Published online by Cambridge University Press: 07 July 2009
INTRODUCTION
Just as sweatshops have become the symbol of the perverse effects of neoliberal globalization, the transnational anti-sweatshop movement lies at the heart of the struggle for social justice in the global economy. In the global North, the reemergence of sweatshops in such cities as New York and Los Angeles entails the return of the economic and legal realities of the nineteenth century (Bonacich and Appelbaum 2000; Ross 1997). In the South, the exploitative labor conditions and the unfulfilled promise of employment and growth have turned maquilas into an icon of the failure of late twentieth-century neoliberalism. In bridging the North–South divide through highly plural, dynamic, and decentralized transnational advocacy networks (TANs), the anti-sweatshop movement holds out the prospect of a revamped, twenty-first century labor internationalism (Evans, forthcoming; Moody 1997).
Beyond its political and symbolic importance, the anti-sweatshop movement offers a privileged vantage point to examine the role of law in counter-hegemonic globalization for two reasons. First, in terms of social movement theory (Snow et al. 1986), the “framing” of the anti-sweatshop cause has crucially relied on law and legal discourse. Given that abuses committed in global sweatshops – from physical violence to sexual harassment and misery wages – undermine fundamental conditions of human dignity, TANs have framed their struggle as a vindication of basic human rights. This has not only lent a potent moral force to the movement but has also placed the mobilization of human rights rules and discourses at the center of TANs' strategies.
To save this book to your Kindle, first ensure no-reply@cambridge.org is added to your Approved Personal Document E-mail List under your Personal Document Settings on the Manage Your Content and Devices page of your Amazon account. Then enter the ‘name’ part of your Kindle email address below. Find out more about saving to your Kindle.
Note you can select to save to either the @free.kindle.com or @kindle.com variations. ‘@free.kindle.com’ emails are free but can only be saved to your device when it is connected to wi-fi. ‘@kindle.com’ emails can be delivered even when you are not connected to wi-fi, but note that service fees apply.
Find out more about the Kindle Personal Document Service.
To save content items to your account, please confirm that you agree to abide by our usage policies. If this is the first time you use this feature, you will be asked to authorise Cambridge Core to connect with your account. Find out more about saving content to Dropbox.
To save content items to your account, please confirm that you agree to abide by our usage policies. If this is the first time you use this feature, you will be asked to authorise Cambridge Core to connect with your account. Find out more about saving content to Google Drive.