This chapter focuses on a novel transnational governance initiative which was developed after the 2013 Rana Plaza crisis: the Bangladesh Accord on Fire and Building Safety. We focus on one particularly novel aspect of the Accord, which is the nature of the collective action created through the collaboration of over 200 signatory brands with global labour actors. We first identify the institutional design features including transnational co-determination, industry-wide, pre-competitive collaboration, legally enforceable commitment, developing worker voice, leverage through collective action, accountability through collective oversight, pooling of resources and, finally, the highly focused approach. While successful in improving safety in the industry, we also highlight the political nature of collective private regulation and the political backlash from national actors which ultimately ended its regulatory power.

The Conradian fauna range from the albatross to the yearling and contain more than 150 different species of nonhuman animal. Despite the biodiversity, it is easy to overlook Conrad’s animals because they most frequently appear in metaphors and similes: at first sight, they lack agency, physical presence and independent meaning. But contrary to an articulated evaluative ideal of animal studies, Conrad’s animal metaphors invite reflection on human–animal relations, and demonstrate that an author can write attentively, sympathetically and thoughtfully on animals, despite primarily mentioning them in metaphors. The unreality effect, which I argue unites Conrad’s unconventional animal metaphors, confronts the reader to question the reality of the fictional construct. The unconventional sayings that produce this unreality effect all say: we have the appearance of a marginal, incidental detail but we are one of the most complicated structures in the text.