SPRING ARBOR, Mich. ¾  “An animal trapped in your hot car, all day that you choose to ignore,” are lines from a Radiohead song that in the video juxtaposes the life of a boy in England to a boy in China.

Jeremy Norwood, a professor at Spring Arbor University, talked about the lives of people in Cambodia who work in the garment industry and how their lives differed from the people that live in the United States during the Focus Series events on Mar. 3.  

To the people in the United States the working conditions of the women in Cambodia would be considered sweatshops. To those women that work there they call what they do the garment industry.

These women are often from the rural areas that are more impoverish than the cities. They live in makeshift housing that are made by the government or the companies. They work 12-16 hour days to make only around $2. Food costs about $1 a day and it is spent on something that probably isn’t more than rice.

“What if I were born in some other place? What if my children were born in some other place of the world? Would things be the same?” Norwood mentioned to the audience.

Life would be different for anyone if they lived in a different culture. Jobs would not be the same, the salaries would not be the same and people would live under different housing conditions. Radiohead shows the difference of two people from different cultures, the boy from China makes the shoes that the boy from England wears everyday.