Bodies of Work

Slavishak Edward Slavishak

Description

By the end of the nineteenth century, Pittsburgh emerged as a major manufacturing center in the United States. Its rise as a leading producer of steel, glass, and coal was fueled by machine technology and mass immigration, developments that fundamentally changed the industrial workplace. Because Pittsburgh's major industries were almost exclusively male and renowned for their physical demands, the male working body came to symbolize multiple often contradictory narratives about strength and vulnerability, mastery and exploitation. In Bodies of Work, Edward Slavishak explores how Pittsburgh and the working body were symbolically linked in civic celebrations, the research of social scientists, the criticisms of labor reformers, advertisements, and workers' self-representations. Combining labor and cultural history with visual culture studies, he chronicles a heated contest to define Pittsburgh's essential character at the turn of the twentieth century, and he describes how that contest was conducted largely through the production of competing images.Slavishak focuses on the workers whose bodies came to epitomize Pittsburgh, the men engaged in the arduous physical labor demanded by the city's metals, glass, and coal industries. At the same time, he emphasizes how conceptions of Pittsburgh as quintessentially male limited representations of women in the industrial workplace. The threat of injury or violence loomed large for industrial workers at the turn of the twentieth century, and it recurs throughout Bodies of Work: in the marketing of artificial limbs, statistical assessments of the physical toll of industrial capitalism, clashes between labor and management, the introduction of workplace safety procedures, and the development of a statewide workmen's compensation system.

Sujets

• Histoire
• USA
• Pensilvania
• 20th century
• Pennsylvania
• History of the Americas
• États-Unis
• Pennsylvanie

Informations

• Publié par: Duke University Press
• Date de parution: 16 septembre 2008
• Nombre de lectures: 0
• EAN13: 9780822389347
• Langue: English
• Poids de l'ouvrage: 2 Mo

Extrait

G

BODIES OF WORK

G

body, commodity, text

Studies of Objectifying Practice

A series edited by

arjun appadur ai,

jean comaroff,and

judith farquhar

edward slavishak

BODIES OF WORK G

G

civic display and labor in

industrial pittsburgh

duke universit y press

durham and london2008

∫2keDu800srevinUserPytis

All rights reserved

Printed in the United States of America

on acid-free paper$

Designed by C. H. Westmoreland

Typeset in Warnock Light by

Keystone Typesetting, Inc.

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication

Data appear on the last printed

page of this book.

TO MY MOTHER

1

2 3 4 5

6

CONTENTS

illustr ations. . . . ix acknowledgments. . . . xi note on usage...xiii. introduction. . . . 1

The Magic of the Nineteenth Century: Industrial Change and Work in Pittsburgh . . . . 17 Working-Class Muscle in the Battle of Homestead . . . . 64 The Working Body as a Civic Image . . . . 89 The Pittsburgh Survey and the Body as Evidence . . . . 149 ‘‘Delicately Built’’: The ‘‘Problem’’ of Working Women in Pittsburgh . . . . 200 Hiding and Displaying the Broken Body . . . . 224

epilogue. ‘‘That’s Work, and That’s What People Like to Watch!’’ . . . . 265

notes. . . . 277 bibliogr aphy. . . . 319 index. . . . 345

ILLUSTRATIONS

1. Puddling iron . . . . 33 2. Blowing glass . . . . 43 3. Mechanized undercutting . . . . 48 4.Pittsburgh at the Dawn of the 20th Century. . . . 105 5.Industrial Pittsburgh. . . . 105 6. D. B. Walkley,The Glassblowers. . . . 108 7. Edwin Blashfield,Pittsburg Offering its Iron and Steel to the World. . . . 125 8. Daniel Chester French,Colonel James Anderson Monument. . . . 129 9. Detail from John White Alexander,The Crowning of Labor. . . . 133 10. Detail from John White Alexander,The Crowning of Labor. . . . 133 11. Sesquicentennial float of the Manufacturers Committee . . . . 141 12. Sesquicentennial float of the Riter-Conley Manufacturing Company . . . . 141 13. Sesquicentennial float of the Jones and Laughlin Company . . . . 143 14. ‘‘Scenes at the Steel Mills’’ . . . . 145 15. Injured coal miners . . . . 159 16. Joseph Stella,A Breathing Spell. . . . 185 17. Joseph Stella,In the Glare of the Converter. . . . 185 18. Joseph Stella,In the Light of a Five-Ton Ingot. . . . 185 19. Joseph Stella,At the Base of the Blast Furnace. . . . 188 20. Slumping miner . . . . 189 21. Lewis Hine,The Wounds of Work. . . . 193 22. Lewis Hine,The Crippled Watchman—A Type. . . . 193