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I remember reading The Travels of a T-Shirt in the Global Economy (1) for an undergrad class about globalization - a light, quick read but one that stuck with m
by macandcheese 10y ago
I remember reading The Travels of a T-Shirt in the Global Economy (1) for an undergrad class about globalization - a light, quick read but one that stuck with me through college and post-graduation. Highly recommended.
The narrative follows the lifecycle of a t-shirt, from the farming of cotton in the southern US, to China where the shirts are created, back to the US for sale, and ultimately to Africa after donation.
1) https://www.amazon.com/Travels-T-Shirt-Global-Economy-Economist/dp/0471648493 https://www.amazon.com/Travels-T-Shirt-Global-Economy-Econom...
- flyingfences 10y agoFor those looking for an even shorter read, Leonard Read's I, Pencil gets the basic point across pretty quickly. There's even a video adaptation available for those who don't want to read at all. https://en.wikisource.org/wiki/I,_Pencil https://en.wikisource.org/wiki/I,_Pencil https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IYO3tOqDISE https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IYO3tOqDISE
- porterde 10y agoIndeed. As well as the globalisation aspect, I found the political vs economic point interesting. As the BBC article ends: "Rather than a story of how people were competing - how do I make a faster T-shirt, a better T-shirt, a cheaper T-shirt - what I found is that the story of the T-shirt and why its life turned out the way it did was really about how people were using political power," she says. The current backlash against global trade is a direct result of this kind of political interference, she believes.