Garments without Guilt?: Global Labour Justice and Ethical Codes in Sri Lankan Apparels

226 Pages·2022·8.459 MB·English

by  Kanchana Ruwanpura

Advance Praise
Garments without Guilt? is a scholarly tour de force. Kanchana N. Ruwanpura
has challenged prevailing analyses of voluntary ethical governance codes which
foreground global and national level standards while ignoring the central role
of the state in investing in human capital. Educated workers are central to the
struggles for decent working conditions and wages, on which the Sri Lankan
garments industry claims to be a world-leading ethical producer. Using rich
ethnographic data obtained over more than a decade talking to factory managers
and garment workers, she has produced a vivid picture of the agency of the
workers and the limitations of voluntary industrial and national regulations, and
the dangers posed by ethnic divisions and conflict that could undermine ethical
standards.
—Ruth Pearson, University of Leeds, UK
Kanchana N. Ruwanpura builds on years of field research to develop a
provocative and convincing book, highlighting the role that local labour and
social institutions actually played in creating conditions for the apparent
success of global ethical governance. The contribution of labour and social
development policies goes unacknowledged and is even threatened by the
voluntary ethical regime, Ruwanpura argues, a regime which remains highly
uneven and unstable in the social gains made by workers on the shop floor. Her
book offers a thorough, inspiring reading for scholars concerned with the local
developmental outcomes of economic globalization.
—Florence Palpacuer, University of Montpellier, France
In Garments without Guilt? Kanchana N. Ruwanpura unpacks the global
clothing industry’s complexities as they play out in her home country, shining
a nuanced light on ethical clothing initiatives in practice. Drawing on over 10
years of fieldwork, she highlights how Sri Lanka’s better track record complying
with health and safety codes compared to its South Asian neighbours is rooted
as much in workers’ movements and agency as it is in industry-led initiatives.
Ruwanpura also makes a compelling case that freedom of association, living
wages, and humane treatment on the shop floor are ethical codes that remain a
site of ongoing struggle.
—Annelies Goger, Brookings Institution, USA

Garments without Guilt?
Sri Lanka’s apparel sector holds an enviable place in the imaginary of its
competitors for having a niche position amongst global retailers, given its
claims of producing ‘garments without guilt’. Exploitative labour conditions
are not part of the industry’s portfolio – ethicality, eco-friendly production
and unblemished conditions of work are. Sri Lanka’s transition away from a
protracted ethnic war has meant that the industry portrays itself as investing in
the former war zone to create jobs without reflection on how its vaunted mantle,
the deployment of ethical codes effectively, itself may be under duress. This
book uses an analytical framing informed by labour and feminist perspectives
to explore how labour struggles in the post-1977 period in Sri Lanka provided
important resistance to capitalist processes and continue to shape the industry
both within and outside of the shop floor. It studies contextual moments in
the country’s recent history to rupture the dominant narrative and record the
centrality of labour in the success of the country’s apparel industry.
Kanchana N. Ruwanpura is Professor of Human Geography at the University
of Gothenburg, Sweden; and Fellow at the Centre for South Asian Studies,
University of Edinburgh, United Kingdom. Her focus areas for both research and
teaching cover labour geographies, feminist politics and uneven development.
She is the author of Matrilineal Communities, Patriarchal Realities: A Feminist
Nirvana Uncovered (2006).

Garments without Guilt?
Global Labour Justice and Ethical Codes
Global Value Chains
in Sri Lankan Apparels
and Development
Redefining the Contours of
st
21 Century Capitalism
Kanchana N. Ruwanpura
Gary Gereffi
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© Kanchana N. Ruwanpura 2022
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First published 2022
Printed in India
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ISBN 978-1-108-83201-4 Hardback
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For my feminist parents and grandmother:
Chand de Silva, Anoma de Silva and
Harriet Chandrasekera

My thaththi for imparting intellect mixed with humour,
ammi for being my first feminist role model
and achchi for schooling us in academic discipline and
codes of sīla.

With much gratitude for creating a home, where our emotional
and spiritual comfort was intermingled with high doses of love
for books, political curiosity with a quest for social justice.