Tracing the Veins

by Finn, Janet L.

• ISBN13: 9780520211360
• ISBN10: 0520211367
• Format: Hardcover
• Copyright: 1998-08-01
• Publisher: California Academy of Sciences

Summary

This tale of two cities--Butte, Montana, and Chuquicamata, Chile--traces the relationship of capitalism and community across cultural, national, and geographic boundaries. Combining social history with ethnography, Janet Finn shows how the development of copper mining set in motion parallel processes involving distinctive constructions of community, class, and gender in the two widely separated but intimately related sites. While the rich veins of copper in the Rockies and the Andes flowed for the giant Anaconda Company, the miners and their families in both places struggled to make a life as well as a living for themselves. Miner's consumption, a popular name for silicosis, provides a powerful metaphor for the danger, wasting, and loss that penetrated mining life. Finn explores themes of privation and privilege, trust and betrayal, and offers a new model for community studies that links local culture and global capitalism.

Table of Contents

List of Illustrations	xiii	(2)
Preface	xv
1. Tracing the Veins	1	(28)
2. Mining History: A Political Chronology	29	(43)
3. Mining Community	72	(37)
4. Mining Men and Designing Women	109	(38)
5. Crafting the Everyday	147	(30)
6. Miner's Consumption	177	(24)
7. Trust, Betrayal, and Transformation	201	(29)
8. Food for Thought and Action	230	(17)
Appendix 1. Copper Production, 1920-1972	247	(1)
Appendix 2. Copper Production, 1934-1972	248	(1)
Notes	249	(28)
Bibliography	277	(20)
Index	297