Items related to Beyond the Ruins: The Meanings of Deindustrialization
The immediate impact of deindustrialization―the suffering inflicted upon workers, their families, and their communities―has been widely reported by scholars and journalists. In this important volume, the authors seek to move discussion of America's industrial decline beyond the immediate ramifications of plant shutdowns by placing it into a broader social, political, and economic context. Emphasizing a historical approach, the authors explore the multiple meanings of one of the major transformations of the twentieth century.The concept of deindustrialization entered the popular and scholarly lexicon in 1982 with the publication of The Deindustrialization of America, by Barry Bluestone and Bennett Harrison. Beyond the Ruins both builds upon and departs from the insights presented in that benchmark study. In this volume, the authors rethink the chronology, memory, geography, culture, and politics of industrial change in America.Taken together, these original essays argue that deindustrialization is not a story of a single emblematic place, such as Flint or Youngstown, or a specific time period, such as the 1980s. Nor is it limited to the abandoned factory buildings associated with heavy industry. Rather, deindustrialization is a complex process that is uneven in its causes, timing, and consequences. The essays in this volume examine this process through a wide range of topics, from worker narratives and media imagery, to suburban politics, environmental activism, and commemoration.
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From the Inside Flap:
"Beyond the Ruins chronicles the human stories beneath the statistics of plant closures and job losses. It is must reading for anyone concerned about the current wave of deindustrialization that is undermining the job security, good wages, and respect in the workplace once widely enjoyed by manufacturing workers."—John Sweeney, President, AFL-CIO
About the Author:
"In this landmark study, some of our smartest urban geographers and historians revisit the industrial graveyards of New Deal America. These case studies should be court-ordered reading for those civic boosters who think that the deep wounds of plant closure can be healed with a new office park or some ‘dead tech’ sculpture gardens."—Mike Davis, author, most recently, of Dead Cities and Other Tales (2002) and co-author of Under a Perfect Sun: The San Diego Tourists Never See (2003)
"This important collection challenges us to think anew about the experience of post-World War II American cities, bringing historical depth and fresh disciplinary perspective to debates about the origins, meanings, and legacies of the process known as deindustrialization. In underscoring the importance of political and cultural factors, the authors uncover the varieties of collective, institutional, and above all human action that have shaped structural transformations in the past—and that can be mobilized toward a more equitable future."—Alice O’Connor, author of Poverty Knowledge: Social Science, Social Policy, and the Poor in Twentieth-Century U.S. History
"This outstanding and thought-provoking collection describes the complex roles of the many players in tales of deindustrialization."—Laurence F. Gross, University of Massachusetts, Lowell, author of The Course of Industrial Decline
"The essays in Beyond the Ruins traverse America, with stops in rusted and reconstructed places as diverse as Atlantic City, Butte, Gary, Lansing, Oakland, Yonkers, and Youngstown. Collectively, these histories offer a powerful corrective to overdetermined accounts of economic change, reminding us that deindustrialization was the result of politics and public policy and often met with fierce, creative resistance. The authors represent the best of a new generation of American historians who research locally and think globally."—Thomas J. Sugrue, Bicentennial Class of 1940 Professor of History and Sociology, University of Pennsylvania, and author of The Origins of the Urban Crisis
Jefferson Cowie is Assistant Professor at the School of Industrial and Labor Relations at Cornell University. He is author of Capital Moves: RCA’s Seventy-Year Quest for Cheap Labor, also from Cornell. Joseph Heathcott is Assistant Professor of American Studies at Saint Louis University. Barry Bluestone is Russell B. and Andrče B. Stearns Trustee Professor of Political Economy and Director of the Center for Urban and Regional Policy at Northeastern University.
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- PublisherILR Press
- Publication date2003
- ISBN 10 0801439213
- ISBN 13 9780801439216
- BindingHardcover
- Number of pages372
- EditorCowie Jefferson, Heathcott Joseph
- Rating
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