Broken Promises of Globalization: The Case of the Bangladesh Garment
Industry analyzes the consequences of the latest wave of globalization
within the context of the Bangladesh garment industry's integration into
world markets and production chains. Shahidur Rahman has found that
although globalization has created opportunities, the process of
globalization has also triggered a deformed development leaving
Bangladesh increasingly vulnerable to shifts and tensions within the
world trading regime. Bangladesh's vulnerability, experienced as a
constraining framework by all the major actors in dependent
industrialization, is of particular importance to the progress both of
workers and of Bangladesh's industrializing modernizers in the garment
industry. This book intends to respond to three questions. First, has
the garment industry been able to counteract the vulnerability that
women garment workers had experienced in their villages? Second, is the
formation of a welfare committee a substitute model for unions when it
comes to protecting women's rights? Finally, how is a Least Developing
Country dealing with both domestic and external pressures in its
response to globalization? Rahman argues that in spite of the
opportunities created by the growth of the garment industry, the key
actors such as workers, entrepreneurs, unions, and even the government
have become vulnerable in the process of the global integration of this
industry. This is an ethnographic study that tells the story of the
rise, growth, and demise of a Bangladeshi garment company. From a
broader approach, an internal force such as the government of Bangladesh
is not alone in being responsible for pushing the workers into a
vulnerable position; external pressure on the state is also responsible
for intensifying the vulnerability of Bangladeshi institutions and
actors. Broken Promises of Globalization exposes the crisis Bangladeshi
garment companies face as a result of the momentous pressures emanating
from the regime of neo-liberal globalization. This ethnographic study,
exploring a wide range of contemporary and recent development issues,
holds particular relevance for students and scholars of sociology,
political science, political economics, labor, and development studies.
