Anthropologist Steve Striffler begins this book in a poultry processing plant, drawing on his own experiences there as a worker. He also reports on the way chickens are raised today and how they are ...consumed. What he discovers about America's favorite meat is not just unpleasant but a powerful indictment of our industrial food system. The process of bringing chicken to our dinner tables is unhealthy for all concerned-from farmer to factory worker to consumer.
The book traces the development of the poultry industry since the Second World War, analyzing the impact of such changes as the destruction of the family farm, the processing of chicken into nuggets and patties, and the changing makeup of the industrial labor force. The author describes the lives of immigrant workers and their reception in the small towns where they live. The conclusion is clear: there has to be a better way. Striffler proposes radical but practical change, a plan that promises more humane treatment of chickens, better food for the consumer, and fair payment for food workers and farmers.
Boston's economy has become defined by a disconcerting trend that has intensified throughout much of the United States since the 2008 recession. Economic growth now delivers remarkably few benefits ...to large sectors of the working class - a phenomenon that is particularly severe for immigrants, people of color, and women. Labor in 21 st Century Boston explores this nation-wide phenomenon of "unshared growth" by focusing on Boston, a city that is famously liberal, relatively wealthy, and increasingly difficult for working people (who service the city's needs) to actually live in. Labor in 21 st Century Boston is the only comprehensive analysis of labor and popular mobilizing in Boston today, the volume contributes to a growing body of academic and popular literature that examines urban America, racial and economic inequality, labor and immigration, and the right-wing assault on working people.
In this article, I explore how immigrant workers have understood the shift from seasonal migration between Mexico and California to permanent settlement in the U.S. South. I suggest not only that ...understandings, memories, and the physicality of places are produced in tension with one another but also that the ongoing experience of migration is itself key for shaping how subjectivities and places are constituted through the contradictions embedded in them. I also argue that even as immigrant settlers become more invested in the United States, the idea and experience of a community rooted in Mexico but spanning multiple places retains its appeal in part because it plays such a powerful role in daily life in the United States.
Elusive Relations Smith, Gavin; Macip, Ricardo F.; Roth-Seneff, Andrew ...
Current anthropology,
06/2018, Letnik:
59, Številka:
3
Journal Article
Recenzirano
A revised version of the tenth Eric Wolf Lecture, given in Vienna in November 2015, this article works with three interlocking elements of Wolf’s research agenda: historical ethnography conducted ...across interlocking scales with a view to exposing the different fields through which power operates. I use two moments in my own research. The first serves to characterize Wolf’s research framework as a lens through which to expose those social relations of particular interest for a critique of capitalist society at the time he was writing. The second is then used to suggest possible extensions of Wolf’s work for a similar agenda in the present. Characteristics of the 1970s and 2010s are distinguished, on the one hand, for the society of capital and, on the other, for people who identify themselves with the community of Huasicancha in the central highlands of Peru. Such a historical ethnography is thereby employed to reveal shifts in the interlocking scales of social relations alongside changes in fields of power.
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