Author Pietra Rivoli discusses The Travels of a T-Shirt in the Global Economy: An Economist Examines the Markets, Power, and Politics of World Trade, in a Georgetown University office cluttered with piles of economics texts and student papers, as well as the globetrotting T-shirt that inspired the book.
Could you talk about what globalization means to you and why you think the term is so misunderstood?
The term has so many multiple meanings. There's cultural globalization, there's imperialistic globalization. To me, it has always meant economic globalization. That's the kind of globalization that was at the forefront of the news when I started to write the book. People were talking about trade and labor and economic issues. But there is no common understanding of the word, and it's very value-laden by those people who are in favor and those who are opposed to globalization. I think it's because it does affect people's lives so directly. It's not really an abstraction to someone who, for example, has lost their job due to imports or to someone who is working in a factory under substandard conditions. So globalization is a reality in people's lives. People have a lot of themselves invested in the word.
What are some of the shortcomings of United States trade policy?
I think the primary shortcoming is that it's not about the best policy; it's about responding to the squeakiest wheels. Look at the extent to which it responds to the political demands rather than to the idea of figuring out the best policy in a more intellectual or macro sense.
When you were traveling in China, how did the Chinese see American workers? What were their impressions of America?
Many of the Chinese I met would say, “I love Americans, but I really don't like what you're doing with this policy or that policy.” I think one of the things that comes out when you talk to Chinese workers is their astonishment at the level of wages in the United States. They always say, “You make that much money?” And then, of course, you have to explain about the higher costs of living and so forth. But the main thing that people respond to is the idea that so many people have a house and that so many people make this much money. The wealth difference between the two countries is still enormous.
You wrote about how many Chinese women saw the work in the factories as a source of liberation from an oppressive family life or the farm labor. Did any of the women end up having to go back to the farms?
I think what you find often is a fairly typical pattern. The women will use their savings to return to their home province and open businesses. If you go into a Chinese garment factory, most of the workers are in their early 20s. Many of them do not plan to spend their lives in Shanghai stitching T-shirts. They want to go back home and have a family, but they want to do so with some savings so that they can build a house or start a business or something like that.
You also talk about the “race to the bottom” in terms of wages. What can be done to ensure that low-wage workers aren't exploited in countries like China or India?
This is really where one of the most important lessons of this book comes out. The workers who stitch these T-shirts together need the job; they need the companies in there producing the T-shirts so they can have this job. At the same time, they need the political activists that have, throughout industrial history, been a part of writing the rules. And this is why I think the last five or six years has been an encouraging time, because it's been a time when we've seen labor standards written into our trade agreements. That was never the case before. In recent years, we have seen activists pressure companies to implement various forms of factory monitoring to hold them accountable on various kinds of labor rights.
In the book, I've stated that the markets and the companies on the one hand, and the activists on the other, are really unwitting co-conspirators. They're actually working together to improve the human condition. So, I think that even though the activists and the companies are pitted against each other in the press, they're working together in a rather unintentional way to stop the worst of these abuses, to shine a light where a light needs to be shone, and to show the world the reality of life in some of these factories. What's been a very positive development is that companies have really responded out of their own self-interest. I'm fairly optimistic about the way the activists have been able to mobilize public opinion, mobilize corporate behavior, and improve the lives of these workers in the factories.
George W. Bush talks about bringing democracy and free markets to the world. In your book, you say that Africa is one of the few places where your T-shirt encountered a free market. Why do you think that these free markets haven't translated into higher living standards in Africa?
Africa has so many tragedies on so many dimensions, and I don't want to put myself out as an economic expert on Africa, because I'm not. I think that what I would say is that there are pockets that I saw in Africa where the markets are helping pockets of communities to improve their lives. I'm not making some kind of blanket statement that free markets are best for Africa -- I don't have the evidence or the background to make such a statement. Based on my own research, I looked at how these markets worked in this relatively small part of Africa in this clothing piece. I saw people's living standards and the quality of life improved as a result of these markets. I think that state socialism failed Africa, and it failed Africa in many ways because it was not a socialism for the people, it was a socialism for the elite. And so this used-clothing trade is about the smaller people and their ability to find their own way through Africa's problems.
There are so many challenges in Africa ranging from health challenges to governance challenges to corruption, and I would never sit here and say that free markets will fix all of that. My point was: Here's a small little piece of the African experience that's working for people.
Do you ever wear the T-shirt?
I wore it for a picture, but I'm pretty scared of anything happening to it. I'm very nervous that 10 years from now, someone will want to see the shirt and somehow I've lost it, so it just stays right there [on the chair].
Thanks so much for talking to me.
Sure. I'm always happy to talk about my T-shirt.
LaNitra Walker is a doctoral candidate in art history at Duke University.
