Machines and the Migrant Under-employed: the production of surplus life and labor in the Anthracite coal fields of Northeast Pennsylvania

Summary

For much of its early history, underground coal mining involved material conditions which encouraged the solidarity and control of its independent skilled workers. Coal operations in the Anthracite region of Northeast Pennsylvania were among the first, however, to mechanize labor processes with steam shovels, waste processing, and other technical means to extract additional surplus profit from their investments. It also served to break the resistance of organized skilled workers. This technical assemblage required a surplus army of unskilled migrant labor to operate these machines. Archaeological excavation of the shanty settlements of these migrant workers illustrates the dynamism of an industrial regime wholly dependent upon the entangling of machines and the under-employed. This research illuminates Deleuze and Guattari’s suggestion that the weird machines of Late Capitalism, "work only when they break down," but also that, "[their] product is always an offshoot of production." 

This Resource is Part of the Following Collections

• Society for Historical Archaeology 2018   •
• Left Of Capitalism: Archaeology, Homelessness, and the People's Critique

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Contact(s): Society for Historical Archaeology

Record Identifiers

PaperId(s): 256