Award Information
The project will examine three protest movements for workers' rights against global garment manufacturing. In each of the campaigns, my research will focus on the relationship between the organizers of the protests and the mostly women workers they claim to represent. Each protest movement uses transnational methods, targeting retail outlets, corporate headquarters and the news and advertising media, in order to address labor violations on the factory floor. The research proposal asks whether new forms of protest posit a serious challenge to globalized production practices, or whether they are merely an uncritical mimicking of the organization of capitalist manufacturing itself: The three ease studies to be examined are (1) against working conditions in a Gap Factory in El Salvador, which resulted in company-wide labor regulations, (2) the campaign against the use of child labor in Bangladesh, and (3) the protests against immigrant sweatshops in New York City by labor unions and activist groups. The project will combine analysis of the tactics arid documentation of the protests with observation and interviews on the shopfloor, in order to document the relationship between the workers and organizers of the campaigns.