Overview
Company towns were the spatial manifestation of a social ideology and an economic rationale. The contributors to this volume show how national politics, social protest, and local culture transformed those founding ideologies by examining the histories of company towns in six countries: Argentina (Firmat), Brazil (Volta Redonda, Santos, Fordlândia), Canada (Sudbury), Chile (El Salvador), Mexico (Santa Rosa, Río Blanco), and the United States (Anaconda, Kellogg, and Sunflower City). Company towns across the Americas played similar economic and social roles. They advanced the frontiers of industrial capitalism and became powerful symbols of modernity. They expanded national economies by supporting extractive industries on thinly settled frontiers and, as a result, brought more land, natural resources, and people under the control of corporations. U.S. multinational companies exported ideas about work discipline, race, and gender to Latin America as they established company towns there to extend their economic reach. Employers indeed shaped social relations in these company towns through education, welfare, and leisure programs, but these essays also show how working-class communities reshaped these programs to serve their needs. The editors’ introduction and a theoretical essay by labor geographer Andrew Herod provide the context for the case studies and illuminate how the company town serves as a window into both the comparative and transnational histories of labor under industrial capitalism.
Full Product Details
Author: Oliver J. Dinius ,
Angela Vergara ,
Marshall C. Eakin ,
Elizabeth Esch
Publisher: University of Georgia Press
Imprint: University of Georgia Press
Dimensions:
Width: 15.20cm
, Height: 1.50cm
, Length: 22.90cm
Weight: 0.386kg
ISBN: 9780820336824
ISBN 10: 0820336823
Pages: 236
Publication Date: 01 January 2011
Audience:
Professional and scholarly
,
Professional and scholarly
,
Professional & Vocational
,
Professional & Vocational
Format: Paperback
Publisher's Status: Active
Availability: In Print
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Language: English
Reviews
Wonderful and original . . . The contributors' case studies are exceptionally well done, and the result is a very readable book that should be quite accessible to students. --Steve Striffler, author of Chicken: The Dangerous Transformation of America's Favorite Food
<p> Wonderful and original . . . The contributors' case studies are exceptionally well done, and the result is a very readable book that should be quite accessible to students. --Steve Striffler, author of Chicken: The Dangerous Transformation of America's Favorite Food
By broadening our thinking on company towns, the authors present new opportunities for thinking about the convergence between industrial, military, and state planning. Company Towns in the Americas opens exciting new vistas for those who want to understand company towns as more than an exceptional phenomenon. -- Patrick Vitale, Labor History
Author Information
Oliver J. Dinius (Editor) OLIVER J. DINIUS is the Croft Associate Professor of History and International Studies at the University of Mississippi. He is the author of Brazil’s Steel City: Developmentalism, Strategic Power, and Industrial Relations in Volta Redonda, 1941–1964. Angela Vergara (Editor) ANGELA VERGARA is an assistant professor of history at California State University, Los Angeles. She is the author of Copper Workers, International Business, and Domestic Politics in Cold War Chile.
