Tuesday, February 4, 2014

Travels of a Tee-Shirt in the Global Economy


The Travels of a T-Shirt in the Global Economy: An Economist Examines the Markets, Power, and Politics of World Trade 
by Pietra Rivoli

Over five years, business professor Pietra Rivoli traveled from a Texas cotton field to a Chinese factory to a used clothing market in Africa, to investigate compelling questions about the politics, economics, ethics, and history of modern business and globalization. Using the story of the t-shirt to illustrate the major issues of the globalization debate, this uniquely entertaining business book offers a surprising, enlightening, and balanced look at one of the major topics of our time.

The book is a neat exploration of all the steps involved in manufacturing a tee-shirt from growing the cotton on. (This was a draft that I accidentally published too soon. If you are interested in this book check back - I will fill in more details. To sum up - good book, easy to read, written by an economist so external costs to the environment are not a focus).

Planet Money on NPR did a special series last month where they made their own shirt ...
Planet Money Makes A T-Shirt: The world behind a simple shirt, in five chapters.


If you want to hear the author - The Travels of a T-Shirt in the Global Economy - see Pietra Rivoli speak at UCSB (BTW - the author actually starts speaking about about the 5:30 minute mark) 
(Sorry, I honestly thought her talk was pretty boring. This is for hard core interest) 
University of California Television (UCTV)  http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9yYQqKxz8Tg


Older stories on this are at 
http://www.npr.org/series/4622200/the-world-in-a-t-shirt

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