The legitimization of the use of sweat shops by H&M in the Swedish press
In the Swedish news-media we find sporadic critical, or reflective, reporting on the production conditions of Swedish
‘sweat-shop’ factories in the Global South, used to supply Transnational Corporations (TNCs). In this paper we carry out a critical
discourse analysis, in particular using Van Leeuwen’s social actor and social action analysis, to look at examples from a larger corpus of
88 news reports and editorials from the Swedish press, between 2012–2017, which report and comment on activities of the Swedish company
H&M in relation to its production chains. Analysis reveals how these recontextualize events, processes and motives, to represent Sweden
and Swedish TNCs as characterized by a benevolent, democratic, humane, form of capitalism, drawing on discourses of a former social
democratic Sweden of the 1960s before it became highly neo-liberalized. This nationalism converges with other discourses promoting the
exploitation of the Global South.
Article outline
- 1.Introduction
- 2.Global supply chains and exploitation of workers
- 3.H&M and its global suppliers
- 4.The news media and reporting the Global South
- 5.Theory and methods
- 6.Analysis
- 6.1Article 1: ‘Exporting Trade-union rights – H&M and IF Metall want to fight bad working conditions in Cambodian factories’ (SvenskaDagbladet, 23/10/2012)
- 6.1.1How the participants are represented
- 6.1.1.1The Swedish participants
- 6.1.1.2Chinese and other participants
- 6.1.2What the participants are represented as doing
- 6.1.2.1What the Swedish participants are doing
- 6.1.2.2What the factory owners/bosses are doing
- 6.1.2.3What the workers are doing
- 6.2Article 2: Now it’s the time for Africa (Sydsvenskan 27/7/2013)
- 6.2.1The participants in the report
- 6.2.2What are these participants doing?
- 7.Conclusion
-
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