Mohammad Hasan Ashraf

This book provides an intimate illustration of the fast-fashion worlds and the resulting transnational readymade garment manufacturing regime in liberalised Bangladesh state from its historical genesis to contemporary state of the industry based on sustained ethnographic and archival research spanned over 15 years. Premised on three ethnographies –six months of participant observation as a full-time worker at a garment factory followed by seven months of living in a labour colony and two months of street level ethnography during and after a massive labour protest– this book first presents empirical evidence and analysis of the pre-conditions of workers’ health, safety, and labour politics in the years just prior to the Rana-Plaza building collapse in 2013. What it follows, an analysis of how the corporate-led initiatives in the past 10 years not only backgrounded its extractive labour process during when the augmented state securitization and labour discipline strategies have contributed to a pro-capital and anti-labour expansion of the industry. With special attention to workers’ embodied experiences on the shopfloor and their attempts to recover and revitalize themselves at home, this book depicts how working in the highly regimented export garment industry leads to the erosion of workers’ bodies and produces ill-health.