Bob Jeffcott makes the case against ethical shopping.
April 2007's Issue
The magic crop was once thought to be the ‘white gold’ that would lead the Global South out of poverty. But all is not well, neither in the cotton fields nor in the sweatshop factories that turn out your T-shirts and blue jeans. We follow the cotton chain and find links that are tangled in exploitation and tragedy. Our editor travels to India to discover an unfolding disaster – and the determination to reshape the fabric of the cotton economy. But there’s more to the story of cotton that that – a fascinating history, a contested present and a perilous future filled with promise.
Every month, we put up a selection of articles from the magazine. To enjoy the complete magazine, subscribe and receive three free issues and a world map. Or buy a digital subscription which gives you unlimited access to all magazines since 2007 and for a year after purchase on your computer or mobile device, in their original full-colour design.
Featured in issue 399
Natural alternatives to cotton...
Advances in cotton production and the development of synthetic fibres.
- 1 Apr 2007
- 0
Shell still hell
Shell may be pumping the petrodollars into glossy PR campaigns, but Nigerians remain unimpressed.
- 1 Apr 2007
- 0
Powerloom prison
India’s textile industry is changing – and the workers are not the beneficiaries. Dionne Bunsha reports.
- Dionne Bunsha
- 1 Apr 2007
- 1
Breaking with ‘tradition’
Women’s movements were much in evidence at the Nairobi gathering.
- 1 Apr 2007
- 0
Coked up
Farmer Gilbert Rodrigo from Tamil Nadu in India spent the WSF marching around telling people not to drink Coke.
- 1 Apr 2007
- 0
‘Privatization brings the rain’
A new African Water Network was launched at the WSF to co-ordinate opposition to ‘water privatization in all its forms’.
- 1 Apr 2007
- 0
Queer eye for the WSF
The many African lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender and intersex activists made this one of the largest public gatherings mobilizing for sexual rights in Africa to date.
- 1 Apr 2007
- 0
Poverty bites WSF on the backside
We arrived at the stadium where the 2007 World Social Forum was taking place.
- 1 Apr 2007
- 0
Organic and beyond
Can a shift to organic create a sustainable yield? Richard Swift weighs the evidence.
- Richard Swift
- 1 Apr 2007
- 0
Cooking up change
The seventh World Social Forum (WSF) took place this January in Nairobi, Kenya.
- 1 Apr 2007
- 0
Death by cotton
India’s farmers have been killing themselves by the thousands. Richard Swift finds out why.
- Richard Swift
- 1 Apr 2007
- 0
Cotton: peril and promise
Richard Swift wonders if there are better ways to get along with this difficult shrub.
- Richard Swift
- 1 Apr 2007
- 0
The Cotton Chain – The Facts
Cotton clothes the world. It represents 38% of the world fibre market.
- 1 Apr 2007
- 0
The Successor
The Successor by Ismail Kadare translated from the French of Tedi Papavrami by David Bellos
- 1 Apr 2007
- 0
Carbon Trading
Carbon Trading a critical conversation on climate change, privatisation and power by Larry Lohmann
- 1 Apr 2007
- 0
Lech and Jaroslaw Kaczynski
Two for the price of one, in the shape of Tweedledum and Tweedledee
- 1 Apr 2007
- 0
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