Garments without Guilt?
Global Labour Justice and Ethical Codes in Sri Lankan Apparels

Explores how labour struggles in the post-1977 period in Sri Lanka provided important resistance to capitalist processes.

Kanchana N. Ruwanpura (Author)

9781108832014, Cambridge University Press

Hardback, published 16 June 2022

224 pages
23.6 x 15.8 x 1.8 cm, 0.44 kg

'Ruwanpura's Garments Without Guilt? is a fruit of over a decade-long grounded fieldwork with apparel workers which puts in conversation their everyday realities in manufacturing with the industry's ethical standards. This book makes a significant contribution to scholarship on human geography and labour governance for its focus on the workers and their struggles (and victories) in a system that otherwise obscures the labour's role in shaping industries and their ethical and economic success. One of its key contributions is towards how the local social, political and economic realities determine the efficacy of globally enacted ethical regimes and how this translates into local industry efforts in devising and implementing their own standards. It is also significant that this book neatly compiles the labour histories of Sri Lanka from scattered sources, filling a gap in literature, while presenting the story of the apparel industry as told by the workers.' Achalie Kumarage, Competition and Change

Sri Lanka's apparel sector holds an enviable place in the imaginary of its competitors for having a niche position amongst global retailers, given its claims of producing 'garments without guilt'. Exploitative labour conditions are not part of the industry's portfolio – ethicality, eco-friendly production and unblemished conditions of work are. Sri Lanka's transition away from a protracted ethnic war has meant that the industry portrays itself as investing in the former war zone to create jobs without reflection on how its vaunted mantle, the deployment of ethical codes effectively, themselves may be under duress. This book uses an analytical framing informed by labour and feminist perspectives to explore how labour struggles in the post-1977 period in Sri Lanka provided important resistance to capitalist processes and continue to shape the industry both within and outside of the shop floor. It studies contextual moments in the country's recent history to rupture the dominant narrative and record the centrality of labour in the success of the country's apparel industry.

Acknowledgements
List of Published Works and Funders
List of Tables, Figures and Images
Abbreviations
1. Introduction: Global Labour Justice via Ethical Codes
2. Labouring for Apparels: Labour Geographies and Feminist Inflections
3. Fieldwork: Prolonged Phases and Multiple Moments
4. Clothing the World – Guilt Free? Sri Lanka's Apparel Landscape
5. Neglected Labour Histories: the Sri Lankan State Responds to Labour
6. Ethicality with a Blind Eye? Ethical Code Practices at Production Sites
7. From War to Work: Ethicality Amidst Post-War Trauma? 8. Concluding Thoughts: Grounded Governance?
Appendix
References
Index.

Subject Areas: Political economy [KCP], Labour economics [KCF], Economics [KC], Central government [JPQ], Politics & government [JP], Feminism & feminist theory [JFFK], Development studies [GTF]