Abstract
Colleges and universities have long had a reputation for being hotbeds of activism; however, relatively few sociologists have produced detailed accounts of campus activism. Matthew S. Williams has done so in Strategizing against Sweatshops, an insightful analysis of a U.S. college student organization (United Students Against Sweatshops, or USAS) that sought to challenge major apparel companies’ reliance on sweatshops.
One of the main goals of Williams’ book is to shed light on how social movement organizations such as USAS craft their strategies and tactics. As Williams notes, when students began mobilizing against sweatshops in the mid-1990s, they did not have much of a strategy at all. Instead, outraged by media reports revealing that prominent apparel companies were using sweatshops to produce their clothing at minimal cost, students began engaging in creative anti-sweatshop protests on individual campuses.
After students began connecting across campuses and officially formed USAS, they were able to formulate more specific strategies. For example, early on, USAS demanded that apparel companies disclose the names of the factories they used to manufacture clothing. Students hoped that, if apparel companies made the names of those factories public, then other activists would be able to investigate the conditions inside those factories and shame companies that were exploiting workers. USAS soon learned that this plan was ineffective, though, as it was difficult for activists to get inside those factories.
As USAS debated its next steps, the Clinton administration announced that it had worked with major apparel companies to negotiate the launch of the Fair Labor Association (FLA). The FLA, which was funded by apparel companies themselves, planned to inspect a small percentage of apparel factories each year—but only after giving factories advance warning of their plans to show up. Apparel companies agreed to participate in this initiative mostly as a way to undercut attempts to bring about more serious reforms.
By closely watching their opponents’ moves, learning from their early mistakes, and staying true to their core ideology, USAS soon developed the idea for a competing organization known as the Worker Rights Consortium (WRC). Launched in 2000, this organization would conduct more thorough, random inspections and allow factory workers to contact the WRC directly if their factories were not abiding by WRC's code of conduct. The WRC would become USAS’ biggest success story: through educational and direct-action campaigns, USAS convinced over 150 U.S. colleges and universities to commit to selling licensed apparel only from companies that agreed to inspections by the WRC (workersrights.org).
In addition to shedding light on social movement strategizing, Williams’ book also theorizes the characteristics of colleges and universities that make them vulnerable to social movement campaigns. As Williams argues, colleges and universities represented ideal sites for USAS’ campaigns for several reasons: (1) they are home to a large number of people with biographical availability to participate in social movements; (2) there are strong norms supporting students’ right to protest on their campuses; and (3) the relatively small scale of colleges and universities, coupled with most schools’ extensive ties to outside organizations (including apparel companies), made them appealing targets.
Williams’ analysis of the “political opportunity structure” (or what other scholars have called the “educational opportunity structure” or “academic opportunity structure”) of colleges and universities helps us understand why USAS was so successful in convincing schools to sign on to the WRC. It also helps us understand why similar anti-sweatshop organizations such as SweatFree Communities—which targets state and local governments and is the subject of a later chapter—achieved comparatively fewer victories.
If I had one small critique here, it is that Williams’ conceptualization of the opportunity structure of colleges and universities is less helpful for explaining why some colleges and universities are more responsive to protests than others. Although Williams briefly nods to the idea that the “type of school can also make a difference” in the differential success of student movements (p. 53), perhaps future researchers could do more to systematically examine this possibility.
Overall, Strategizing Against Sweatshops represents a sophisticated yet highly readable account of student activism—a book that should interest seasoned scholars and student activists alike. Indeed, by taking students seriously as agents of social change, the book has the potential to inspire future students who are looking for insights on how to bring about important changes on their campuses and in the wider society.
