The Global Journey of T-Shirts: An Economist's Examination of the Market, Power, and Politics of World Trade

Author: Shanghai University of Finance and Economics Press
Publisher:
Publish Date: 2006-06-01
Features: In The Global Tribe of T-shirts, business professor Pieretta F. Riffelli takes readers on a fascinating global journey, revealing the real story behind her $6 T-shirt. From cotton farms in West Texas to textile production workshops in China, from trade negotiations in Washington to second-hand clothing markets in Africa, Riffelli examines today's international trade through this simple product. The stories Riffelli collected and wrote have achieved high academic standards, while also showing that both critics and proponents of globalization tend to oversimplify many issues in international trade. When Riffelli spoke with business leaders involved in her T-shirt story around the world, she was forced to examine her own views on the political, economic, and moral impacts of globalization. As a trained economist, Riffelli hoped her T-shirt stories would reveal the undeniable benefits of global free trade and counter the misleading perceptions spread by anti-globalization movements. However, she found that "free markets" are often far from free; staunch supporters of free trade often benefit from trade restrictions; and those who claim to be "victims" of globalization are actually the biggest beneficiaries. Although the focus of today's globalization debates is whether competitive markets bring disaster or a bright future, Riffelli discovered that the stories she tells about T-shirts are more about power and politics. The Global Tribe of T-shirts reveals a political and human side of the globalization debate through a simple T-shirt. The story suggests that every component of any product is accompanied by an intriguing business process, and the ordinary public holds their own hopes and dreams for these products (or their components). To realize these hopes or dreams is often influenced by politics, and this influence is both beneficial and detrimental. The ordinary public is closely connected through T-shirts, and their stories paint a vivid picture of the political and economic landscape of globalization.