Unraveling the garment industry : transnational organizing and women's work / Ethel C. Brooks.

Format:

Book

Author/Creator:

Brooks, Ethel Carolyn.

Series:

Social movements, protest, and contention ; v. 27.

Social movements, protest, and contention ; v. 27

Language:

English

Subjects (All):

Anti-sweatshop movement.

Protest movements--International cooperation.

Protest movements.

Women--Developing countries--Social conditions.

Women.

Developing countries.

Social conditions.

Women--Developing countries--Economic conditions.

Economic conditions.

Working class women.

Social conflict.

Physical Description:

xxxiii, 243 pages : illustrations, map ; 23 cm.

Place of Publication:

Minneapolis : University of Minnesota Press, [2007]

Summary:

Unraveling the Garment Industry is an ambitious investigation of the politics of labor and protest within an industry that has come to define the possibilities and abuses of globalization and its feminized labor: the garment industry. Focusing on three labor rights movements-against Gap clothing in El Salvador, child labor in Bangladesh, and sweatshops in New York City-Ethel C. Brooks examines how transnational consumer protest campaigns effect change, sometimes with unplanned penalties for those they intend to protect. Brooks analyzes a two-pronged problem in consumer boycott campaigns against labor abuse in the garment industry. First, how are we to understand the political necessities of local protest such as the right to unionize against the emphasis placed on consumer boycotts? Second, what and whose agency is privileged or obscured within the symbolic economies and the politics of information deployed by these campaigns? Tying both of these questions together is a commitment to seeing globalization as embedded in the everyday realities of the local. Drawing attention to the race, class, and gender assumptions central to powerful consumer boycotts, Brooks reveals how these movements unintentionally reinforce the global economic forces they denounce.

Contents:

List of acronyms

Introduction

Children, schools, and labored questions

Organizing in times of (post)war

The ideal of transnational organizing

Disciplining bodies

Women first?

Living proof

Epilogue: gender and the work of branding

Acknowledgments

Notes

Bibliography

Index.

Notes:

Includes bibliographical references (pages 203-217) and index.

ISBN:

9780816644858

0816644853

9780816644865

0816644861

OCLC:

71778951