Unraveling the Garment Industry

[an error occurred while processing this directive]

Unraveling the Garment Industry

Transnational Organizing and Women’s Work

Ethel C. Brooks

Table of Contents

$22.50 paper
ISBN: 0-8166-4486-1
ISBN-13: 978-0-8166-4486-5

$67.50 cloth
ISBN: 0-8166-4485-3
ISBN-13: 978-0-8166-4485-8

The consequences—both positive and negative—of consumer boycotts of sweatshop labor.

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.

“The book is highly instructive of the perils as well as promise of transnational organizing.” —Mobilization

“This powerful analysis of transnational protests against abuses of garment sweatshop workers in poor countries as well as poor immigrant workers in US sweatshops offers critical perspective with some astounding insights. Brooks’ rich international ethnographic fieldwork is well balanced with dense theories, the text written in largely accessible language. The author casts a critical, unflinching eye on campaigns organized and waged by privileged First World consumers.” —Choice

“This book poses important questions about the efficacy of transnational organizing for women garment workers. Unraveling the Garment Industry promises to be a pathbreaking contribution to the now-burgeoning field of social movements.” —American Journal of Sociology

Ethel C. Brooks is assistant professor of women’s and gender studies and sociology at Rutgers University.

304 pages | 15 halftones, 3 maps | 5 7⁄8 x 9 | 2007
Social Movements, Protest, and Contention Series, volume 27

Table of Contents

List of Acronyms
Introduction

1. Children, Schools and Labored Questions
2. Organizing in Times of (Post) War
3. The Ideal of Transnational Organizing
4. Disciplining Bodies
5. Women First?
6. Living Proof

Epilogue: Gender and the Work of Branding
Acknowledgments
Notes
Bibliography
Index

[an error occurred while processing this directive]



Unraveling the Garment Industry *Transnational Organizing and Women’s Work* Ethel C. Brooks Table of Contents		$22.50 paper ISBN: 0-8166-4486-1 ISBN-13: 978-0-8166-4486-5 $67.50 cloth ISBN: 0-8166-4485-3 ISBN-13: 978-0-8166-4485-8
The consequences—both positive and negative—of consumer boycotts of sweatshop labor. 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. “The book is highly instructive of the perils as well as promise of transnational organizing.” —Mobilization “This powerful analysis of transnational protests against abuses of garment sweatshop workers in poor countries as well as poor immigrant workers in US sweatshops offers critical perspective with some astounding insights. Brooks’ rich international ethnographic fieldwork is well balanced with dense theories, the text written in largely accessible language. The author casts a critical, unflinching eye on campaigns organized and waged by privileged First World consumers.” —Choice “This book poses important questions about the efficacy of transnational organizing for women garment workers. Unraveling the Garment Industry promises to be a pathbreaking contribution to the now-burgeoning field of social movements.” —American Journal of Sociology Ethel C. Brooks is assistant professor of women’s and gender studies and sociology at Rutgers University. 304 pages \| 15 halftones, 3 maps \| 5 7⁄8 x 9 \| 2007 Social Movements, Protest, and Contention Series, volume 27 Table of Contents List of Acronyms Introduction 1. Children, Schools and Labored Questions 2. Organizing in Times of (Post) War 3. The Ideal of Transnational Organizing 4. Disciplining Bodies 5. Women First? 6. Living Proof Epilogue: Gender and the Work of Branding Acknowledgments Notes Bibliography Index