Strategizing Against Sweatshops: The Global Economy, Student Activism, and Worker Empowerment
Item
Title
Strategizing Against Sweatshops: The Global Economy, Student Activism, and Worker Empowerment
List of Authors
Matthew Williams
Abstract
For the past few decades, the U.S. anti-sweatshop movement was bolstered by actions from American college students. United Students Against Sweatshops (USAS) effectively advanced the cause of workersê rights in sweatshops around the world. Strategizing against Sweatshops chronicles the evolution of student activism and presents an innovative model of how college campuses are a critical site for the advancement of global social justice.Matthew Williams shows how USAS targeted apparel companies outsourcing production to sweatshop factories with weak or non-existent unions. USAS did so by developing a campaign that would support workers organizing by leveraging their collegeês partnerships with global apparel firms like Nike and Adidas to abide by pro-labor codes of conduct.Strategizing against Sweatshops exemplifies how organizations and actors cooperate across a movement to formulate a coherent strategy responsive to the conditions in their social environment. Williams also provides a model of political opportunity structure to show how social context shapes the chances of a movementês successãand how movements can change that political opportunity structure in turn. Ultimately, he shows why progressive student activism remains important.
Date
2020
Publisher
Temple University Press
Identifier
ISBN 978-1439918227
Bibliographic Citation
Williams, Matthew. 2020. Strategizing Against Sweatshops: The Global Economy, Student Activism, and Worker Empowerment. Philadelphia: Temple University Press.
