Is It Worth It?

5 Pages 1275 Words

“Why do people stay in jobs that are killing them? Simple survival is one motivation.” In the article “Sweatshop Barbie: Exploitation of Third World Labor,” the author, Anton Foek, attempts to open our eyes and see the deplorable situations of the workers in these Third World Nations. Foek visited the factory, Dynamics, where Barbie dolls are manufactured. (Some of the locations of these factories include China, Thailand and Indonesia.) As soon as Foek arrived at Bangkok she saw women and children protesting, “We are not slave labour!” Of these women many suffer from illnesses, which often results in death. After intensive research, Foek tries to explain this social phenomenon through the conflict and interactionalist perspectives about the social world.
Anton Foek helps us recognize human variety and confronts the challenges of living in a diverse world by focusing on the conflict and interactionalist perspective. The conflict perspective “focuses on competition and conflict between social groups and the change that results.” The interactionalist perspective, a micro approach, “views society as the product of countless encounters between human beings in everyday social activity.” The conflict perspective attempts to find answers through questions like who benefits and what are the major patterns of social inequality? While the interactionalist perspective asks why do individuals do the things they do? These answers are found through the words of dying women who have and continue to work at the Dynamics factory. (Gesualdi)
Imagine yourself at the age of twelve and running the risk of being sold into sex slavery or as cheap labor in Thailand. Many parents sadly have no other alternative but to sell their daughters. Foek, in search for answers, speaks with Sunanta, a young lady in her twenty’s, as she explains why people do the things they do? She goes on to say that parents “generate income from selling their ...