Zoom talk presented by
Society for Industrial Archeology
January 16, 2025, 5 p.m. Eastern (US & Canada)

This talk will explore the long process of deindustrialization at Bethlehem Steel’s Bethlehem Steel’s flagship mill as experienced by the last generation of Bethlehem, PA steelworkers. Workers entering the mill in the 1960s and early 1970s walked into what they described as a “different world”, one in which social relations built inside a union-mediated workplace gave strength to steel workers.  This position of power was then eroded by 20 years of deindustrialization, ending in bankruptcy of the corporation. These processes of dispossession, combined with expanding production at the plant, appeared confusing and contradictory to steelworkers, often undermining their best-laid plans to hold onto Fordist benefits. Ultimately, however, a “new economy” was redefined in the region.

Speaker: Dr. Jill Schennum
Dr. Schennum has a Ph.D. in cultural anthropology and is the author of As Goes Bethlehem. She has conducted ethnographic research on ex-steelworkers and processes of deindustrialization in Bethlehem, PA for the past 15 years. She chairs the Department of Social Sciences at the County College of Morris. Dr. Schennum has been engaged in public anthropology in Bethlehem, including serving as an Officer with the Steelworkers’ Archives.
She has written a book entitled As Goes Bethlehem: Steelworkers and the Restructuring of an Industrial Working Class published in 2023 by Vanderbilt University Press, EAN/UPC 9780826505880.
Available from the usual sources including your local bookstore and
https://bookshop.org/p/books/as-goes-bethlehem-steelworkers-and-the-restructuring-of-an-industrial-working-class-jill-a-schennum/19767615?ean=9780826505880

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Meeting ID: 816 3109 6628
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