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Just Compensation? The Price of Death and Injury after the Rana Plaza Garment Factory Collapse

In: The Politics and Ethics of the Just Price

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  • Rebecca Prentice

Abstract

The 2013 collapse of the Rana Plaza factory building in Dhaka, Bangladesh, was the most deadly disaster in garment manufacturing history, with at least 1,134 people killed and hundreds injured. In 2015, injured workers and the families of those killed received compensation from global apparel brands through a US$30 million voluntary initiative known as the Rana Plaza Arrangement. Overseen by the International Labour Organization (ILO), the Rana Plaza Arrangement awarded payments to survivors using a pricing formula developed by a diverse team of ‘stakeholders’ that included labour groups, multinational apparel companies, representatives of the Bangladesh government and local employers, and ILO actuaries. This paper draws from anthropological scholarship on the ‘just price’ to explore how a formula for pricing death and injury became both themeansandformof a fragile political settlement in the wake of a shocking and widely publicised industrial disaster. By unpacking the complicated ‘ethics of a formula’ (Ballestero, 2015), I demonstrate how the project of creating a just price involves not two sets of values (ethical and financial) but rather multiple, competing values. This paper argues for recognition of the persistence and power of these competing values, showing how they variously strengthen and undermine the claim that justice was served by the Rana Plaza Arrangement. This analysis reveals the deficiencies of counterposing ‘morality’ and ‘economy’ in the study of price by reflecting upon all elements of price as situated within political economy and history.

Suggested Citation

  • Rebecca Prentice, 2019. "Just Compensation? The Price of Death and Injury after the Rana Plaza Garment Factory Collapse," Research in Economic Anthropology, in: The Politics and Ethics of the Just Price, volume 39, pages 157-178, Emerald Group Publishing Limited.
  • Handle: RePEc:eme:reanzz:s0190-128120190000039008
    DOI: 10.1108/S0190-128120190000039008
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    Citations

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    Cited by:

    1. Sibel Kusimba, 2020. "Embodied value: Wealth‐in‐people," Economic Anthropology, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 7(2), pages 166-175, June.
    2. Nuno Guimaraes Costa & Gerard Farias & David Wasieleski & Anthony Annett, 2021. "Seven Principles for Seven Generations: Moral Boundaries for Transformational Change," Humanistic Management Journal, Springer, vol. 6(3), pages 313-328, December.
    3. Anne TREBILCOCK, 2020. "The Rana Plaza disaster seven years on: Transnational experiments and perhaps a new treaty?," International Labour Review, International Labour Organization, vol. 159(4), pages 545-568, December.

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