Annotated Bibliography

I’m not finished collecting all my resources and I’m still looking. Here is my list of possible and definite resources so far. They are ordered from those I am most likely to use to those I am least interested in.

1. : Taking Aim at the Brand Bullies by and Fences and Windows:

Dispatches From the Front Lines of the Globalization Debate by Naomi Klein – I expect I’ll be using No Logo the book as my main orientating source about globalization issues and clothing.

It may also help me talk about stories which reimagine the political narrative of the clothing industry. I may also watch No Logo the film, if I have time, but for now I’m leaving it out.

Klein’s website may be cited in my final project for one small point, but so far I haven’t found enough helpful material on it to constitute including it as a major resource. In the language of our course, Klein’s thesis in No Logo might run thus:

The global corporate story of multinational corporate branded products and mass advertising has little respect for local culture; indeed it tends to co-opt or eliminate public spaces, privatizing much of value that is public and offering poor quality, unstable an unprotected employment both in usually western countries where jobs involve sale of multinational products and in those poorer countries where it manufactures the same products. In both setting it monopolizes the market, pushing out local business by the design of its business strategy. In a quest for brand promotion, the multinational message infiltrates schools in ways that are change and compromise to the quality and nature of learning. It further co-opts culture and material from political movements for commercial gain, and its attempts to brand and profit from youth culture in ways that amount to cultural theft and make youth rebellion itself hard to imagine in novel and important ways, especially rebellion from the corporate world of mass-produced brands and products.

Klein’s book examines this situation, explains how this it came to exist and explains why and how it is breeding decent in communities who feel endangered by multinational corporate business, both North American and Internationally. Resistance has involved interlocking local and global activism which brings together various desperate activist group and agendas

(feminism, workers’ rights groups, international aid groups, western urban violence prevention groups, many groups who object to advertising’s prevalence and/or its content such as culture jammers etc.) I hope to share sections of this resource strategically with other members of my group, who are studying other branches of clothing beside manufacturing and to use it myself as I delve into the relationship of my clothing to the multination and local clothing business and of my relationship as a consumer and activist with the resistance to the corporate model of clothing manufacture. I may also deal with the sales aspect of clothing, but want to make sure that this won’t infringe on any other group-member’s subject focus.

Naomi Klein has political roots. Her mother is a feminist documentarian, her father is a member of Physicians for Social Responsibility, her brother is a former director of BC’s branch of the Canadian Centre for Policy Alternatives and her Grandfather was fired from a Disney job for attempting to organize the company’s first strike and organize a union. She has identified and written as a feminist since the Montreal Massacre in 1989 prompted her to take on the identity. She is a university-educated Torontonian journalist. As far as I can tell, she is one of the main voices bridging academic and popular scholarship with activism within the western anti-globalization movement – her association with it is comparable only to Michel Moore in the United States. She is currently a writer with several political books to her name, but No

Logo was her first, following a journalism career spent working for large, respected, left-wing magazine and mainstream newspapers. Both her most recent book and No Logo have been international bestsellers and she has become a documentary filmmaker since writing No Logo.

Her writing is academically rigorous but accessible to a popular audience. (all information on

Klein here is taken from Seevak’s online bio).

I’ve also got Fences and Windows: Dispatches from the Front Lines of the Globalization Debate.

This is a collection of short essays, speeches, articles and other short writings by Klein related to globalization. I am hopeful that it will be even more helpful than No Logo in offering an on-the-ground perspective on what can be done to combat the abuse of power by global multinational businesses in the clothing industry, although No Logo itself has content about resistance to corporate power which can and does apply to the clothing industry.

Klein, Naomi. No LOGO: Taking Aim at The Corporate Brand Bullies. : Vintage Canada, 2000. Print.

Klein, Naomi. Fences and Windows: Dispatches from the Front Lines of the Globalization Debate. Toronto: Vintage Canada, 2002. Print.

2. A Year Without “Made In China”: One Family’s True Life Adventure in the Global Economy by Sara Bongiorni – If I do decide to talk extensively about changing consumption choices as a reaction to global corporate power’s impact on the clothing industry, this book will help me talk about how workable that solution is when it comes to clothing. Bongiorni and her family, including her son and daughter, tried to go a year without consuming products from China – an extreme experiment in consumption politics. Bongiorni has a background in American journalism, but her writing is likely geared almost entirely to a popular audience.

Bongiorni, Sara. A Year without “Made In China”: One Family’s True Life Adventure in the Global Economy. Hoboken: John Wiley & Sons Inc., 2007. Print

Also related to China’s impact on the clothes we wear are parts of the book China Inc by

Ted C. Fishman, which I have a hold on at the library at York. I may or may not receive in it in time to use it, so it isn’t cited here. Fishman is another journalist. He writes in economics for and several well-known business magazines. Based in Chicago, he makes many television news appearances. He is a member of the Chicago Mercantile Exchange, and previously was a floor-trader in the stock market and ran a trading firm. I’ve read from China

Inc. before and found it both accessible to non-economists and full of interesting points of view including concerns which go beyond economics. If Bongiorni’s book isn’t useful in helping me think about China, I am hopeful that I’ll have China Inc. (all information on Fishman cited below under Authors: Ted Fishman).

3. The Canadian Labour Movement: A Short History (second edition) by Craig Heron –

This resource should help me tackle the politics of the sale of my clothing in Canada and the question of whether there are sweatshops in Canada. It has a chapter specifically dealing with the Canadian labour movements struggles to prevent and later cope with issues raised by free trade. Craig Heron teaches at York University and has written several other books on

Canadian labour politics with a historical and political feel to their titles. He holds multiple degrees including a Ph.D. in history and an M.A. in labour history, has held leading positions in professional history organizations, helps organize an impressive list of scholarly conferences and holds membership in many Toronto organizations related to history and labour. He has edited two social history textbooks (the above information comes from York University’s

Website directory).

Heron, Craig. The Canadian Labour Movement: A Short History (second edition). James Lorimer & Company Ltd., 1996. Print.

4. Case Study: Indonesia by John Tanner written in the Albion Monitor – This is a quick article on sweatshop labour, specifically focusing on Indonesia. While learning about the particulars of sweatshop conditions in big countries like China and India seems to be easy, investigating labour conditions in Indonesia may be more difficult to research. John Tanner appears to be a journalist who has written a number of articles in this online newspaper which is published out of the US and is read internationally over the internet. The Monitor’s content is purchased from news syndicates which are regional, mainstream and alternative.

5. Agricultural Biodiversity, Intellectual Property Rights and Farmers Rights and

Biotechnology Development and Conservation of Biodiversity both by Vandana Shiva and published in Economic and Political Weekly – Shiva is a highly renowned Indian ecofeminist activist with a strong background organizing small and large-scale movements in India. She advocates for organic farming, challenges the cooperate genetic modification and patenting of agricultural seed, organizes for ecology generally, champions local farmers’ rights, challenges multinational corporate giants , like Monsanto, and lobbies governments to great effect. India is a large global producer of cotton and much of the cotton used in clothing from India is likely grown there, so her research into the farming of cotton in India is probably relevant to where the fabric of my clothing comes from, particularly given that the fifth and sixth most numerous origin of my clothing is India and nearby Bangladesh. The first reading listed deals with the issues involved in cooperate patenting of seed, including cotton seed and its impact on local farmers in India, while the second deals with the impact of such genetically engineered modified seed on biodiversity in India. All information about Shiva used here comes from

Saner’s article for .

Shiva, Vandana. “Agricultural Biodiversity, Intellectual Property Rights and Farmers’ Rights.”

Economic and Political Weekly. 31.25 (22 Jun., 1996): 1621-1623, 1625-1631. Jstor.

Web. 24 Jan, 2013.

Shiva, Vandana. “Biotechnology Development and Conservation of Biodiversity.” Economic and

Political Weekly. 26. 8 (30 Nov, 1991): 2740-2746. Jstor. Web. 24 Jan. 2013. 6. Fatal Fire in Bangladesh Highlights the Dangers Facing Garment Workers by Vikas Bajaj in

The New York Times

Finally, in order to speak specifically to what’s going on in Bangladesh, because it is current after all and Bangladesh is the biggest national contributor to my wardrobe, I may reference a current article in the mainstream popular press on a factory fire in Bangladesh. The one I’ve got flagged is by Vikas Bajaj in The New York Times. He covered economics, business issus and financial markets before joining and is currently based in India, covering a much wider array of topics including politics in the news there. He occasionally also does stories about China where he presumably travels from India in order to cover stories.

Bajaj, Vikas. “Fatal Fire in Bangladesh Highlights the Dangers Facing Garment Workers.” NYtimes.com. The New York Times Company, 25, Nov 2012. Web. 24 Jan, 2013. [http://www.nytimes.com/2012/11/26/world/asia/bangladesh-fire-kills-more-than-100-and- injures-many.html?_r=0]

Other resources I am considering:

Justice in a Global Economy: Strategies for Home Community and World edited by Pamela K

Brubaker, Rebecca Todd Peters and Laura A. Strivers. – With the research I’ve got, I’m confident my research can cover all but the third most numerous known producer of my clothing –The

United States. I know informally that there are clothing sweatshops in parts of the USA and was particularly interested in finding out about them, so I’m going to take one last shot at finding a good resource about them and welcome suggestions for research starting-points here. If I don’t get one and in case I need it, this is another resource which, like No Logo addresses the reality of globalization. If anything promises to get me thinking about how people at various levels of society can work together to reinvent the narratives and change the realities of the global corporate clothing economy, this book does. It’s an anthology of several different writers, so when I decide which sections I use in my essay, I’ll be happy to provide an annotation which gives background on the author. The book seems to be geared to helping people struggling with global justice issues related to the global economy to find solutions. Many of the issues talked about will be about dealing with corporate multinational manufacturers, so they should help me to reimagine how the clothing industry could work or how people can respond to it. The book is usefully divided into household strategies, community strategies and government

(public policy) strategies for finding justice in the global economy. It must have strong religious themes, since all three of its editors are described as professors of religious studies and the press name “Westminster” comes from language used mostly to name English churches (it means of the hill but isn’t otherwise in common use). Two of this book’s editors were university-educated in North Carolina and one in California, so this is an American resource.

Brubaker, Pamela K, Rebecca Todd Peters and Laura A. Strivers, eds. Justice in a Global Economy: Strategies for Home, Community and World. Louisville, London: Westminster John Knox Press, 2006. Print.

The Price of a Bargain: The Quest for Cheap and the Death of Globalization by Gordon Laird. – This book is about the ubiquity of bargain pricing and shopping and the “disastrous hidden consequences” it may have for the North American way of life. It specifically mentions global worker revolts and the global consequences of corporate free trade economics. There are ideas here for how clothing narratives could be imagined with critical consciousness. Laird is a

Calgary-based journalist and writer with two previous books to his name focusing on Canadian political issues. He publishes in mainstream to left-wing magazines and newspapers and in The

Far Eastern Economic Review, which, judging by its title, would seem to provide good background for discussing our economic relationship with China.

Laird, Gordon. The Price of a Bargain: The Quest for Cheap and the Death of Globalization. McClelland & Stewart, 2009. Print.

The No-Nonsense Guide to Globalization by Wayne Ellwood and Globalization: A Very Short Introduction by Manfred B. Steger

I’m not entirely sure if these guides will count as scholarly resources. Certainly they are geared to students and backed up by strong scholarship, but they are written in popular language, for a popular audience. In any case, especially Steger’s introductory guide looks useful, since an entire chapter is devoted to “challenges to globalization.” Ellwood is a

Torontonian freelance editorial consultant and writer, who brought the New Internationalist to

North America in 1977, and Steger likely writes from the USA, where he teaches politics and government in Illinois and is involved in research into globalization in a Hawaiian university. His background is in globalization, Comparative Politics and theories of non-violence.

Steger, Manfred B. Globalization: A Very Short Introduction. New York: Oxford University

Press, 2003. Print.

Ellwood, Wayne. No Nonsense Guide to Globalization. 3rd ed. Ottawa, Ontario: New Internationalist Publications Ltd., 2010. Print.