From Steel to Slots: Casino Capitalism in the Postindustrial City - Hardcover

Chloe E. Taft

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 0674660498 ISBN 13: 9780674660496

Publisher: Harvard University Press, 2016

Synopsis

Bethlehem, Pennsylvania, was once synonymous with steel. But after the factories closed, the city bet its future on a new industry: casino gambling. From Steel to Slots tells the story of a city struggling to make sense of the ways in which local jobs, landscapes, and identities are transformed by global capitalism. Postindustrial redevelopment often makes a clean break with a city's rusted past. In Bethlehem, where the new casino is industrial-themed, the city's heritage continues to dominate the built environment and infuse everyday experiences. Through the voices of steelworkers, casino dealers, preservationists, immigrants, and executives, Chloe Taft examines the ongoing legacies of corporate presence and urban development in a small city-and their uneven effects. Today, multinational casino corporations increasingly act as urban planners, promising jobs and tax revenues to ailing communities. Yet in an industry premised on risk, short-term gains do not necessarily mean long-term commitments to local needs. While residents often have few cards to play in the face of global capital, Taft argues that the shape economic progress takes is not inevitable, nor must it always look forward. Citizens see alternatives for more equitable futures in the layered landscapes all around them.

About this title

Review:

"As a case study of the steel industry s decline and casino-based postindustrial economic development, From Steel to Slots offers up illuminating detail and storytelling." --Catherine Tumber In These Times (04/04/2016)

"From Steel to Slots delivers fine-grained cultural analysis at its best a study in which history is alive and fluid, and the community is humane and complex. Taft writes eloquently about deindustrialization without tears and grasps the new order without rage. This subtle book illuminates much about the past, present, and future of the urban landscape." --Jefferson Cowie, Vanderbilt University"

A highly revealing and intellectually ambitious interpretation of a post-industrial landscape in flux. From Steel to Slots offers a fascinating look at the transformations that have occurred on the site of Bethlehem s once iconic steel industry and its implications for those who live or work in its shadows. This ethnographic account makes unique and important contributions to a range of academic literatures and will become a critical text for those interested in deindustrialization, post-industrial economies, neoliberalism, or casino capitalism. --Christine J. Walley, Massachusetts Institute of Technology

About the Author:

Chloe E. Taft is a Mellon Postdoctoral Associate in the Integrated Humanities in the American Studies Program at Yale University.

About this edition

• Publisher: Harvard University Press
• Publication date: 2016
• ISBN 10: 0674660498
• ISBN 13: 9780674660496
• Binding: Hardcover
• Number of pages: 336