Tight Knit: Global Families and the Social Life of Fast Fashion
Book by Elizabeth L. Krause
Review by Adua Elizabeth Paciocco
Summer 2020

Adua Elizabeth Paciocco reviews Tight Knit: Global Families and the Social Life of Fast Fashion by Elizabeth L. Krause. In this book, Krause examines how families involved in the fashion industry are coping with globalization based on longterm research in Prato, the historic hub of textile production in the heart of metropolitan Tuscany. She brings to the fore the tensions—over value, money, beauty, family, care, and belonging—that are reaching a boiling point as the country struggles to deal with the same migration pressures that are triggering backlash all over Europe and North America. Tight Knit tells a fascinating story about the heterogeneity of contemporary capitalism that will interest social scientists, immigration experts, and anyone curious about how globalization is changing the most basic of human conditions—making a living and making a life.
Read the book review at https://doi.org/10.1177/0197918319855065.