This paper concerns sweatshops. It seeks to define what a sweatshop is and in order to do this it wil make reference to the book ‘Where am I Wearing’ by Kelsey Timmeran. It will argue that sweatshops can be understood to be a deliberate tool used by governments and others in power in order to maintain divisions of class and social stratification. On a basic level, this paper understands a sweatshop to be an intensive work place in which goods, usually, but not always, clothing are produced in vast quantities and at a minimum of cost. People who work in sweatshops are usually extremely poorly paid and the term ‘sweat-shop’ is now synomous with hyper-exploitation and misery, as well as with the dominant form of clothing production for the Western world. Therefore, I also understand a sweatshop to be a place in which the workforce are exploited to an extremely high level. Finally, I understand the combination of these two things to mean that a sweatshop can be defined as a centre of production which serves to perpetuate social divisions and stratifications for the benefit of those who own and run them and at the expense of those who work in them. The rest of this paper will prove this definition.
In his book, Timmeman makes it clear that he is interested in where his clothes come from. The vast majority of clothing which is worn in the West is produced in sweat shops in poorer parts of the world. Timmerman notes that the primary reason for maintaining sweat shops in a country is that labour costs are usually very cheap and laws governing the rights of workers are lax. This leads to international companies seeking to produce their clothes in these areas for simple reasons of profit and that this can lead directly to social straification, regardless of whether or not this is to be seen as a deliberate strategy on the behalf of the owners of sweatshops or the governments of the countries in which they exist. Timmerman makes it clear that he considers the logic of profit to come before govermental strategies when thinking about why and where sweat-shops exist: ‘Money moves faster than ethics in the current global market place, and will probably continue to do so until companies, activists and consumers advance the discussion by asking the money to slow down and explain where its been.’ (Timmerman, 2012. 35)
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The logic of profit which operates through the sweatshop involves an extremely high degree of exploitation for those who work in them. Timmerman also draws direct attention to the fact that all those who work in sweatshops tend to be of an extremely poor background and have little opportunity to earn money through any other kind of work other than sweat-shop labour. This leads to a system of direct inequality on both a national and a global scale. Timmerman’s declared purpose in the book is to understand how this inequality comes about and how it can be changed. He writes; ‘The people who make our clothes are poor, we are rich..The workers need opporunities and choices. They need consumers concerned..They need to be valued. ‘ (Timmerman, 2012. 30)
Because of this combination of high productivity and hyper-exploitation, it can be argued that a sweatshop is something which deliberately exacerbates social stratifications in a particualr country. Timmerman notes that sweatshops tend to exist in palces which have a long history of exteme social stratification and division. For example countries such as India which has a long running and traditional ‘caste’ system by several many members of the population are deemed to be ‘untouchable’ and in which the division of wealth in society is exceptionally unequal often have large amount of sweat-shops and it could be argued that the existance of these sweat-shops serves to actively exacerbate and maintain social divisions.
In conclusion, this paper has argued that the sweatshops can be defined as high centres of productivity and as places of extreme exploitation. As a result of the combination of these two they can be defined as something which actively contributes to and exacerbates the social divisions and stratifications within a particular country.
- Timmerman, Kelsey. Where am I Wearing? A Global Tour to the Countries, Factories, and People that Make our Clothes. London: John Wiley & Sons, 2012.
