All the Yards a Market: Bones of Dissent and the Seed of Reproduction

Summary

Subsistence gardening and animal rearing were as integral to the expansion of U.S. capitalism as the coal that fueled its development. Labor performed at the home provided an effective means of workforce reproduction without significant capital investment by elites while also providing an outlet for laborer resistance to company control. In particular, these skills aided the working-class during labor strikes and periods of unemployment. Working-class communities were paradoxically situated within the capitalist dynamic, both actively fighting for better pay and community health while simultaneously engaging in the reproduction of labor. Drawing on archaeological work and historical research from Northeastern Pennsylvania, I will ask these questions: How did subsistence tactics circumvent labor control? How did they aid in capital accumulation by company owners, if at all? And, in the midst of a new subsistence farming and foraging movement, what do acts of "gastro-dissent" really mean for political and environmental activism today?

This Resource is Part of the Following Collections

• Society for Historical Archaeology 2015   •
• Approaching Labor through Archaeology in the Twenty-First Century

Keywords

Spatial Coverage

Individual & Institutional Roles

Contact(s): Society for Historical Archaeology

Record Identifiers

PaperId(s): 260