The Sweatshop Regime
Labouring Bodies, Exploitation, and Garments Made in India

This book explores the processes producing and reproducing the garment sweatshop in India.

Alessandra Mezzadri (Author)

9781107116962, Cambridge University Press

Hardback, published 14 December 2016

258 pages
23.4 x 15.8 x 2.1 cm, 0.48 kg

This book explores the processes producing and reproducing the garment sweatshop in India. Drawing from Marxian and feminist insights, the book theorises the garment sweatshop in India as a complex 'regime' of exploitation and oppression, jointly crafted by global, regional and local actors, composed of factory and non-factory settings, and working across productive and reproductive realms. The analysis shows the tight correspondence between the physical and social materiality of garment production in India; illustrates the great social differentiation and complex patterns of labour unfreedom at work in the industry; and depicts the sweatshop as a composite 'joint enterprise' against the labouring body, which is inexorably depleted and consumed by garment work, even in the absence of major industrial disasters. By placing labour at the centre of the analysis of processes of development and globalisation, the book critically engages with key debates on industrial modernity, modern slavery, and ethical consumerism.

List of tables, figures and pictures
Acknowledgements
List of abbreviations
Introduction
1. The chain and the sweatshop
2. The commodity and the sweatshop
3. Difference and the sweatshop
4. The regional lord and the sweatshop
5. The broker and the sweatshop
6. The body and the sweatshop
7. Conclusions
References
Index.

Subject Areas: Political economy [KCP], Politics & government [JP]