Social Consequences of Economic Restructuring in the Textile Industry
Social Consequences of Economic Restructuring in the Textile Industry

Author: Cynthia D. Anderson

Publisher: Routledge

Published: 2014-02-04

Total Pages: 184

ISBN-13: 113570385X

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This book analyzes the dramatic social impacts of global economic restructuring in the US textile industry and the consequences for Southern textile mill communities. With the expansion of markets in the global economy, government policies such as NAFTA and GATT are greatly affecting the domestic production of textiles. Increased global competitiveness has led to technological modernization, plant shutdowns, and downward pressure on wages. Many family-owned companies are merging into conglomerates, some of which are international. Concurrently, the structure of power and domination in Southern textile communities is changing. Paternalistic control, typically portrayed as a form of traditional authority and benevolent protection of workers, is no longer dominant. With the decreased need for skilled labor, textile company owners are not obligated to provide mill villages with housing electricity, and water. Formerly protected communities are now players on an international scale, with workers competing for jobs on a global level. New forms of class exploitation, racism, and sexism provide a contested terrain for mill employees. As the industry restructures, workers and their households are faced with new challenges. To understand these social impacts, I examine globalization, restructuring, and spatialization as processes embedded in multiple layers of reality. The multi-level analysis focuses on the Southern textile industry, a leading firm, its surrounding labor market area, and members of the community. Historical, statistical and qualitative interviewing methods yield data that demonstrate redefined labor markets, reconstituted race relations, and household adaptations. Changes in firm and industry impact shop-floor labor processes, including increased production pace, new management strategies and technological adjustments. As embedded layers of social relations, the multi-level outcomes are both negative and positive, creating new winners and losers in Southern communities.

Social Consequences of Economic Restructuring in the Textile Industry
Social Consequences of Economic Restructuring in the Textile Industry

Author: Cynthia D. Anderson

Publisher: Routledge

Published: 2014-02-04

Total Pages: 184

ISBN-13: 1135703787

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This book analyzes the dramatic social impacts of global economic restructuring in the US textile industry and the consequences for Southern textile mill communities. With the expansion of markets in the global economy, government policies such as NAFTA and GATT are greatly affecting the domestic production of textiles. Increased global competitiveness has led to technological modernization, plant shutdowns, and downward pressure on wages. Many family-owned companies are merging into conglomerates, some of which are international. Concurrently, the structure of power and domination in Southern textile communities is changing. Paternalistic control, typically portrayed as a form of traditional authority and benevolent protection of workers, is no longer dominant. With the decreased need for skilled labor, textile company owners are not obligated to provide mill villages with housing electricity, and water. Formerly protected communities are now players on an international scale, with workers competing for jobs on a global level. New forms of class exploitation, racism, and sexism provide a contested terrain for mill employees. As the industry restructures, workers and their households are faced with new challenges. To understand these social impacts, I examine globalization, restructuring, and spatialization as processes embedded in multiple layers of reality. The multi-level analysis focuses on the Southern textile industry, a leading firm, its surrounding labor market area, and members of the community. Historical, statistical and qualitative interviewing methods yield data that demonstrate redefined labor markets, reconstituted race relations, and household adaptations. Changes in firm and industry impact shop-floor labor processes, including increased production pace, new management strategies and technological adjustments. As embedded layers of social relations, the multi-level outcomes are both negative and positive, creating new winners and losers in Southern communities.

Global Encounters
Global Encounters

Author: G. Harrison

Publisher: Springer

Published: 2004-11-09

Total Pages: 284

ISBN-13: 0230502814

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How has globalization impacted on development? For Harrison, the answer lies in the international political economy, and the ways in which states have managed economic globalization - from positions of strength or weakness. Key themes emerge, such as new geographies of development and the constant need for state economic action.

The Dangers of Fashion
The Dangers of Fashion

Author: Sara B. Marcketti

Publisher: Bloomsbury Publishing

Published: 2020-05-14

Total Pages: 273

ISBN-13: 1350052027

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From sweatshops to fur farming, from polluting chemicals to painful garments, the fashion industry is associated with activities which have had devastating effects on workers, consumers, and the natural world. This ground-breaking volume provides a framework for examining the ethical, social, and environmental dangers that arise as fashion products are designed, manufactured, distributed, and sold within retail outlets, before being consumed and disposed of. Encompassing the cultural, psychological, and physiological aspects of fashion, it offers a comprehensive exploration of the hazards of a global industry. Drawing together an international team of leading textile and apparel experts, The Dangers of Fashion presents original perspectives on a wide range of topics from piracy and counterfeiting to human trafficking; from the effects of globalization on local industry to the peer pressure that governs contemporary ideals of beauty. Rooted in research into industry and consumer practices, it discusses innovative solutions-both potential and existing-to fashion's dangers and moral dilemmas from the viewpoint of individuals, companies, societies, and the global community.

Shaw Industries
Shaw Industries

Author: Randall L. Patton

Publisher: University of Georgia Press

Published: 2002

Total Pages: 260

ISBN-13: 9780820323640

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Shaw Industries, which is based in Dalton, Georgia, is the nation's leading textile manufacturer and the world's largest producer of carpets. This history focuses on the evolution of Shaw's business strategy and its adaptations to changing economic conditions. Randall L. Patton chronicles Shaw's rise to dominance by drawing on corporate records, industry data, and interviews with Shaw employees and management, including Robert E. Shaw, the only CEO the company has known in its more than thirty years. Patton situates Shaw within both the overall context of Sunbelt economic development and the unique circumstances behind the success of the tufted carpet industry in northwest Georgia. After surveying the state of the carpet industry nationwide at the end of World War II, Patton then tells the Shaw story from the boom years of 1955-1973, through the transitional decade of 1973-1982, the consolidation phase of the 1980s and early 1990s, and the "new economy" of the mid- to late 1990s. Throughout, Patton shows, Shaw's drive has always been toward vertical integration--controlling the outside forces that could affect its bottom line. He tells, for instance, how Shaw built its own trucking fleet and became its own yarn supplier, all to the company's advantage. He also relates less successful ventures, most notably Shaw's attempt at direct retailing. The picture emerges of a company proud of its image as a steady and profitable business surviving in a competitive industry. Patton traces the history of Shaw Industries from its start as a family-owned operation through its growth into a multinational corporation that recently joined Warren Buffett's holding company, Berkshire-Hathaway. The Shaw saga has much to tell us about the continuing vitality of "old economy" manufacturers.

The Sociology of Spatial Inequality
The Sociology of Spatial Inequality

Author: Linda M. Lobao

Publisher: State University of New York Press

Published: 2012-02-01

Total Pages: 288

ISBN-13: 0791479978

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2007 CHOICE Outstanding Academic Title Sociologists have too often discounted the role of space in inequality. This book showcases a recent generation of inquiry that attends to poverty, prosperity, and power across a range of territories and their populations within the United States, addressing spatial inequality as a thematically distinct body of work that spans sociological research traditions. The contributors' various perspectives offer an agenda for future action to bridge sociology's diverse and often narrowly focused spatial and inequality traditions.

Communities of Work
Communities of Work

Author: William W. Falk

Publisher: Ohio University Press

Published: 2003

Total Pages: 466

ISBN-13: 0896802345

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The image of rural America portrayed in this illuminating study is one that is vibrant, regionally varied, and sometimes heroic. Communities of Work focuses on the ways in which rural people and places are affected by political, social, and economic forces far outside their control and how they sustain themselves and their communities in response. Bringing together the two fundamental concepts of community--where the relationships and practices of daily life occur--and work, in which an elementary exchange occurs, Communities of Work bridges several fields of study. Presented here is the contextual and embedded nature of social relations and the complexity involved in understanding them. Through the use of multiple case studies, the authors apply diverse theories and methods in seeking an integrated outcome, one captured by "communities of work." Beginning with a description of the broad changes in work and economic activities across the United States, ranging from the Ohio River Valley to a western boomtown, the book shifts its focus to the interplay of work, family, and local networks in time and place. Activities range from fishing in the Mississippi Delta to farming and family life in the Midwest. The authors then highlight how rural people and places respond to extra-local, increasingly global forces in settings as diverse as rural South Carolina and Wisconsin. A certain communitarian theme runs through Communities of Work. It is about people and communities not merely reacting, but instead responding in ways that reflect their local culture, while being cognizant of the larger world within which they live.

The Voice of Southern Labor
The Voice of Southern Labor

Author: Vincent J. Roscigno

Publisher: U of Minnesota Press

Published: 2004

Total Pages: 216

ISBN-13: 9780816640157

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The 1934 strike of southern textile workers, involving nearly 400,000 mill hands, remains perhaps the largest collective mobilization of workers in U.S. history. How these workers came together in the face of the powerful and coercive opposition of management and the state is the remarkable story at the center of this book. The Voice of Southern Labor chronicles the lives and experiences of southern textile workers and provides a unique perspective on the social, cultural, and historical forces that came into play when the group struck, first in 1929, and then on a massive scale in 1934. The workers' grievances, solidarity, and native radicalism of the time were often reflected in the music they listened to and sang, and Vincent J. Roscigno and William F. Danaher offer an in-depth context for understanding this intersection of labor, politics, and culture. The authors show how the message of the southern mill hands spread throughout the region with the advent of radio and the rise of ex-mill worker musicians, and how their sense of opportunity was further bolstered by Franklin D. Roosevelt's radio speeches and policies. Vincent J. Roscigno is associate professor of sociology at Ohio State University. William F. Danaher is associate professor in the Department of Sociology and Anthropology at the College of Charleston.