Bodies of work
Subtitle: civic display and labor in industrial Pittsburgh
By: Edward Slavishak.
Series: Body, commodity, text
Publisher: Duke University Press
Published: 2008
Place of publication: Durham
Language: eng
Number of pages: 354
ISBN-13: 9780822342069; 9780822342250
Subjects: Working class -- Pennsylvania -- Pittsburgh -- History; Industrialization -- Pennsylvania -- Pittsburgh -- Social aspects; Industries -- Pennsylvania -- Pittsburgh -- Social aspects; City promotion -- Pennsylvania -- Pittsburgh -- History; Pittsburgh (Pa.) -- History
Description: "By the end of the nineteenth century, Pittsburgh emerged as a major manufacturing center in the United States. Its rise as a leading producer of steel, glass, and coal was fueled by machine technology and mass immigration, developments that fundamentally changed the industrial workplace. Because Pittsburgh's major industries were almost exclusively male and renowned for their physical demands, the male working body came to symbolize multiple often contradictory narratives about strength and vulnerability, mastery and exploitation. In Bodies of Work, Edward Slavishak explores how Pittsburgh and the working body were symbolically linked in civic celebrations, the research of social scientists, the criticisms of labor reformers, advertisements, and workers' self-representations. Combining labor and cultural history with visual culture studies, he chronicles a heated contest to define Pittsburgh's essential character at the turn of the twentieth century, and he describes how that contest was conducted largely through the production of competing images."--BOOK JACKET.
Notes: Includes bibliographical references and index.
Table of contents: title: The magic of the nineteenth century: industrial change and work in Pittsburgh; title: Working-class muscle in the battle of homestead; title: The working body as a civic image; title: The Pittsburgh survey and the body as evidence; title: "Delicately built": the "problem" of working women in Pittsburgh; title: Hiding and displaying the broken body.