Overview

This exploration of an industrial suburb south of Detroit takes seriously the connections to place and the natural world among the working-class people who lived, worked, and played in the region. After a consideration of this type of analysis and demographic and environmental features of this highly industrialized region, each chapter considers a different topic or episode in the on-going efforts of the working-class citizens to create a humane and habitable community. Efforts to combat environmental pollution in this highly industrialized region predate the start of the environmental movement. When working-class people worked to pursue clean water or preserve precious marsh lands along the Detroit River and its tributaries, they worked through sportsmen's organizations, appealed to state agencies, or engaged in grass roots organizing. Local unions objected to the building of an atomic power plant in the regions in the1950s. And, amidst the challenges of deindustrialization, one group of steel workers attempted to buy their own company to secure their families and communities in the region. When faced with economic and environmental challenges, the working-class of Downriver Detroit expressed an enduring connection to their region, a 'bond of place.'

Full Product Details

9780252046940

Table of Contents

Reviews

""The story of environmentalism and the story of labor have often been told separately. In this compelling book Lisa Fine weaves these stories together in a specific place and space--Downriver Detroit--to show how workers have struggled not just for improved wages and working conditions but also to protect nature. Through recovering the history of the labor movement's engagement with questions of pollution, toxic waste, and landscape degradation in the Downriver, she reminds us that working-class people are not just workers but also hunters, gardeners, outdoors enthusiasts, and conservationists who often care deeply about the health of both the work and the natural environments within which they live and raise families and who fight tooth and nail to safeguard both.""

Author Information

Lisa M. Fine is chair and professor of history at Michigan State University. She is the author of The Souls of the Skyscraper: Female Clerical Workers in Chicago, 1870-1930 (Temple, 1990) and The Story of Reo Joe: Work, Kin, and Community in Autotown, USA (Temple, 2004).

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