Company Towns in the Americas - 9780820336824

Company towns were the spatial manifestation of a social ideology and an economic rationale. The contributors to this volume show how national politics, social protest, and local culture transformed those founding ideologies by examining the histories of company towns in six countries: Argentina (Firmat), Brazil (Volta Redonda, Santos, Fordlandia), Canada (Sudbury), Chile (El Salvador), Mexico (Santa Rosa, Rio Blanco), and the United States (Anaconda, Kellogg, and Sunflower Village).

Company towns across the Americas played similar economic and social roles. They advanced the frontiers of industrial capitalism and became powerful symbols of modernity. They expanded national economies by supporting extractive industries on thinly settled frontiers and, as a result, brought more land, natural resources, and people under the control of corporations. U.S. multinational companies exported ideas about work discipline, race, and gender to Latin America as they established company towns there to extend their economic reach. Employers indeed shaped social relations in these company towns through education, welfare, and leisure programs, but these essays also show how communities reshaped these programs to serve their needs.

"The idea behind this volume---a comparative look at company towns across the Americas---is wonderful and original. The contributors' case studies are exceptionally well done, and the result is a very readable book that should be quite accessible to students."---Steve Striffler, author of Chicken: The Dangerous Transformation of America's Favorite Food

"The essays in Company Towns in the Americas are uniformly strong, and the over all focus is engaged and smart. It is not very often that a collection can redefine a whole field: this is one of those times."---Richard A. Greenwald, coeditor of Sweatshop USA. The American Sweatshop in Historical and Global Perspective