Unmaking the Global Sweatshop

Rebecca Prentice, Geert De Neve

"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...