Whether we are out on the streets or between the sheets, cotton is our constant companion. But behind this ubiquitous fibre prized for its softness lies a darker story of exploitation and hardship. In this penetrating analysis, Adam Sneyd explores the power politics that envelope cotton as major corporate players and countries across Africa, Asia and the Americas compete to control it. In the aftermath of sweatshop scandal exposes and factory collapse disasters, merchants and retailers have called for better cotton farming practices. But in seeking to prevent the next transnational media circus, will companies simply end up cementing business-as-usual? Corporate public relations strategy now competes directly with the voices of an alternative global community that seeks to fundamentally transform the way that cotton is farmed. Yet these demands for cotton to work better for people and the planet have flown under the radar as media attention has focused instead on farmer subsidies and prices. From the local to the global, this book takes the reader on an illuminating journey through the multifaceted and often grubby politics of the fluffy white stuff in the world economy. The pile of political laundry it uncovers is voluminous but, as Sneyd argues, must be aired in the interests of sustainability and development.

In When the Air Became Important, medical historian Janet Greenlees examines the working environments of the heartlands of the British and American cotton textile industries from the nineteenth to the late twentieth centuries. Greenlees contends that the air quality within these pioneering workplaces was a key contributor to the health of the wider communities of which they were a part. Such enclosed environments, where large numbers of people labored in close quarters, were ideal settings for the rapid spread of diseases including tuberculosis, bronchitis and pneumonia. When workers left the factories for home, these diseases were transmitted throughout the local population, yet operatives also brought diseases into the factory. Other aerial hazards common to both the community and workplace included poor ventilation and noise. Emphasizing the importance of the peculiarities of place as well as employers' balance of workers' health against manufacturing needs, Greenlees's pioneering book sheds light on the roots of contemporary environmentalism and occupational health reform. Her work highlights the complicated relationships among local business, local and national politics of health, and community priorities.

Broken Promises of Globalization: The Case of the Bangladesh Garment Industry analyzes the consequences of the latest wave of globalization within the context of the Bangladesh garment industry's integration into world markets and production chains. Shahidur Rahman has found that although globalization has created opportunities, the process of globalization has also triggered a deformed development leaving Bangladesh increasingly vulnerable to shifts and tensions within the world trading regime. Bangladesh's vulnerability, experienced as a constraining framework by all the major actors in dependent industrialization, is of particular importance to the progress both of workers and of Bangladesh's industrializing modernizers in the garment industry. This book intends to respond to three questions. First, has the garment industry been able to counteract the vulnerability that women garment workers had experienced in their villages? Second, is the formation of a welfare committee a substitute model for unions when it comes to protecting women's rights? Finally, how is a Least Developing Country dealing with both domestic and external pressures in its response to globalization? Rahman argues that in spite of the opportunities created by the growth of the garment industry, the key actors such as workers, entrepreneurs, unions, and even the government have become vulnerable in the process of the global integration of this industry. This is an ethnographic study that tells the story of the rise, growth, and demise of a Bangladeshi garment company. From a broader approach, an internal force such as the government of Bangladesh is not alone in being responsible for pushing the workers into a vulnerable position; external pressure on the state is also responsible for intensifying the vulnerability of Bangladeshi institutions and actors. Broken Promises of Globalization exposes the crisis Bangladeshi garment companies face as a result of the momentous pressures emanating from the regime of neo-liberal globalization. This ethnographic study, exploring a wide range of contemporary and recent development issues, holds particular relevance for students and scholars of sociology, political science, political economics, labor, and development studies.

This impressive collection offers the first systematic global and comparative history of textile workers over the course of 350 years. This period covers the major changes in wool and cotton production, and the global picture from pre-industrial times through to the twentieth century. After an introduction, the first part of the book is divided into twenty national studies on textile production over the period 1650-2000. To make them useful tools for international comparisons, each national overview is based on a consistent framework that defines the topics and issues to be treated in each chapter. The countries described have been selected to included the major historic producers of woollen and cotton fabrics, and the diversity of global experience, and include not only European nations, but also Argentina, Brazil, China, Egypt, India, Japan, Mexico, Turkey, Uruguay and the USA. The second part of the book consists of ten comparative papers on topics including globalization and trade, organization of production, space, identity, workplace, institutions, production relations, gender, ethnicity and the textile firm. These are based on the national overviews and additional literature, and will help apply current interdisciplinary and cultural concerns to a subject traditionally viewed largely through a social and economic history lens. Whilst offering a unique reference source for anyone interested in the history of a particular country's textile industry, the true strength of this project lies in its capacity of international comparison. By providing global comparative studies of key textile industries and workers, both geographically and thematically, this book provides a comprehensive and contemporary analysis of a major element of the world's economy. This allows historians to challenge many of the received ideas about globalization, for instance, highlighting how global competition for lower production costs is by no means a uniquely modern issue, and has b

Challenges the paradigm that the measure of consequence (losses) is a good indicator of safety effort. Introduces three luck factors that determine the course of the accident sequence. Explains what causes accidents, their consequences, and how to prevent them. Discusses hazard identification, risk assessment, and flawed safety management system. Showcases accident immediate causes including high-risk (unsafe) acts and high-risk (unsafe) conditions.

Cotton was the first industrialized global trade. This four-volume reset edition charts the rise of British trade in cotton from the days of small-scale trading between the Middle East and India to the domination of British-led industrialized manufacture.

In this holistic approach to the study of textiles and their makers, Colleen Kriger charts the role cotton has played in commercial, community, and labor settings in West Africa. By paying close attention to the details of how people made, exchanged, and wore cotton cloth from before industrialization in Europe to the twentieth century, she is able to demonstrate some of the cultural effects of Africa's long involvement in trading contacts with Muslim societies and with Europe. Cloth in West African History thus offers a fresh perspective on the history of the region and on the local, regional, and global processes that shaped it. A variety of readers will find its account and insights into the African past and culture valuable, and will appreciate the connections made between the local concerns of small-scale weavers in African villages, the emergence of an indigenous textile industry, and its integration into international networks.

Although mercers have long been recognised as one of the most influential trades in medieval London, this is the first book to offer a comprehensive and detailed analysis of the trade from the twelfth to the sixteenth century. The variety of mercery goods (linen, silk, worsted and small manufactured items including what is now called haberdashery) gave the mercers of London an edge over all competitors. The sources and production of all these commodities is traced throughout the period covered. It was as the major importers and distributors of linen in England that London mercers were able to take control of the Merchant Adventurers and the export of English cloth to the Low Countries. The development of the Adventurers' Company and its domination by London mercers is described from its first privileges of 1296 to after the fall of Antwerp. This book investigates the earliest itinerant mercers and the artisans who made and sold mercery goods (such as the silkwomen of London, so often mercers' wives), and their origins in counties like Norfolk, the source of linen and worsted. These diverse traders were united by the neighbourhood of the London Mercery on Cheapside and by their need for the privileges of the freedom of London. Extensive use of Netherlandish and French sources puts the London Mercery into the context of European Trade, and literary texts add a more personal image of the merchant and his preoccupation with his social status which rose from that of the despised pedlar to the advisor of princes. After a slow start, the Mercers' Company came to include some of the wealthiest and most powerful men of London and administer a wide range of charitable estates such as that of Richard Whittington. The story of how they survived the vicissitudes inflicted by the wars and religious changes of the sixteenth century concludes this fascinating and wide-ranging study.

Apparel Quality: A Guide to Evaluating Sewn Products, Second Edition is a user-friendly guide for evaluating apparel quality to ensure quality products that meet customer expectations. This book provides an overview of apparel production, emphasizing quality characteristics and cues, consumer influences, and motivations impacting purchasing decisions, and highlights the roles of product designers, manufacturers, merchandisers, testing laboratories, and retailers from product inception through the sale of goods. The text is highly illustrated to provide students with the tools needed to evaluate and critique quality elements in apparel and textile products skillfully. New to this Edition: - New fabric technology including e-textiles, sew bots, and automation - International common size equivalents to accompany U.S. size classifications by sex, height, and age - Sustainability considerations for raw materials, design development, and apparel production - Expanded international labeling and safety regulations and compliance for the United States, Canada, EU, and Japan Instructor Resources - The Instructor's Guide provides suggestions for planning the course and using the text in the classroom, including sample syllabi, in-class activities, lab activities, and projects. - The Test Bank includes sample test questions for each chapter - PowerPoint (R) presentations include images from the book and provide a framework for lecture and discussion Instructor's Resources may be accessed through www.fairchildbooks.com. STUDIO Features: - Study smarter with self-quizzes featuring scored results and personalized study tips - Review concepts with flashcards of essential vocabulary and image identification - Watch Videos that take you behind the scenes of factories and testing facilities, to see how concepts covered in the text are applied in the real world

Praise for the previous edition: "[A] fascinating book." John Thackara, Doors of Perception "Provides the foundations for a radical new perspective." Ethical Pulse "At last a book that dispels the idea that fashion is only interested in trend-driven fluff: not only does it have a brain, but it could be a sustainable one." Lucy Siegle, Crafts Magazine Fully revised and updated, the second edition of Sustainable Fashion and Textiles: Design Journeys continues to define the field of design in fashion and textiles. Arranged in two sections, the first four chapters represent key stages of the lifecycle: material cultivation/extraction, production, use and disposal. The remaining four chapters explore design approaches for altering the scale and nature of consumption, including service design, localism, speed and user involvement. While each chapter is complete in and of itself, their real value comes from what they represent together: innovative ways of thinking about textiles and garments based on sustainability values and an interconnected approach to design. Including a new preface, updated content and a new conclusion reflecting and critiquing developments in the field, as well as discussing future developments, the second edition promises to provide further impetus for future change, sealing Sustainable Fashion and Textiles: Design Journeys as the must-buy book for fashion and textiles professionals and students interested in sustainability.

Cotton textile industries vanished from much of East Africa during the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. This book investigates the underlying causes of industrial arrest in the region through a series of in-depth case studies. Findings are considered in light of existing studies on comparatively more resilient textile centers elsewhere on the continent to derive insights into the determinants of differing industrial trajectories across sub-Saharan Africa. The author argues that scholars have placed undue weight on global forces as the primary drivers of industrial decline in the Global South. Rather, this book reveals how local factors - principally demographic, geographic, and institutional features - interacted with external forces to influence unique regional outcomes during the nineteenth and twentieth centuries as sub-Saharan African was increasingly integrated into global trade networks and European colonial empires.

This third of the three volume series highlights the intricate relationship in the handloom industry between its culture and the various areas of sustainability. While there have been major disruptions in this age old industry, this volume presents the design, development and environmental aspects to keep the industry moving ahead. The book contains seven chapters written by leading experts in the areas and discusses means to revive some of the cultures that are on the verge of closing/shutting down.

When thinking about lowering or changing consumption to lower carbon footprints, the obvious offenders come easily to mind: petroleum and petroleum products, paper and plastic, even food. But not clothes. Although the clothing industry is the second largest polluter after agriculture, most consumers do not think of clothes as a source of environmental damage. The Dirty Side of the Garment Industry: Fast Fashion and its Negative Impact on Environment and Society exposes how clever marketing tactics designed to increase demand skillfully hide this reality. An in-depth examination of the international fashion trade and related goods, this book raises visibility of the ethical aspects of promoting overconsumption through explaining the ecological damage resulting from the high rate of discarding old clothes. It focuses on the promotion, globalization, and integration of the apparel sector into our social and political landscape. It presents an expert overview of the garment industry, highlighting the harsh realities of the environmental and labor problems associated with it. It tracks the commercial and cultural factors that have led to the growth of fast fashion retail and its dominance of the entire industry. The book covers current regulatory policies, both national and international, on production and labor, and the author does not shy away from making recommendations for change. He examines marketing, business, and economic models to explain how assumptions of traditional economic theory on industrial growth and prosperity fall short in addressing the high social costs of promoting the overconsumption of cheap and readily disposable clothes. You will come away with a detailed, holistic understanding of the garment industry as well as clarity regarding the larger issue of finding balance when it comes to the ethics of consumption.

This book highlights the sustainable aspects of fashion and textiles in Latin America and discusses how the manufacturing and consumption of textile products and fashion are significant sources of environmental damage. It addresses important issues of water and energy consumption in the textile and fashion industry and using case studies presents how social responsibilities in consumer behavior can help in minimizing these environmental issues for a better future.

This book highlights the Eco-design or Sustainable design in textiles and fashion, aimed at reducing their environmental impact throughout their life cycle. Sustainable design is one of the core elements practiced in various industrial sectors. The textiles and fashion sector, is also creating a huge environmental brunt in terms of various fibres, processes, consumption of various resources including dyes, chemicals and auxiliaries, etc,. Thus, sustainable design is the key to reduce the environmental impacts made out of textiles and fashion products. This book includes seven informative chapters to decipher the concept and applications of sustainable design in textiles and fashion.

This book includes fundamentals of textile processing technology with explanation of craft techniques, various stages of processing fibres and yarns with useful, readily understandable, line drawings. Fibrous types, dyes, yarns and cloths have been explained and material is supported by glossary and explanation of processing stages from fibre to finished cloth. Further, the considerations of relevance to the development and preparation of a design collection are outlined and discussed. Various testing procedures, including fibre, yarn and cloth identification methods, and important innovations in textile products and processing are identified and explained as well. Focused mainly on the needs of students specializing in textile or fashion design, at first year undergraduate university level, this book: Covers all stages from fibre to finished cloth. Discusses various stages of processing fibres and yarns. Explains fibrous types, dyes, yarns and cloths supported by relevant glossary. Presents explanations of both tactile and aesthetic aspects of textiles used in clothing.

This book examines the manufacturing, supply chain and product-level sustainability of leather and footwear products. This book deals with the environmental and chemical sustainability aspects pertaining to the tanning supply chain and the related mitigation measures. The book also explores interesting areas of leather and footwear sustainability, such as waste & the 3R's and their certification for sustainability. At the product level, the book covers advanced topics like the circular economy and blockchain technology for leather and footwear products and addresses innovation development and eco-material use in footwear by investigating environmental sustainability and the use of bacterial cellulose, a potential sustainable alternative for footwear and leather products.

This book is a comprehensive examination of the Indian textile industry and the various determinants affecting its export performance, trends in labour, and capital productivity in the post-liberalization years. Employing 45 million people, including skilled and unskilled workers, the Indian textile and clothing industry occupies a significant position in the Indian economy in terms of industrial production, employment, and exports. This work traces the growth and expansion of this industry in the post-reform period and studies its contributions to the economic development of the nation. It discusses global trade agreements, India's share in international exports, and its major trading partners across the globe including the USA, UK, UAE, Germany, China. It also provides recommendations to Indian policy makers for a possible improvement in the textile exports across the globe. The Textile Industry and Exports in Post-Liberalization India will be of interest to students and researchers of politics and international relations, economics, development studies, labour economics, sociology and social policy, and South Asian studies.

In this book, Brenda M. King challenges the notion that Britain always exploited its empire. Creativity, innovation and entrepreneurship were all part of the Anglo-Indian silk trade and were nurtured in the era of empire through mutually beneficial collaboration. The trade operated within and without the empire, according to its own dictates and prospered in the face of increasing competition from China and Japan. King presents a new picture of the trade, where the strong links between Indian designs, the English silk industry and prominent members of the English the arts and crafts movement led to the production of beautiful and luxurious textiles. Lavishly illustrated, this book will be of interest to those interested in the relationship between the British Empire and the Indian subcontinent, as well as by historians of textiles and fashion. -- .

Automation is the use of various control systems for operating equipment such as machinery and processes. In line, this book deals with comprehensive analysis of the trends and technologies in automation and control systems used in textile engineering. The control systems descript in all chapters is to dissect the important components of an integrated control system in spinning, weaving, knitting, chemical processing and garment industries, and then to determine if and how the components are converging to provide manageable and reliable systems throughout the chain from fiber to the ultimate customer. Key Features: * Describes the design features of machinery for operating various textile machineries in product manufacturing * Covers the fundamentals of the instrumentation and control engineering used in textile machineries * Illustrates sensors and basic elements for textile automation * Highlights the need of robotics in textile engineering * Reviews the overall idea and scope of research in designing textile machineries

D_Tex is proposed as a hub around which it is possible to look at textiles in their different forms, in order to better understand, study, adapt and project them for the future. It is intended to build a flow of ideas and concepts so that participants can arrive at new ideas and concepts and work them in their own way, adapting them to their objectives and research. D_Tex is intended as a space for sharing and building knowledge around textile material in order to propose new understandings and explorations. Present in all areas of knowledge, the textile material bets on renewed social readings and its evolutions to constantly reinvent itself and enable innovative cultural and aesthetic dimensions and unexpected applications to solve questions and promote new knowledge. D_Tex proposes to promote discussion and knowledge in the different areas where textiles, with all their characteristics, can ensure an important contribution, combining material and immaterial knowledge, innovative and traditional techniques, technological and innovative materials and methods, but also new organization and service models, different concepts and views on teaching. With the renewed idea of the intrinsic interdisciplinarity of design and sharing with different areas that support each other, the research and practice of textiles was proposed by the D_TEX Textile Design Conference 2019, held June 19-21, 2019 at the Lisbon School of Architecture of the University of Lisbon, Portugal under the theme "In Touch" where, as broadly understood as possible, different areas of textiles were regarded as needing to keep in touch with each other and end users in order to promote and share the best they can offer for the welfare of their users and consumers.

This book reveals the business history of the Australian Government Clothing Factory as it introduced innovative changes in the production and design of the Australian Army uniform during the twentieth century. While adopting a Schumpeterian interpretation of the concept of innovation, Anneke van Mosseveld traces the driving forces behind innovation and delivers a comprehensive explanation of the resulting changes in the combat uniform. Using an array of archival sources, this book displays details of extensive collaborations between the factory, the Army and scientists in the development of camouflage patterns and military textiles. It uncovers a system of intellectual property management to protect the designs of the uniform, and delivers new insights into the wider economic influences and industry linkages of the Government owned factory.

Since time immemorial Indian textiles, especially textiles from Bengal, were in great demand and exported to different parts of the world. Textiles from Bengal were appreciated by the Romans as early as first century ad. Numerous foreign travellers including Chinese, Portuguese, Arab and Persian, have mentioned the delicacy and beauty of Bengal textiles. From the mid-seventeenth century, there was a massive spurt in demand of cloth manufactured in Bengal, but after the British conquest of Bengal in 1757 this industry started to decline. This monograph traces the journey of Bengal textiles till its decline. Among the topics covered include accounts of the admiration for Bengal textiles from far and wide, the different types of textiles that were manufactured in Bengal, the major exporters, the major centres of production, the production system, the Dhaka muslin and the silk industry in Bengal, the procuring system that was adopted by the European / Asian merchants, the condition of the artisans who were the chief pillars of the textile industry and lastly the reasons behind the decline of the Bengal textile industry. This is the first comprehensive volume on Bengal textile industry. It is the outcome of the author's four and a half decades of work on various aspects of Indian Ocean trade, the activities of the European companies and their impact on Indian / Bengal's economy. Please note: This title is co-published with Manohar Publishers, New Delhi. Taylor & Francis does not sell or distribute the Hardback in India, Pakistan, Nepal, Bhutan, Bangladesh and Sri Lanka

Silk! Just the word invokes intrigue and fantasies of lavish mounds of richly hued fabrics. The journey of metamorphosis from caterpillar to silken luxury is miraculous. Textile artist Karen Selk delves into the amazing world of wild silk and the Indigenous people of India who raise the wild silkworms. You'll be drawn into the captivating world of a unique living culture that has been engaged in a sustainable industry for generations. Photos and anecdotes captured from weavers, spinners, and silkworm farmers transport you into their homes and villages to get an up-close look at the intimate connection to the skill, dedication, and specialized tools and techniques the artisans use to transform cocoons into yarn and luxurious fabrics. This little-known industry not only provides us with resplendent cloth but improves our environment and provides a sustainable income, allowing families and communities to stay together while preserving a way of life.