Dan S. Wang on Thu, 5 Aug 2004 00:36:41 +0200 (CEST) |
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Re: <nettime> The Art of Sweatshops |
I always thought of sweatshops as a creation of the American South. Maybe that's because I grew up in the seventies with the film Norma Rae being my first introduction to the world of textile mills. But according to Encyclopaedia Britannica, the term is derived from the verb "to sweat," used as a descriptive management technique in the factories of 1850s England. "Sweating" the workers became common in the US, the entry goes on to say, in the 1880s with the arrival of large numbers of eastern and southern European immigrants. Talking about Manhatten garment shops, probably. So I think you're right, John. The term doesn't seem to have any particular geographical or national identity embedded within it. Rather, it seems that it is a term that becomes applicable whenever and wherever the conditions of industrialization and the power of employers together make the super exploitation of laborers possible. I think I even remember some sound byte from a radio show or some media piece somewhere asking the question of whether China is now the "world's sweatshop." Which right away implies, even in popular usage, that sweatshops are not new, and haven't always been Asian or even Third World. Dan w. > Date: Tue, 3 Aug 2004 17:11:51 -0700 > From: John <3v1l.hax0r@gmail.com> > Subject: Re: <nettime> The Art of Sweatshops > > "A sweatshop is a factory, usually in a developing or Third World > country and especially in Asia, where people work for a very small > wage, producing products such as clothes, toys, shoes, and other > consumer goods." <...> # distributed via <nettime>: no commercial use without permission # <nettime> is a moderated mailing list for net criticism, # collaborative text filtering and cultural politics of the nets # more info: majordomo@bbs.thing.net and "info nettime-l" in the msg body # archive: http://www.nettime.org contact: nettime@bbs.thing.net