Bt cotton and farmer suicides in India: an evidence-based assessment.

Bt cotton is accused of being responsible for an increase of farmer suicides in India. In this article, we provide a comprehensive review of evidence on Bt cotton and farmer suicides. Available data show no evidence of a 'resurgence' of farmer suicides. Moreover, Bt cotton technology has been very effective overall in India. Nevertheless, in specific districts and years, Bt cotton may have indirectly contributed to farmer indebtedness, leading to suicides, but its failure was mainly the result of the context or environment in which it was planted.

Feet and fabrication: footbinding and early twentieth-century rural women's labor in Shaanxi.

The early twentieth-century transformations of rural Chinese women's work have received relatively little direct attention. By contrast, the former custom of footbinding continues to fascinate and is often used to illustrate or contest theories about Chinese women's status. Arguing that for rural women at least, footbinding needs to be understood in relation to rural economic conditions, the authors focus on changes in textile production and in footbinding in two counties in Shaanxi province. Drawing on historical sources and their own interview data from rural women who grew up in this period, the authors find evidence that transformations in textile production undercut the custom of footbinding and contributed to its rapid demise.

Oil on the water: Government regulation of a carcinogen in the twentieth-century Lancashire cotton spinning industry.

In the Lancashire cotton textile industry, mule spinners were prone to a chronic and sometimes fatal skin cancer (often affecting the groin). The disease had reached epidemic proportions by the 1920s, which necessitated action by the government, employers, and trade unions. In contrast to previous accounts, this article focuses on the government's reaction to mule spinners' cancer. Using official records in the National Archives, the slow introduction of health and safety measures by the government is explored in detail. Although obstructionism by the employers played a key role, one of the reasons for government inaction was the ambiguity of scientific research on engineering oils. On the other hand, prolonged scientific research suited a government policy that was framed around self regulation - a policy that had proved largely ineffective by the 1950s.

Sweat or no sweat: foreign workers in the garment industry in Malaysia.

In the last decade factory owners, in response to brand-name Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR) parameters, have joined associations that verify (through a monitoring and audit system) that management does not exploit labour. There have been no reports of violations of codes of conduct concerning Malaysian workers but for foreign workers on contract there are certain areas that have been reported. These areas, including trade union membership, the withholding of workers' passports and unsuitable accommodation, generally escape notice because auditors who monitor factory compliance do not question the terms of contracts as long as they comply with national labour standards. This paper is based on research with foreign workers in Malaysia and argues that despite the success of the anti-sweatshop movement in a global context, the neo-liberal state in Malaysia continues to place certain restrictions on transnational labour migrants which breach garment industry codes of conduct. Available evidence does not support the assumption that CSR practices provide sufficient protection for both citizen and foreign workers on contract in the garment industry.

Educational Virtual-Wear Trial: More Than a Virtual Try-On Experience.

Developments in computer capabilities, networks, mobile devices, and social media have enabled researchers and educators to increasingly employ blended strategies when developing new learning technologies. In addition, there is a growing need to develop discipline-specific learning technologies as result of expanding research in various domains. The study reported here was conducted in the context of a textile and clothing higher education course. The key aim was to develop a new learning technology for university students, specifically to help them learn about clothing thermal functional design (CTFD).

[Evaluation of somatic development, physical fitness and motor skills of girls from the Textile Technical College in Lódz (I)]. / Ocena rozwoju somatycznego, wydolnosci fizycznej i sprawnosci motorycznej dziewczat z technikum wlókienniczego w Lodzi.

Thirty-five girls from a technical college (TC) and forty-five from a grammar school (GS) (a control group) were included in a long-term examination. Somatic traits have been investigated for 4 years, while aerobic capacity and motor efficiency have been studied for 3 years. The preliminary selection was noticed in girls--candidates to technical college and grammar school. These two groups of girls differed in respect of social factors and somatic predisposition. At the beginning of the examination the girls from the technical college revealed a considerably lower motor efficiency as compared to those from the GS. After 3 or 4 years of learning traits of the body length were still weaker in the girls from the technical college. However, they had a more massive skeleton, stronger trunk muscles and stronger hands. In addition, these girls were characterized by a remarkable improvement of general physical efficiency, particularly endurance, speed and nimbleness. In the final stage of the study in all girls from both TC and GS aged 18 lower aerobic capacity in comparison with data from the previous year was found, which could results from inefficient physical activity during the educational process. This fact may be especially unfavourable for the girls from TC as far as their future profession is concerned.

[Evaluation of the respiratory system function in girls from the Textile Technical College in Lódz (II)]. / Ocena czynnosci ukladu oddechowego dziewczat z Technikum Wlókienniczego w Lodzi (Czesc II).

The work in textile industry is a risk factor of the development of chronic non-specific diseases of the respiratory tract. Thus the vocational selection for the posts in this industry should particularly take into account the health status of the applying youths. The subjects of the study were 35 girls from Textile Technical College and 42 girls from Grammar School (control group). The girls were examined three times in the succeeding school years. Anthropometric and spirometric examinations were performed. No significant differences between the values of ventilation parameters in both the groups were observed, which indicates that the selection of pupils admitted to the Technical College was proper. During the period of professional training no adverse effects of the industrial environment on the respiratory function could be found either.

"Productivity on the cheap"? The "more looms" experiment and the Lancashire weaving industry during the inter-war years.

Two major debates in the literature, productivity performance and the decline of the cotton industry, are joined in the analysis presented in this article on the attempts to raise productivity through the introduction of the more looms per weaver system in cotton weaving in the inter-war years. We find that the limited resultant changes were the outcome of understandable predisposition to maintain co-operative behaviour which meant that productivity enhancing schemes with long term potential were sacrificed for more modest schemes which preserved consensus in the short term.

Francesco Saverio Amman: an Austrian cotton entrepreneur in Lombardy,1838-82.

This article examines the cotton manufacturing industry in Lombardy during the period when Austrian rule was being restored in the wake of the Congress of Vienna. It adopts Pollard's emphasis on the regional nature of industrialisation, drawing on the surviving accounts of Francesco Saverio Amman - the Austrian-born founder of a major cotton-mill - and attempts to identify differences and similarities between his career and achievements and those of his many counterparts in the rest of Europe. The article begins by looking at Amman's economic and social advancement, and then discusses the development of his business interests. It concludes by examining how he chose to invest his earnings, both within and without the cotton industry.

The sources of innovation in the woollen and worsted industry of eighteenth-century Yorkshire.

This article examines the economic developments that induced producers to seek our innovations during a transformative period in the Yorkshire woollen industry. The analysis examines both the increase in the scale of the typical operation and the tremendous effect that fashion had on the industry. Particular attention is given to the ways in which the workings of real markets and product innovation focused entrepreneurial energy on the production process, and what that tells us about the origins of the Industrial Revolution.

The economics of abundance: coal and cotton in Lancashire and the world.

As a subterranean, highly elastic energy source, coal played a vital role in the cotton industry revolution. Coal was also vital to Lancashire's primacy in this revolution, because it was necessary both to the original accumulation of agglomeration economies before the steam age and to their reinforcement during the steam age. In no other part of the world was the cotton industry situated on a coalfield, and the response of other parts of the world cotton industry to Lancashire's agglomeration advantages was dispersal in search of cheap water and/or labour power. Lancashire coal helped to shape the global pattern of cotton production.

A pair of little gilded shoes: commission, cost, and meaning in Renaissance footwear.

This article focuses on women's luxury footwear to examine issues of economic, material, and familial life in Renaissance Italy. It uses graphic work by Albrecht Dürer to explore footwear design, and draw from disparate sources to propose a new method for evaluating its cost. The article argues that sumptuous footwear was available for a range of prices that are not reflected in surviving payment records, and that it was largely less expensive than moralists and legislators implied. In conclusion, it employs Minerbetti documentation to consider the role particular shoes may have played in developing personal subjectivity.

"No fertile soil for pathogens": rayon, advertising, and biopolitics in late Weimar Germany.

Recent research on twentieth-century German history has begun to re-examine the centrality of race as a category of analysis. While not discounting its importance in the shaping and enacting of Nazi policies and practices, race is seen instead as one among many factors leading to the crimes of the Nazi regime. In this paper, the author considers the role consumerist desires and fantasies played in the wider context of the inter-war European fascination with notions of technology, "hygiene," democracy, and modernity. Using advertisements that were created to promote manufactured-fiber (rayon) apparel, this article suggests that continuities across cultures and time periods necessitate a re-evaluation of race as the signal organizing principal. Instead, the author argues that by complicating the intersections between class, science and technology, and an emerging, but troubling, modernity, 1920s rayon advertising offers an especially rich site for analysis of the ways in which biopolitics and nascent consumerism both sold products and constructed ideologies before 1933, and influenced the post-war welfare state.