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.

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

About the Author
Alessandra Mezzadri teaches in the department of Development Studies at the School of Oriental and African Studies, University of London. Her research interests focus on globalisation and processes of labour informalisation; materialist approaches to global commodity chain analysis and global industrial systems, labour standards and CSR; gender and feminist theory; and the political economy of India. She has investigated in depth the Indian garment industry over a span of ten years, and illustrated the different ways in which distinct regional sweatshops are formed and reproduced across the Subcontinent.


Book Information
ISBN 9781107116962
Author Alessandra Mezzadri
Format Hardback
Page Count 258
Imprint Cambridge University Press
Publisher Cambridge University Press
Weight(grams) 480g
Dimensions(mm) 234mm * 158mm * 21mm