The Deindustrialization of DC

Between January and May this year, more than 260,000 U.S. federal government workers have either been laid off, taken early retirement, or accepted buyouts. Thousands more are losing jobs as the Trump administration slashes research grants and funding for social services and non-profits. While the cuts affect people across the country and the world, they hit especially hard in Washington, D.C., where the federal government has always been the largest employer. As the Axios news service put it, the Trump administration is “downsiz[ing] the capital city’s big factory.”

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Recording Deindustrialization in the New Populist Era

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Memoirs of Women from Mining Families

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Navigating the Memory of Nationalized Coal in Britain

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Deindustrialization as People’s History

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Oyster Smells, Ranked — A DePOT Summer Institute Poem

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Fred Burrill on Andy Clark’s Fighting Deindustrialisation

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Roberta Garruccio on Andy Clark’s “Fighting Deindustrialization: Scottish Women’s Factory Occupations, 1981-1982”

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No More Scheffervilles

Forty years ago this summer, the Cleveland-based Iron Ore Company of Canada closed its open pit mine in Quebec’s far northeast, putting the future of the town of Schefferville into doubt. Most of the housing in the town of 2,500 was owned by the departing company as was the long railway line south to Sept-Iles, the only land-link to the outside world. While most industrial closures receive little public attention outside of the immediate locality or region, Schefferville became front page news across Canada for weeks, even years. What explains this sustained interest?

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Tenby, South Wales. Wikicommons. Used under a Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 4.0 International license.

Sea, Sunburn, and Fish & Chips: Reflections on ‘May Day’ in Britain

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Salaried Staff, Engineers and Middle Managers:  Are they the neglected workers of deindustrialization’s historians?

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The Memory of Industrial Pasts and its Role in Remaking (Post)Industrial Landscapes in Global Perspective

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Slag Banks and Acts of Erasure

Clara Casian reflects on the traces left by the steel industry on Barrows Island’s landscape.

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Mural in the Craft Village, Derry depicting Tillie and Henderson’s factory workers linking arms on their walk home from work. Photo: Naomi Petropoulos

Honouring the Original Derry Girls: the Resurgence of the Commemoration and Celebration of Shirt Making in Derry, Northern Ireland

Naomi Petropoulos writes on the legacy of industrial shirt-making in Derry, Northern Ireland.

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Tower Colliery, December 1982. Photo: John Podpadec.

EXPANDING BOUNDARIES: NEW PERSPECTIVES ON DEINDUSTRIALIZATION

Part Two of DePOT’s roundtable series on new publications in the international field of deindustrialization studies recently took place. Among the new perspectives that emerged, Lachlan MacKinnon highlights the unique contributions that this new scholarship has made to the field.

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Abandoned workers' council assembly hall in a Porto Marghera chemical factory, 2017. Photo: Gilda Zazzara.

Bridging divides: new perspectives on deindustrialization

By Steven High

DePOT recently organized the first of two roundtables on new publications in the international field of deindustrialization studies. Among the new perspectives that emerged, Steven High highlights three ways that the new scholarship is bridging old historiographic divides.

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