The Sweatshop Regime: Labouring Bodies, Exploitation & Garments Made in India, SOAS
Channel: SOAS University of London
Date: 2016-10-31

https://www.soas.ac.uk/development/
This book launch seminar titled "The Sweatshop Regime: Labouring Bodies, Exploitation and Garments Made in India" was given by Dr Alessandra Mezzadri as part of the Development Studies Seminar Series at SOAS University of London on18 October 2016.

You can find out more about this event at https://goo.gl/hRZWcM

This book explores the processes producing and reproducing the garment sweatshop in India.Drawing from Marxian and feminist insights, the book theorizes the sweatshop as a complex ‘regime’ of exploitation and oppression, jointly crafted by global, regional and local actors, and working across productive and reproductive realms. The analysis illustrates the links between the physical and social materiality of production, unveiling the distinct circuits of exploitation corresponding to different clothing items. As these circuits change across India, on the basis of regional patterns of product specialisation, so does the logic of the sweatshop, its composition, the social profile of the labouring poor engaged in garment work, and their working conditions. Through the eyes of sourcing actors, the whole country can be re-imagined as a giant department store, with different garment collections exhibited at different floors, and created through the sweat of different sets of labourers.

Filmed and edited by: Zipporah Goetze