The End of the Line: Lost Jobs, New Lives in Postindustrial America (Morality and Society Series)

An evocative and powerful portrait of America in transition, The End of the Line tells the story of what the 1988 closing of the Chrysler assembly plant in Kenosha, Wisconsin, meant to the people who lived in that company town. Since the early days of the twentieth century, Kenosha had forged its identity and politics around the interests of the auto industry. When nearly six thousand workers lost their jobs in the shutdown, the community faced not only a serious economic crisis but also a profound moral one. In this innovative study, Dudley describes the painful, often confusing process of change that residents of Kenosha, like the increasing number of Americans who are caught in the crossfire of deindustrialization, were forced to undergo. . Through interviews with displaced autoworkers and Kenosha's community leaders, high-school counselors, and a rising class of upwardly mobile professionals, Dudley dramatizes the lessons Kenoshans drew from the plant shutdown. When economic forces intrude on our lives, the resulting changes in earning power, status, and access to opportunity affect our sense of who we are, what we are worth, the nature of the world we live in, and in particular, what it takes to succeed. Dudley examines how ideas about self-worth - especially those based on market ideologies of competition and the Darwinian notion that only the fittest survive - become the subject of intense cultural conflict. Dudley describes a community in conflict with itself: while Kenosha's autoworkers struggle to regain an economic foothold and make sense of their suddenly devalued place in society, white-collar workers, professionals, and a new wave of politicians see themselves at the vanguard of a new moral order that redefines community as a "culture of mind" instead of the traditional "culture of hands" long associated with the work of the assembly line. This honest, moving portrait of one town's radical shift from a manufacturing to a postindustrial economy will redefine the way Americans across class lines think about our families, communities, and future.

The End of the Line tells the story of the 1988 closing of the Chrysler assembly plant in Kenosha, Wisconsin. Kathryn Marie Dudley uses interviews with residents to chart the often confusing process of change that deindustrialization forced on every corner of the community. This honest, moving portrait of one town's radical shift from a manufacturing to a postindustrial economy will redefine the way Americans think about our families, communities, and future.

"An excellent study not only of the cultural disruptions caused by the shutdown of Chrysler's operations in Kenosha, Wisconsin, but also of the ideology of progress that abetted the shutdown."—Stephen Amberg, Industrial and Labor Relations Review

"With the eye of an anthropologist, [Dudley] examines the tensions between the 'culture of hands' and the 'culture of mind.' Her account is especially instructive because, by many measures, Kenosha has successfully recovered, yet for many the pain still remains."—Booklist

"Exceptional. . . . Should be widely read."—Douglas Harper, Contemporary Sociology

"Make[s] clear what a tenuous concept economic security is, especially when the rules for achieving security are in flux."—Barbara Presley Noble, New York Times

Library Journal

In this well-written study of the 1988 closing of the Chrysler assembly plant in Kenosha, Wisconsin, Dudley, an anthropologist and assistant professor of American studies at Yale University, argues that economists, sociologists, and anthropologists are wrongfully portraying displaced factory workers as new American primitives lost in a postindustrial society. ``They are people who work with their hands in a society that increasingly values work done with the mind,'' she writes. We thus are witnessing ``a cultural debate about two very different ways of calculating the value of the work we do and the worth of the people we are.'' Dudley concludes, however, ``that both versions of meritocracy are viable in American society, so long as the economy backs them up.'' Former autoworkers understand that they may need new credentials, but they need help getting those credentials and then new jobs. Given its scholarly tone, this book is recommended for large academic libraries.-Jeffrey R. Herold, Bucyrus P.L., Ohio

This volume tells the story of what the 1988 closing of the Chrysler assembly plant in Kenosha, Wisconsin, meant to the people who lived in that town. Through interviews with displaced autoworkers and other members of the community it dramatizes the lessons Kenoshans drew from the plant shutdown. This volume tells the story of what the 1988 closing of the Chrysler assembly plant in Kenosha, Wisconsin, meant to the people who lived in that company town. Since the early days of the 20th century, Kenosha had forged its identity and politics around the interests of the auto industry. When nearly 6000 workers lost their jobs in the shutdown, the community faced not only a serious economic crisis but also a profound moral one. In this study, Dudley describes the painful, often confusing process of change that residents of Kenosha, like the increasing number of Americans who are caught in the crossfire of de-industrialization, were forced to undergo. Through interviews with displaced autoworkers and Kenosha's community leaders, high-school counsellors and a rising class of upwardly mobile professionals, Dudley dramatizes the lessons Kenoshans drew from the plant shutdown