ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

My first thanks are to the people in this story. In my travels around the world during the past 10 years, I have been blessed by hospitality, kindness, and insights from people on three continents who have welcomed me into their homes and businesses, and patiently explained things to me. As a tenured professor at an American university, my livelihood is as immune as it is possible to get from the gale-force winds of global economic and political change, so I humbly concede that to live this story is a far greater challenge than to write it. My respect for my many friends who get up every day to face these challenges is immense. My thanks and admiration are especially due to Nelson and Ruth Reinsch, Gary Sandler, Su Qin, Tao Yong Fang, Patrick Xu, Mohammed and Gulam Dewji, Geofrey Milonge, Auggie Tantillo, Julia Hughes, and Ed Stubin.

Georgetown University has been my second home for 25 years, and I have benefited from innumerable conversations with my students and colleagues. Special thanks are due to our student activists, who first sparked the idea for this book, and who have changed my mind more than once. Their energy and engagement are inspirational, even when we disagree, and I am tremendously proud of them and the difference that they continue to make in the course that globalization takes. Many of the ideas in this book were discussed at meetings of the university’s Licensing Oversight Committee, which has been chaired successively by Jim Donahue, Michael Garanzini, Dan Porterfield, and LaMarr Billups.

A number of capable research assistants and administrative assistants have helped me in the course of this research. Thanks are due to Brooke Barber, Lan Feng, Russell Jame, Renee Jiang, Dana Omahen, Jeffrey Pardini, Ann Pitchayanonnetr, and Emma Thompson. Thanks, too, to Jennifer Boettcher of the Lauinger Library at Georgetown. I have relied extensively on electronic updates from the U.S. Association of Importers of Textiles and Apparel; the American Apparel Producers’ Network; and Sander, Travis, and Rosenberg, P.A. My students and faculty colleagues on the fall 2003 voyage of Semester at Sea also deserve thanks for our many conversations and shared experiences that helped me to sharpen the ideas in this book. Semester at Sea also made possible additional field research in China and Tanzania.

I have now spoken with hundreds of people about the topics in this book, and it is impossible to thank them all by name. The most significant interviews were conducted with those named in the notes throughout the book, so I hope these notes can serve as thanks for now. However, I would be remiss if I did not mention the extensive help and Texas hospitality of Wally and Margy Darneille, Bryan Gregory, John Johnson, Roger Haldenby, Kelly Pepper, and Ralph and Naomi Hoelscher. For China-based research I owe a debt to Professor Lijun Qu, and for their field research in Tanzania, special thanks are due Elina Makanja and Henri Minion.

For our around-the-world adventure, and especially for bringing my T-shirt’s story to the radio, I thank Adam Davidson of National Public Radio. And for bringing this story to the stage in Europe, I thank playwright Ditte Maria Bjerg. Finally, thanks once more to Annette and Elaine, and of course to Denny, Annalisa, and Dennis.