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

Author: (USA) Peter L. Rivoli
Publisher:
Publish Date: 2006-07-12
Features: In The T-Shirt Global Tribe, business professor Peter L. Rivoli 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, Rivoli examines today's international trade through this simple product. The stories Rivoli collected and wrote have achieved high academic standards, while also showing that both critics and advocates of globalization tend to oversimplify many issues in international trade. When Rivoli spoke with business leaders involved in her T-shirt story around the world, she was forced to question her own views on the political, economic, and moral impacts of globalization. As a trained economist, Rivoli 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. While today's debates about globalization focus on whether competitive markets bring disaster or a bright future, Rivoli discovered that the stories she tells about the T-shirt are more about power and politics. The T-Shirt Global Tribe 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 tied to an intriguing business process, and ordinary people attach their hopes and dreams to these products (or their components). To realize these hopes or dreams, however, is often influenced by politics, which can be both beneficial and detrimental. Through T-shirts, ordinary people are closely connected, and their stories paint a vivid picture of the political and economic landscape of globalization.