Women, Power, and Dissent in the Hills of Carolina (review)

Abstract

Mary K. Anglin. 2002. Urbana and Chicago: University of Illinois Press. This ethnographic and historical study of the industry in Western North Carolina is based on research conducted in the 1980s; publication in book form was delayed to protect workers who might suffer reprisal for their candid discussion of ambiguous relationships with local plant owners and supervisors and their revelations regarding health and safety issues at Hill Mica Company, the primary locus for ethnographic description. Anglin may have delayed publication but she gained additional insight and perspective on her dissertation research during the intervening years. Intensified globalization and restructuring of local economies in the late twentieth century have made her work all the more pertinent to current scholarship in feminist studies, anthropology of work, labor history, and Appalachian studies. When George Hicks published Appalachian Valley in 1966, he made passing mention of the historical importance of mining in northwestern North Carolina but said nothing at all about the where a semi-skilled work force composed mostly of women processed for industrial uses. Concluding the introduction to this book with Jo Carson's poem, Stories I Ain't Told Nobody Yet, Anglin positions her narrative to challenge stereotypes of Appalachian passivity and to balance an extensive literature on the male-dominated coal mining industry. Labor history of the West Virginia and Kentucky coalfields describes the struggle of working class people against impersonal and often ruthless corporations for decent wages, workplace safety, and free exercise of their rights as citizens. Mine wars and deadly disasters periodically have brought national media as well as scholarly attention to bear on the plight of coal miners and their families. In contrast, few outside of western North Carolina have any knowledge of mining and fewer still are aware of the work that goes on in the small rural plants known as mica houses where workers process and fabricate parts from that now is mostly imported. Anglin tells the story of women's work in that industry for the first time. Using documentary sources, oral histories, and ethnographic fieldwork, she describes how women's skill at tasks such as fabricating plate made them key to survival of western North Carolina's while their wages became increasingly essential to household welfare. Anglin effectively interweaves theory and description, historical context developed from social statistics for Pike and Clark counties in Western North Carolina, ethnographic observations, frank discussion of the challenges encountered during fieldwork, and an account of her developing relationships with the women who became her mentors at Hill Mica Company and primary narrators of occupational and life histories. Chapter one offers a brief overview of the social landscape of Pike and Clark counties; however, census records and other documentary sources provide only the sketchiest glimpses of women's participation in local economies and shed even less light on the lived complexity of social relations across class, gender, race and ethnic differences. Anglin turned to oral histories to supply temporal and socio-cultural context for ethnographic fieldwork centered in the workplace; but conversely, observation of shop floor politics and interactions with co-workers away from the plant made possible a richer interpretation of the narratives than could have emerged from a conventional oral history project. Chapter two details the difficulties of initiating and continuing fieldwork in a social field of worker factions and employer-employee conflicts of interest. Anglin chose to focus her dissertation project on because of its salience in women's talk about their lives; however, both the owner-managers who initially gave access to Moth Hill and workers fearful of unemployment were concerned about the consequences of having an outsider-possibly a spy-in the house. …