Threads of globalization is an interdisciplinary volume that brings fashion-specific garments, motifs, materials, and methods of production into dialogue with gender and identity in various cultures throughout Asia during the long twentieth century. It examines how the shift from artisanal production to 'fast fashion' over the past 150 years has devalued women’s textile labour and how skilled textile/ garment makers and the organizations that support them are preserving and reviving heritage traditions. It also offers examples of how socially engaged artists in Asia and the diaspora use their work to criticize labour and environmental abuses in the global fashion industry.

Americans have been shocked by media reports of the dismal working conditions in factories that make clothing for U.S. companies. But while well intentioned, many of these reports about child labor and sweatshop practices rely on stereotypes of how Third World factories operate, ignoring the complex economic dynamics driving the global apparel industry. To dispel these misunderstandings, Jane L. Collins visited two very different apparel firms and their factories in the United States and Mexico. Moving from corporate headquarters to factory floors, her study traces the diverse ties that link First and Third World workers and managers, producers and consumers. Collins examines how the transnational economics of the apparel industry allow firms to relocate or subcontract their work anywhere in the world, making it much harder for garment workers in the United States or any other country to demand fair pay and humane working conditions. Putting a human face on globalization, Threads shows not only how international trade affects local communities but also how workers can organize in this new environment to more effectively demand better treatment from their distant corporate employers.

Considering silk as a major force of cross-cultural interaction, this book examines the integration of silk production and consumption into various cultures in the pre-modern world.

What is a global market? How does it work? At a time when new crises in world markets cannot be satisfactorily resolved through old ideas, Market Threads presents a detailed analysis of the international cotton trade and argues for a novel and groundbreaking understanding of global markets. The book examines the arrangements, institutions, and power relations on which cotton trading and production depend, and provides an alternative approach to the analysis of pricing mechanisms. Drawing upon research from such diverse places as the New York Board of Trade and the Turkish and Egyptian countrysides, the book explores how market agents from peasants to global merchants negotiate, accept, reject, resist, reproduce, understand, and misunderstand a global market. The book demonstrates that policymakers and researchers must focus on the specific practices of market maintenance in order to know how they operate. Markets do not simply emerge as a relationship among self-interested buyers and sellers, governed by appropriate economic institutions. Nor are they just social networks embedded in wider economic social structures. Rather, global markets are maintained through daily interventions, the production of prosthetic prices, and the waging of struggles among those who produce and exchange commodities. The book illustrates the crucial consequences that these ideas have on economic reform projects and market studies. Spanning a variety of disciplines, Market Threads offers an original look at the world commodity trade and revises prevailing explanations for how markets work.

History has declared globalization the winner of the 20th century. Globalization connected the world and created wealth unimaginable in the wake of the Second World War. But the financial crisis of 2008-09 has now placed at risk the liberal economic policies behind globalization. Engulfing the entire world, the crisis gave new fuel to the skeptics of the benefits of economic integration. Policy responses seem to favor anti-globalizers. New regulations could balkanize the global financial system, while widespread protectionist impulses might undo the Doha Round. Issues from climate change to national security may be used as convenient excuses to keep imports out, keep jobs at home, and to clamp down on global capital. Will globalization triumph or perish in the 21st century? What reforms make sense in the post-crisis world?International economists Gary Clyde Hufbauer and Kati Suominen argue that globalization has been a force of great good, one that needs to be actively advanced and honed. Drawing on the latest economic analyses, they reveal the drivers and effects of global finance and trade, lay out the key risks to globalization, and offer a practical policy roadmap for managing the challenges while increasing the gains. Vital reading for anyone in business, finance, foreign affairs, or economics, Globalization at Risk is sure to advance public debate on this defining issue of the 21st century.

Threads of Labour presents new empirical research by a network of garment workers' support organizations and makes sense of global supply chains from the bottom up. Presents new empirical research by a network of garment workers' support organizations in ten different locations in Asia, Europe and Mexico. Creates a blueprint for conducting worker-orientated action research in order to better understand and resist the negative impact of globalization on labour. Ensures that workers' voices reach those who are already trying to reconfigure global capitalism in more humane directions. Explores the ways in which workers might begin to develop new forms of organization that are more suited to securing gains in the global garment industry. Bridges the gap between activist and academic research, improving the conversation between these two groups.

In the decades since the September 11, 2001, terrorist attacks on the United States forces of cultural, economic, and political integration appear locked in battle with equally powerful forces of fragmentation. Globalization is facilitating unprecedented movement of goods, services, people, and ideas, while calls for building walls, erecting fences, and strengthening borders intensify. Tensions flare around claims of deeply rooted ethnic and civilizational identities—identities that are shaped and mobilized via sophisticated advances in technology. Women worldwide are achieving remarkable economic and political gains while sexual violence and gender inequalities persist and are fueled by rapid global change. This book explores the complex inter-relationship between globalization and belonging. In a hyper-modern, 21st-century world, questions and conflicts surrounding who ‘we’ are and who ‘we’ want to be predominate. This book links the politics of different forms of identification and attachment to the dynamics of an increasingly interconnected world.

Globalization is usually said to be about markets, power, and culture. This innovative book goes further, arguing that globalization may also be understood as a way of knowing and representing the world. Mittelman debunks several prevalent myths about globalization and 'anti-globalization', presenting alternatives to this force and indicating the prospects for a new common sense about future world order. Drawing on considerable original research, this book shows how globalization itself and globalization studies have changed since 9/11. Compact and accessible, Whither Globalization? is a major contribution to the study of globalization by one of the leading scholars in the field and is essential reading for students of international relations and international political economy.