Garments without Guilt? Global Labour Justice and Ethical Codes in Sri Lankan Apparels

“What about the workers? What do they think of … ethical trade initiatives? Where is their voice?” (p. xv). Kanchana N. Ruwanpura raises these questions at the very beginning of her book Garments without Guilt? It is precisely these questions that have guided her in her long-term research, beginning in 2008, on global labor justice and ethical codes in Sri Lankan apparel. With these guiding questions, Ruwanpura places labor at the center of the debate on ethical governance, focusing on the workers’ histories and how, against the backdrop of the country’s specific local political-economic configuration, they have actively shaped the capitalized landscape in Sri Lanka from the apparel sector’s initial development in the late 1970s to the present.

When I, a Southeast Asian scientist by training and a feminist labor geographer at heart, began reading this book, I was immediately interested in Ruwanpura’s unique approach of investigating “how labourers negotiate ethical codes” (p. 27) in a globalized capitalist system such as the apparel industry. Too often, discourses and debates on global labor standards and sustainability in this commodity chain are “instrumentalized and fashioned as top-down universal ‘solutions’” (p. 14), ignoring the fact that labor as a spatial subject and significant agent shapes and forms these discourses and debates from below as well. Following a labor (geography) perspective (Herod 1997), Ruwanpura demonstrates that these ethical codes are navigated not only globally from above, but also locally from below. In this sense, she shows that we can learn from and with labor (p. xv), to explore how workers in Sri Lanka (re)negotiate their situation collectively, searching for change and improvements.

The rapid success and the exclusive image of the Sri Lankan apparel industry as an ethical sourcing destination with high production quality thus did not come out of the blue. This image (whether it is true is a different story, and directly questioned by the question mark in the title) has only become possible through recurring collective labor (re)actions. In Garments without Guilt? Ruwanpura aims to show that labor is “fundamental to the Sri Lankan apparel industry’s success—for the factory, sector, and country” (p. 5), with all the contradictions that come with it. She pursues this goal theoretically, methodologically, and empirically in an enriching and inspiring way.

Contributing to an Intersectionally Informed Feminist Labor Geography

While systematically bringing her research interests and expertise on unequal development, gender, and ethnic conflict to the scientific and political project of labor geography, Ruwanpura extends discourses and debates around labor, space, and agency with a necessary and increasingly discussed intersectionally informed feminist perspective (e.g., Strauss 2018; Dutta 2020). In this sense, she underscores the need to consider the multiple identities that workers embody and that are shaped and reshaped in and outside of factories, and thus in interconnected spatial processes of (re)production (Chapter 2). In doing so, she also shows how important it is to consider the space–time continuum. Whereas previous feminist work has emphasized “the nimble fingers” of “docile” women workers (Elson and Pearson 1981) and gender in particular as a central category in the capital accumulation process in the apparel industry, Ruwanpura notes that in her research it became clear that it was labor rather than gender that was the central motif (p. 19), and she mentions the increase in male labor in the Sri Lankan factories. This in no way eliminates power relations along the lines of gender, however. Rather, the point is to highlight the role of ethnicity in this case study and how labor is ultimately intertwined with the categories of gender and ethnicity. With the help of such an intersectionally informed feminist perspective on labor geographies, thinking in spatial and temporal trajectories, not only can we “examine how social institutions and the political fabric shape the (uneven) power of labour” (p. 16), but, moreover, we can also examine the power of workers themselves, their agency in its various forms and dimensions. Although Ruwanpura primarily examines the former, she shows beyond doubt that workers are central actors in the capitalist landscape of Sri Lanka and in relation to the “architecture of global governance regimes” (p. 25) in particular, to which feminist studies, such as the one presented here, always make an important contribution.

Telling the Story from a Labor Perspective from Below

Sri Lanka “claims to be ahead of the curve on the ethical production system” (p. 2) and boasts a unique labor profile compared to other low-wage, apparel-producing countries in the Global South, including as a well-educated workforce, strong labor legislation, and rapid social development. The state as an institution and “inalienable ally for apparel industrialists” (p. 67) has played an important, if often underexposed, role in these dynamics (Chapter 4). In contrast to the dominant narratives of the Sri Lankan apparel industry’s great success with its “quality, reliability, and punctuality” (p. 71), especially told by national actors such as management or policymakers from above. . . Ruwanpura explicitly “give[s] a voice to labour vis-à-vis ethical governance” (p. 3) by telling workers’ histories from below. Beginning with three case studies of collective labor struggles (the Polytex garment strikes in a free-trade zone in the 1980s, the 2011 pension reform protests, and the 2019 struggles against the government’s proposed unified labor law), she first demonstrates the extent to which workers have been central actors in the emergence and development of national and international discourse on ethical codes throughout history, and that is far from the end of the story. After uncovering “neglected labour histories” in the past (Chapter 5), Ruwanpura draws on workers’ voices in the present to illuminate the emic perspective of the predominantly female workers on contemporary “(c)odes of reality” (p. 153). Although it becomes clear that private forms of regulation can make a difference for labor, at least to some degree, the limitations of such neoliberal governance initiatives remain undeniable. In particular, codes dealing with the reproduction of labor (living wage) and the agency of the workers (freedom of association and right to collective bargaining) continue to be widely violated (Chapter 6). This is a finding that is by no means surprising and is comparable to conditions in other producing countries of the Global South.

This image of reality, however, can only be revealed through a labor perspective from below, through the histories and voices of working-class women, in particular, that Ruwanpura brings to light based on a rich mix of qualitative research methods (Chapter 3). At this point it is particularly interesting to see how the researcher’s own “multiple belongings” (in terms of class affiliation, being born and raised in Sri Lanka, having lived and worked in the United Kingdom) have shaped this methodological research process. For example, she gained access to the Sri Lankan production sites through personal family or kinship contacts, particularly at the management level, yet was able to establish a sense of “camaraderie” (p. 33) with the women workers by living with them on site near the factories in semirural areas of Sri Lanka for more than a year. The exciting negotiation of her positioning, her dynamic movement on an insider–outsider continuum, and her ongoing critical self-reflection in the context of the research demonstrates that such scholarly work, such an academic book, has ‘a life story’ (p. xxii) in which the researcher’s personal history is also embedded, which is proactively taken into account and consciously negotiated in the research process.

Bringing out the Specificity of Glocal Linkages

The global apparel industry is a prime example of how capital is always looking for new spatialities to counter the crisis of overaccumulation and continue to make profits. Capital, though, must constantly renegotiate and work through (different and diverse local) places (Herod 2001). Looking at the global–local linkages, Ruwanpura examines how capital in Sri Lanka’s apparel sector—and by extension global ethical trade regimes—must operate in specific, namely highly ethno-ideological, spaces (Chapter 7), and what this in turn entails in terms of local consequences and challenges, not only for the successful implementation of ethical codes, but also for the diverse workforce and their daily lives. The explosive aspect here is that the workforce is recruited from the two ethnic groups that were violently at war with each other for decades. Using this example of labor recruitment processes in past years and the current composition of the workforce, Ruwanpura uncovers the specific glocal intertwining of global production processes and ethical regimes with the local history of war and ethno-nationalist ideologies in Sri Lanka, showing “how working place could [also] bring its own contradictions” (p. 141, original emphasis) as “the ethnic-schisms” (p. 140) are far from overcome following the official end of the war in Sri Lanka in 2009. Labor is still embedded in a highly militarized and ethno-nationalist authoritarian context, and this fact calls for proactive confrontation, as it creates great potential for conflict in the workplace and poses a major challenge to collective struggles and solidarity among workers.

Although I would have liked to read more about this point of locally specific challenges related to collective agency and solidarity, perhaps also in connection or comparison with labor struggles outside the apparel sector and with regard to the challenges of the trade union movement in Sri Lanka more generally (which would be interesting both from a feminist perspective and in terms of what local and supralocal strategies are actually necessary and possible to proactively address the “(c)odes of reality” (p. 153)), Ruwanpura’s book ultimately provides us with the “careful and detailed study of how labourers negotiate ethical codes within the apparel sector” (p. 27) that has been lacking to date. It is, indeed, a book that is “about the workers primarily” (p. xvi), taking into account the political-economic context in which workers are embedded and the actors with whom they have to negotiate. This book, vividly written through the voices of workers and also through the researcher’s own personal background and involvement, which places labor as a key actor at the heart of the debate, is particularly relevant and enriching for labor geographers, but also for scholars in related interdisciplinary fields such as global labor, development, gender, or area studies, engaging with labor in global value chains such as the apparel industry.