Table of contents

Examines how contemporary American working- class literature reveals the long- term effects of deindustrialization on individuals and communities

A novel account of the relationship between postindustrial capitalism and postmodern culture, this book looks at American poetry and art of the last fifty years in light of the massive changes in people's working lives. Over the last few decades, we have seen the shift from an economy based on the production of goods to one based on the provision of services, the entry of large numbers of women into the workforce, and the emergence of new digital technologies that have transformed the way people work. The Work of Art in the Age of Deindustrialization argues that art and literature not only reflected the transformation of the workplace but anticipated and may have contributed to it as well, providing some of the terms through which resistance to labor was expressed. As firms continue to tout creativity and to reorganize in response to this resistance, they increasingly rely on models of labor that derive from values and ideas found in the experimental poetry and conceptual art of decades past.

How does an industrial community cope when they are told that closure is inevitable? What if this is only the last in a 200 year long line of threats, insecurities and closure? How did people weather the storms and how do they face the future now? While attempts to regenerate communities are everywhere, we do not often hear from the people themselves just how they managed to create safe collective spaces or how the fall of the whole house of cards brought with it effects which can be felt by young people who never knew the town when it was an industrial heartland. We hear the story of how men and women tried to cope and still want to retain their community in the face of its destruction. What can they and will they have to pass to the next generation and where will that leave the young people themselves, who have nothing to stay for but are unable to leave? This book examines these crucial questions facing post-industrial societies.

Contesting claims that postwar American liberalism retreated from fights against unemployment and economic inequality, The Problem of Jobs reveals that such efforts did not collapse after the New Deal but instead began to flourish at the local, rather than the national, level. With a focus on Philadelphia, this volume illuminates the central role of these local political and policy struggles in shaping the fortunes of city and citizen alike. In the process, it tells the remarkable story of how Philadelphia’s policymakers and community activists energetically worked to challenge deindustrialization through an innovative series of job retention initiatives, training programs, inner-city business development projects, and early affirmative action programs. Without ignoring the failure of Philadelphians to combat institutionalized racism, Guian McKee's account of their surprising success draws a portrait of American liberalism that evinces a potency not usually associated with the postwar era. Ultimately interpreting economic decline as an arena for intervention rather than a historical inevitability, The Problem of Jobs serves as a timely reminder of policy’s potential to combat injustice.

All advanced economies have experienced a secular decline in the share of manufacturing employment—a phenomenon referred to as deindustrialization. This paper argues that, contrary to popular perceptions, deindustrialization is not a negative phenomenon, but is the natural consequence of the industrial dynamism in an already developed economy, and that North-South trade has had very little to do with deindustrialization. The paper also discusses the implications of deindustrialization for the growth prospects and the nature of labor market arrangements in the advanced economies.