Cutting Into the Meatpacking Line: Workers and Change in the Rural Midwest (Studies in Rural Culture) - Softcover

Book 2 of 11: Studies in Rural Culture

Fink, Deborah

 
9780807846957: Cutting Into the Meatpacking Line: Workers and Change in the Rural Midwest (Studies in Rural Culture)
Softcover
ISBN 10: 0807846953 ISBN 13: 9780807846957
Publisher: University North Carolina Pr, 1998

Synopsis

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About the Author

Deborah Fink is author of Agrarian Women: Wives and Mothers in Rural Nebraska, 1880-1940. She lives in Ames, Iowa.

From the Back Cover

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.

From the Inside Flap

Drawing on firsthand experience working in an Iowa pork-processing plant, Fink looks at the differing experience of male and female, immigrant and native-born, black and white workers in the meatpacking industry.

"About this title" may belong to another edition of this title.

Publisher
University North Carolina Pr
Publication date
1998
Language
English
ISBN 10 
0807846953
ISBN 13 
9780807846957
Binding
Paperback
Number of pages
260

Other Popular Editions of the Same Title

9780807823880: Cutting Into the Meatpacking Line: Workers and Change in the Rural Midwest (Studies in Rural Culture)

Featured Edition

ISBN 10:  0807823880 ISBN 13:  9780807823880
Publisher: The University of North Carolina..., 1998
Softcover