Cutting into the meatpacking line : workers and change in the rural Midwest

Resource Information

The work Cutting into the meatpacking line : workers and change in the rural Midwest represents a distinct intellectual or artistic creation found in University of Missouri Libraries. This resource is a combination of several types including: Work, Language Material, Books.

Label

Cutting into the meatpacking line : workers and change in the rural Midwest

Title remainder

workers and change in the rural Midwest

Statement of responsibility

Deborah Fink

Title variation

Cutting into the meat packing line

Creator

• Fink, Deborah, 1944-

Subject

• Packing-house workers -- United States

Language

eng

Summary

• 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
• 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
• 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

Member of

• Studies in rural culture

Cataloging source

DLC

Dewey number

331.7/6649/00973

Government publication

government publication of a state province territory dependency etc

Illustrations

• illustrations
• portraits

Index

index present

LC call number

HD8039.P152

LC item number

U535 1998

Literary form

non fiction

Nature of contents

bibliography

Series statement

Studies in rural culture