Introduction
The need for an orientation to the global economy is introduced by considering how an apparel consumer in the developed world should respond to the deaths of apparel workers in the Tazreen factory fire and Rana Plaza collapse in Bangladesh. These paradigmatic global injustices are not well understood by standard egalitarian approaches to global justice. Those approaches focus on the comparative wealth of the developed world, but in doing so, they overlook the ways that the global economy is also experienced as unfair by workers there. The chapter argues instead for recognizing that many people in both Bangladesh and the United States have an interest in changing the institutions that govern the global economy. The chapter explains what a conception of orientation can do and why a range of theoretical traditions can endorse the book’s account in light of neoliberalism’s ascendance. The book’s remaining chapters are also summarized.