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Organizing the Landscape Geographical Perspectives on Labor Unionism Andrew Herod, editor |
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Considers the spatial nature of labor unionism. Social life, conducted within economic, political, and cultural boundaries, is fundamentally spatial. Adopting an explicitly geographical perspective, this volume demonstrates that labor unionism, no less than any other social practice, is spatial in nature as well. These essays take up two primary questions: What is the relationship between workers' and unions' social practices and the making of the geography of capitalism? And, how does spatial sensitivity contribute to an understanding of workers' and unions' social behavior? The authors address these questions from a wide range of geographical scales, from the very local to the truly global, and in a variety of contexts including 1920s California, 1930s Massachusetts, 1940s Japan, and contemporary Eastern Europe. An essay by editor Andrew Herod offers a comprehensive review of work done in geography relating to the spatiality of labor unionism. "Organizing the Landscape addresses the geographic dilemmas facing organized workers like the Detroit auto parts workers in a number of different situations, times, and places. This collection of essays and studies deals with the impact of spatial changes and realities on local and national labor movements—and the unions' reaction to and, in some cases, impact on spatial relations. Organizing the Landscape demands the attention of labor historians, educators, and activists." —Antipode "This uncommonly fine collection of essays may well lay the foundation for the future of labor studies. This is a very admirable collection that brings the work of a developing field and a new generation of scholars under a single cover." —Annals of the AAG "The book provides a set of detailed case studies which illustrate the numerous ways in which geography has been fundamental to union organization. While most human geographers would readily accept this, industrial relations specialists and labor economists continue to dismiss the significance of this point, and I hope this book can be used to change their views." —Progress in Human Geography "Organizing the Landscape breaks new ground in geography by bringing together, for the first time, scholars whose collective endeavors constitute the foundation of a relatively new speciality within the discipline, labor geography." —Economic Geography "Herod and his contributors meet the goals of the volume which are to bring to the forefront of economic geography a sense of how space and spatiality impact working-class landscapes. He and his contributors convincingly illustrate that, because social life is indeed spatiality constructed, so too are the cultures, traditions, and lived geographies of the actors that collectively contribute to creating social life. Organizing the Landscape is a valuable contribution to the emerging body of literature concerned with labor geography, as well as all of economic geography and labor studies more broadly." —Environment and Planning D: Society and Space "Andrew Herod, a prominent leader of a resurgent labor geography, has edited an excellent collection of 10 papers that goes far in meeting this goal. At a time when organized labor is caricatured as a passive, defensive remnant of a mythical golden age, Organizing the Landscape presents a sophisticated, timely, and penetrating analysis of labor's role in the construction and reformulation of economic geographies. This is an ambitious collection, at the cutting edge of scholarship on labor markets, regional economic change, and the transformation of scale. Ultimately, though, Organizing the Landscape maps a geography that has been sorely neglected for too long, and pioneers new ways of analyzing how workers attempt to gain control over their livelihoods and their lives." —Urban Geography "Organizing the Landscape is a well conceived introduction to the culture and economic geography of labor unions. Perhaps the book's greatest value is for trade union leaders and activists trying to theorize the structure, organization and activities of unions in a postindustrial world and global economy. If unions are to operate effectively in this postindustrial environment, they will need to carefully consider and theorize using geographic concepts and principals." —Labor Studies Journal "The authors in this collection pulled together by Andrew Herod seek to go beyond limited understandings of the role of place and space in the development of capitalism. The strength of the works in this collection is that they potentially link union activist, marxist economists and sociologists, and the various historical fields of inquiry opened in the past thirty years in a new synthesis which can transcend both disciplinary limitations and academia itself, restoring some relation between theory and practice." —Hudson Valley Regional Review "An impressive attribute of this book is its clarity. Herod guides the reader through the book's major themes and debates in an engaging and informative manner. Overall, Organizing the Landscape is a significant contribution to the new economic geography and the new labor geography in particular. The authors successfully incorporate contemporary themes of social difference, the 'local-global paradox,' the production of geographical scale, and workers' struggles for social justice. The research informing this book is both theoretically grounded and empirically rich." —Geographical Review Contributors: Shawn Banasick, Lee Lucas Berman, Meghan Cope, Altha J. Cravey, Robert Hanham, Andrew E. G. Jonas, Don Mitchell, Brian Page, Lydia Savage, Jane Wills. Andrew Herod is associate professor of geography at the University of Georgia. 280 pages | 9 figures, 7 tables | 5 7/8 x 9 | 1998 |
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$30.00 paper