Any Way You Cut it: Meat Processing and Small-town America (Rural America) - Softcover

Softcover

ISBN 10: 0700607226 ISBN 13: 9780700607228

Publisher: University Press of Kansas, 1995

Synopsis

In pursuit of jobs and economic development, many rural communities have attracted large meat, poultry, and fish processing plants owned by transnational corporations. But what they don't bargain for is the increase in crime, homelessness, school overcrowding, housing shortages, social disorder, cyclical migration, and poverty that inevitably follows. To shed light on the forces that drive the meat industry and the communities where it locates, this book brings together the varying perspectives of anthropologists, geographers, sociologists, journalists, and industry specialists. These experts show that, despite increased automation, meat, poultry, and fish processing remain labor intensive create problems for employees, host communities, and government regulatory agencies. The authors explore the factors that sway industry and community decision making and propose alternate routes communities and meat processors can take to reverse deteriorating conditions and avoid potentially explosive predicaments.

About this title

Review

"The premise of this book is exciting and timely, touching on an industrial sector generally overlooked in discussions of the U.S. economy. This accessible and well-written book will be widely read and much debated."--Mark Moberg, author of Citrus, Strategy, and Class: The Politics of Development in Southern Belize

"These essays encapsulate a wide range of the most recent social science research on the nature of work and concerns of workers in the modern meatpacking industry. Several essays also describe the impact of plants and their workers on various small, isolated communities, and some include prescriptions for change."--Journal of the West

"This book does not just criticize a powerful and polluting industry, it offers positive policy suggestions, many simple and well known, on how to control and contain the process."--Annals of Iowa

Synopsis

Many rural communities attract meat, poultry and fish processing plants owned by transnational corporations. They often bring social disorder in their wake (incoming workers). This work offers anthropological, geographical, sociological, journalist and industrial perspectives on the issue.

Edition details

• Publisher: University Press of Kansas
• Publication date: 1995
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 0700607226
• ISBN 13: 9780700607228
• Binding: Paperback
• Number of pages: 296
• Editor: Stull Donald D., Etc.