinking Garment Workers' Health and Safety Geert De Neve Rebecca Prentice 1

Part I The Rise and Fall of Labor Standards

1 Sweatshops and the Search for Solutions, Yesterday and Today Jennifer Bair Mark Anner Jeremy Blasi 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 57

3 Sourcing Ethical Fashion for Collegiate Apparel: "School House" Lessons in Business and Ethics Caitrin Lynch Ingrid Hagen-Keith 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 123

5 Discourses of Compensation and the Normalization of Negligence: The Experience of the Tazreen Factory Fire Mahmudul H. Sumon Nazneen Shifa Saydia Gulrukh 147

6 Garment Sweatshop Regimes, the Laboring Body, and the Externalization of Social Responsibility over Health and Safety Provisions Alessandra Mezzadri 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 203

8 Toward Meaningful Health and Safety Measures: Stigma and the Devaluation of Garment Work in Sri Lanka's Global Factories Sandya Hewamanne 226

9 Beyond Building Safety: An Ethnographic Account of Health and Well-Being on the Bangladesh Garment Shop Floor Hasan Ashraf 250

Afterword: Politics After Rana Plaza Dina M. Siddiqi 275

List of Contributors 283

Index 287

Acknowledgments 291

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