San Diego Carleton Club Common Reading Discussion, 2008

This fall the San Diego Carleton Club will discuss Carleton’s Common Reading selection for 2008: Travels of a T-Shirt in a Global Economy, by Pietra Rivoli.

Book Description: "During a 1999 protest of the World Trade Organization, Rivoli, an economics professor at Georgetown, looked on as an activist seized the microphone and demanded, "Who made your T-shirt?" Rivoli determined to find out. She interviewed cotton farmers in Texas, factory workers in China, labor champions in the American South and used-clothing vendors in Tanzania. Problems, Rivoli concludes, arise not with the market, but with the suppression of the market. Subsidized farmers, and manufacturers and importers with tax breaks, she argues, succeed because they avoid the risks and competition of unprotected global trade, which in turn forces poorer countries to lower their prices to below subsistence levels in order to compete. Rivoli seems surprised by her own conclusions, and while some chapters lapse into academic prose and tedious descriptions of bureaucratic maneuvering, her writing is at its best when it considers the social dimensions of a global economy, as in chapters on the social networks of African used-clothing entrepreneurs." (see excerpt, author information and reviews at http://www.wiley.com/)

For additional perspectives and potential topics for discussion, check out a three-part report produced by NPR: http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=4622200

Date: Sunday, September 14, 2008

Time:5-7pm. Potluck dinner beginning at 5:00; discussion to start at 6:00

Where: Home of Ann Johns ’59

4626 56^th Street

San Diego, CA 92115-3636

Please view a map of the location at http://maps.google.com/maps?f=q&hl=en&geocode=&q=4626+56th+Street+92115&sll=37.0625,-95.677068&sspn=62.619483,108.28125&ie=UTF8&ll=32.76299,-117.074904&spn=0.008264,0.013218&z=16&iwloc=addr.

For questions about directions please contact Ann Johns: (619) 583-2966

Bring: A dinner item to share. Beverages and paper goods will be provided.