Editor's introduction

R ecently I came across a photograph of a pair of Lee Cooper denim jeans on the front page of a newspaper supplement. The jeans were photographed in a flat formal style as though part of an exhibition on popular culture. I assumed the article (Abrams, 2001) that followed would be about dress codes, fashion icons, or advertising and therefore strewn with quotes from Bourdieu and Barthes. I was wrong. The article was accompanied by two more images. The first was a photograph taken in a factory in Tunisia where the jeans were made. It showed tottering piles of half-made jeans, lines of women working head down at their sewing machines, general confusion and clutter suggesting 'this is a hot house—cheap labour at work.' The second image, a map, illustrated where different elements of the jeans came from—the material was dyed in Milan using synthetic German indigo, the zip teeth made in Japan, the cotton from west Africa etc. The article moved on to more significant issues than those we normally invest in this particular piece of material culture, to explore globalisation, human geography, ethnography and work, gender, morality and ethics.