Sustainable Fashion: A Handbook for Educators

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The China Price: The True Cost of Chinese Competitive
Advantage

This book documents how China has leveraged its
workers, environment and future by competing for the
global business of offering “cheap goods” for Western
companies. The author details situations of institutionalised
corruption and how business is gained by those who
lie about their business practices, as she exposes how
businesses have responded to a decade of outsiders
monitoring their factories. First-hand interviews with
workers in apparel production and other sectors reveal the
human misery but also some opportunity that has resulted
from their work.

Harney, A. (2008). The China Price: The True Cost of Chinese
Competitive Advantage, New York: The Penguin Press.

The Hidden Assembly Line: Gender Dynamics of
Subcontracted Work in a Global Economy

This edited book includes case studies about subcontracted
garment assembly work carried out in small workshops
and in workers’ homes in South and Southeast Asia. Macro-
economic issues are analysed, as is the impact the work
has on women’s social status and household relations. The
book provides understanding of the limited knowledge
workers have about complex global supply chains in which
they are stakeholders.

Balakrishnan, R. (ed.) (2007) The Hidden Assembly Line:
Gender Dynamics of Subcontracted Work in a Global
Economy, Bloomfield, CT: Kumarian Press.

Making Sweatshops: The Globalization of the U.S. Apparel

Industry

This book provides a comprehensive analysis of the

globalization of the US apparel industry in a social,

historical and political context. A variety of perspectives

(labour, industry and government) are drawn upon in

analysis of trade policies leading to increasingly free trade.

The author outlines how consolidation and price-cutting

by US retailers eventually brought back sweatshops in

the U.S. and in developing countries. Special attention is

paid to how globalization affects female labour and links

the paternalistic views of the apparel industry with the

proliferation of sweatshops. A longer review of this book

can be found at http://www.huec.lsu.edu/esrab/downloads/

BookReviewMaking%20Sweatshops9031.pdf.

Rosen, E.I. (2002). Making Sweatshops: The Globalization of

the US Apparel Industry Berkeley: University of California

Press.

Monitoring Sweatshops

This book is based on the author’s research into how

monitoring of codes of conduct is carried out in the

California apparel industry, including the shortcomings of

that monitoring.

Esbenshade, J. (2004) Monitoring Sweatshops. Philadelphia:

Temple University Press.

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