A Town Abandoned: Flint, Michigan, Confronts DeindustrializationHometown to both General Motors and the United Auto Workers, and the setting for the documentary film Roger and Me, Flint, Michigan, is a striking example of a declining city in America's Rust Belt. A Town Abandoned examines Flint's response to its own social and economic decline and at the same time pursues a broad analysis of class and culture in America's late capitalist society. It tells the story of how Flint's local institutions and citizens interpret and rationalize their city's massive auto-industry job loss and consequent decline, and it relates these interpretations to statewide, national, and international forces that led to the deindustrialization. Using a critical-theory approach, Dandaneau reveals the futility of Flint's efforts to confront essentially global problems and moreover depicts the disturbing conceptual and cultural distortions that result from its sustained powerlessness. Dandaneau shows that all policy solutions to Flint's problems were in essence public relations solutions, and he gives a moving portrayal of the consequences for local communities of the internationalization of American business. |
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Audience Member auto industry auto workers Bensman Bergmann Center city's CNW's community's concept consciousness corporate critical critique Cultural Consensus cynical Dave Yettaw dependent deindustrialization depicts Directions Movement document source Donahue economic development Edsforth example factory film film's Flint area Flint Journal Flint Sit-Down Strike Flint/Genesee County future GEAR GEAR's Strategic Plan Genesee County global GM's going Gull Ibid ideology Interview 14 Jerry Tucker joint July July 23 labor movement Lakes Technology Centre leaders leadership Local PEL mainstream Marquart meaning ment Michael Moore Michigan Moore's moral Motors NDM's notes organized participants PEL instructors PEL program PEL's perspective Peter Sloterdijk Phil Donahue political postindustrial production reality relationship Roger & Me's Ronald Edsforth significance Sit-Down Strike Sloterdijk social structure suggests Tech Centre's tion UAW Local 599 UAW's University of Michigan-Flint Victor Reuther workplace Wright Mills
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Page xx - Controversial as it may be, the essential problem with the US economy can be traced to the way capital — in the forms of financial resources and of real plant and equipment — has been diverted from productive investment in our basic national industries into unproductive speculation, mergers and acquisitions, and foreign investment.
Page xxvi - Andre Gunder Frank, Capitalism and Underdevelopment in Latin America (New York : Monthly Review Press, 1967) ; and Latin America : Underdevelopment or Re volution (New York : Monthly Review Press, 1969).
Page xi - Fieldwork studies are often, particularly in sociology, strategically situated to shed light on larger social, political, symbolic, or economic issues.
Page 3 - What's the use of kidding ourselves? All that piece of paper means is that we got a union. The rest depends on us. For God's sake let's go back to work and keep up what we started here!