Social Justice

There was fast food, then there is fast fashion. The True Cost (2015), a documentary film by Andrew Morgan, reveals that the fashion industry is one of the most polluting industry in the world. And talking about pollution in any given circumstance shall expose more than the insidious waste; it crucially uncovers a systemic and almost deliberate phenomenon which primarily harms the environment, society, and human life itself. In a growing society that always seeks progress, a necessity like clothing has turned unpleasantly into a constant consumption from a commercial and inhumane production. Little do we know about the conditions from which our clothes are created; we only know about their prices that we are so willing to pay even we can’t usually afford.

Time and again, in a growing society that always seeks progress – an economic system that efficiently works under the structure of capitalism is bound to search and exploit cheap labor from developing countries. The East, countries from Asia, happens to be constituted with a sizeable labor force that is highly operated by the West. Work may be productive; it must be. Meanwhile, the working conditions for the people who do the work are not conducive. Even the expected goods are produced with such quantity and quality, the people who conducted the processes before such outputs did not have a choice but accept the nature that makes them survive. Condescendingly, the businessmen and owners are not willing to improve and grant a just and living wage for their workers. They claim to have followed legal policies and for them, that is enough. But it is evidently not enough when workers are forced to stay and keep working in an unsafe working place where the building is long expected to collapse, and it did – killing numerous lives. 

Who pays the price for our clothing?

Unfortunately, such disastrous event, the Bangladesh factory collapse in 2013, only marked a crucial history of the industry but did not compel a significant total change on the labor system. The labor force is still denied the right living wage. Fashion is not a necessity anymore but a trend of production and consumption too limitless to cease. Essentially, the global fashion industry in a growing society that always seeks progress only effectively moves forward its moneymaking that enables environmental and social injustices.


SOC SCI 1 Foundation of Social Science
08 March 2020

Reflection Paper 

The True Cost (2015, dir. Andrew Morgan)

If you like reading this, see The Sociological Imagination

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