| Cutting Into the Meatpacking Line: Workers and Change in the Rural Midwest Contributor(s): Fink, Deborah (Author) |
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ISBN: 0807846953 ISBN-13: 9780807846957 Publisher: University of North Carolina Press OUR PRICE: $52.25 Product Type: Paperback - Other Formats Published: April 1998 Annotation: The nostalgic vision of a rural Midwest populated by independent family farmers hides the reality that rural wage labor has been integral to the region's development, says Deborah Fink. Focusing on the porkpacking industry in Iowa, Fink investigates the experience of the rural working class and highlights its significance in shaping the state's economic, political, and social contours. Fink draws both on interviews and on her own firsthand experience working on the production floor of a pork-processing plant. She weaves a fascinating account of the meatpacking industry's history in Iowa - a history, she notes, that has been experienced differently by male and female, immigrant and native-born, white and black workers. Indeed, argues Fink, these differences are a key factor in the ongoing creation of the rural working class. Other writers have denounced the new meatpacking companies for their ruthless destruction of both workers and communities. Fink sustains this criticism, which she augments with a discussion of union action, but also goes beyond it. She looks within rural midwestern culture itself to examine the class, gender, and ethnic contradictions that allowed - indeed welcomed - the meatpacking industry's development. |
| Additional Information |
| BISAC Categories: - Social Science | Sociology - Rural - Social Science | Anthropology - Cultural & Social - Political Science | Labor & Industrial Relations |
| Dewey: 331.766 |
| LCCN: 97-22006 |
| Lexile Measure: 1330 |
| Series: Studies in Rural Culture |
| Physical Information: 0.7" H x 6.16" W x 9.25" (0.97 lbs) 256 pages |
| Themes: - Cultural Region - Heartland - Cultural Region - Midwest - Demographic Orientation - Rural - Geographic Orientation - Iowa - Cultural Region - Upper Midwest |
| Descriptions, Reviews, Etc. |
| Publisher Description: The nostalgic vision of a rural Midwest populated by independent family farmers hides the reality that rural wage labor has been integral to the region's development, says Deborah Fink. Focusing on the porkpacking industry in Iowa, Fink investigates the experience of the rural working class and highlights its significance in shaping the state's economic, political, and social contours. Fink draws both on interviews and on her own firsthand experience working on the production floor of a pork-processing plant. She weaves a fascinating account of the meatpacking industry's history in Iowa--a history, she notes, that has been experienced differently by male and female, immigrant and native-born, white and black workers. Indeed, argues Fink, these differences are a key factor in the ongoing creation of the rural working class. Other writers have denounced the new meatpacking companies for their ruthless destruction of both workers and communities. Fink sustains this criticism, which she augments with a discussion of union action, but also goes beyond it. She looks within rural midwestern culture itself to examine the class, gender, and ethnic contradictions that allowed--indeed welcomed--the meatpacking industry's development. |
Contributor Bio(s): Fink, Deborah: - Deborah Fink is author of Agrarian Women: Wives and Mothers in Rural Nebraska, 1880-1940. She lives in Ames, Iowa. |