Suchergebnisse

"Once a busy if impoverished center for the anthracite coal industry, northeastern Pennsylvania exists today as a region suffering inexorable decline--racked by economic hardship and rampant opioid abuse, abandoned by young people, and steeped in xenophobic fear. Paul A. Shackel merges analysis with oral history to document the devastating effects of a lifetime of structural violence on the people who have stayed behind. Heroic stories of workers facing the dangers of underground mining stand beside accounts of people living their lives in a toxic environment and battling deprivation and starvation by foraging, bartering, and relying on the good will of neighbors. As Shackel reveals the effects of these long-term traumas, he sheds light on people's poor health and lack of well-being. The result is a valuable on-the-ground perspective that expands our understanding of the social fracturing, economic decay, and anger afflicting many communities across the United States. Insightful and dramatic, The Ruined Anthracite combines archaeology, documentary research, and oral history to render the ongoing human cost of environmental devastation and unchecked capitalism."

"Once a busy if impoverished center for the anthracite coal industry, northeastern Pennsylvania exists today as a region suffering inexorable decline--racked by economic hardship and rampant opioid abuse, abandoned by young people, and steeped in xenophobic fear. Paul A. Shackel merges analysis with oral history to document the devastating effects of a lifetime of structural violence on the people who have stayed behind. Heroic stories of workers facing the dangers of underground mining stand beside accounts of people living their lives in a toxic environment and battling deprivation and starvation by foraging, bartering, and relying on the good will of neighbors. As Shackel reveals the effects of these long-term traumas, he sheds light on people's poor health and lack of well-being. The result is a valuable on-the-ground perspective that expands our understanding of the social fracturing, economic decay, and anger afflicting many communities across the United States. Insightful and dramatic, The Ruined Anthracite combines archaeology, documentary research, and oral history to render the ongoing human cost of environmental devastation and unchecked capitalism"--

Introduction -- Anthracite mining -- The Lattimer Strike/incident/massacre -- A great miscarriage of justice and the growth of the UMWA -- Memory of Lattimer -- The 1997 centennial commemoration and the memory of Lattimer -- Deindustrialization and the new twenty-first-century immigrant -- Turning the corner.

Lattimer, Pennsylvania, is the location for one of labor's forgotten massacres, a result of the xenophobic fears prevalent during the turn of the 20th century. On September 10, 1897, about 400 strikers of eastern & southern European descent marched to close the Lattimer colliery. Without warning, the men were fired upon by the local sheriff & his posse. The shooters stood trial for the killing of the protestors & were acquitted. Though Lattimer is one of the largest tragedies in US labor history, a type of amnesia attached to the event, & the massacre has been largely forgotten in the national public memory. Many attempts to memorialize the Lattimer massacre failed, as labor & capital struggled to control memory of the event. Eventually, in 1972, the town erected a monument at the site. While Lattimer is a lesson about past labor & immigration practices, it is also about the ways in which communities perceive new immigrants.

What happens, though, when we take a closer look at the archaeological record? That is the focus of Paul Shackel's new book, which examines labor and working-class life in nineteenth- and early twentieth-century industrial America.

Harpers Ferry: A Place in Time -- Harpers Ferry: A Place in Time -- Occupied Harpers Ferry During the Civil War -- All about Us Was the Wreckage of the Fighting -- A Village of Paupers -- Rebuilding Harpers Ferry after the War -- The Place never Will Be Anything Again -- The Handsomest House in Two Towns -- The Natural Limits of Human Endurance -- A Miserable Mockery of a Home -- The Assassination of Plurality.

Over the past decade there has been a heightened awareness of the importance of colleges and universities being engaged in communities. Civic engagement is based on the premise that all citizens can contribute to improving society. People can work individually or collectively on issues of public concern to promote quality of life. The University of Maryland is considered one of the national leaders in civic engagement programming among institutions of higher learning and the Department of Anthropology is playing a an important role in this effort. A general description of the department's engaged programs follows as well as a more detailed synopsis of how using examples from a difficult past can help spur change in communities today.

How Americans remember the past is often reinforced by landscapes, monuments, commemorative ceremonies, and archaeology. These features and activities often help to create an official public memory that becomes part of a group's heritage. I suggest that public memory can be established by (1) forgetting about or excluding an alternative past, (2) creating and reinforcing patriotism, and/or (3) developing a sense of nostalgia to legitimize a particular heritage. These categories are not mutually exclusive, and the lines that separate these categories may not always be well defined. I show how post–Civil War American landscapes, monuments, and commemorative activities helped to reinforce racist attitudes in the United States that became part of the official memory. African Americans have struggled to revise the official memory of the Civil War, although the power to change this memory has been situational and not always successful, [commemoration, memory, material culture, historical archaeology, landscapes]

An archaeology of the twentieth century in the anthracite coal region of northeast Pennsylvania -- History of the anthracite region, 1830 to 1897 -- The memory of violence: the Lattimer Massacre of 1897 -- Migration, part 1: The social and material landscape of the company town -- The archaeology of machinic mass consumerism and the logistics of the factory floor in everyday life -- Migration, part 2: Emancipation and catastrophe -- The destructive character: renewal and memory -- Conclusion