Exit Zero by Christine J Walley

Exit Zero by Christine J Walley

In 1980, Christine J. Walley's world was turned upside down when the steel mill in Southeast Chicago where her father worked abruptly closed. In the ensuing years, ninety thousand other area residents would also lose their jobs in the mills - just one example of the vast scale of de-industrialization occurring across the United States. The disruption of this event propelled Walley into a career as a cultural anthropologist, and now, in "Exit Zero", she brings her anthropological perspective home, examining the fate of her family and that of blue-collar America at large. Interweaving personal narratives and family photos with a nuanced assessment of the social impacts of de-industrialization, "Exit Zero" is one part memoir and one part ethnography - providing a much-needed female and familial perspective on cultures of labor and their decline. Through vivid accounts of her family's struggles and her own upward mobility, Walley reveals the social landscapes of America's industrial fallout, navigating complex tensions among class, labor, economy, and environment. Unsatisfied with the notion that her family's turmoil was inevitable in the ever-forward progress of the United States, she provides a fresh and important counter narrative that gives a new voice to the many Americans whose distress resulting from de-industrialization has too often counter narrative ignored.

Christine J. Walley is associate professor of anthropology at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and the author of Rough Waters: Nature and Development in an East African Marine Park.

SKU	Unavailable
ISBN 13	9780226871806
ISBN 10	0226871800
Title	Exit Zero
Author	Christine J Walley
Condition	Unavailable
Binding Type	Paperback
Publisher	The University of Chicago Press
Year published	2013-01-17
Number of pages	240
Cover note	Book picture is for illustrative purposes only, actual binding, cover or edition may vary.
Note	Unavailable