Pennsylvania Coal and North Dakota Oil

I’ve learned a tremendous amount from reading Michael Roller’s and Paul Shackel’s work on northeast Pennsylvania coal industry in the late 19th and early 20th century. Their ability to locate the activities around Hazleton, Pennsylvania (particularly Lattimer and Pardeesville) in the history of American labor, immigration, capitalism, and in Paul Shackel’s most recent book, global capitalism: An Archaeology of Unchecked Capitalism: From the American Rust Belt to the Developing World (2020).

(As an aside, the title is a bit misleading in that the book is filled with examples where workers, communities, and even the state checked and shaped the growth of global capitalism.)

Shackel’s 2020 book did a nice job connecting global trends to the situation in Northeastern Pennsylvania both literally and conceptually. Shackel literally connects the sweat shops in Bangladesh to Northeastern Pennsylvania by tracking the garment industry from Hasleton’s silk mills to contemporary sweatshops in Southeast Asia and Oceana. A case study from the North Mariana Islands which were once a key location for garment manufacturing, demonstrated how the territory’s exemption from US immigration policies allowed for the flourishing of low-cost manufacturing. This effective reprises the history of coal extraction in Northeastern Pennsylvania where immigrants provided easily exploited, low-cost, labor in the mines.

The book isn’t long and when read alongside Michael Roller’s work and Shackel’s 2018 book, Remembering Lattimer it provides a vivid window into the construction of contemporary capitalism and its relationship to state policy, race, immigration, and the labor movement.

This got me wondering whether our work in the Bakken oil patch might contribute to how we imagine an archaeology of future capitalism. The ephemeral character of settlement, the temporary character of the work, and it’s hyper-sensitivity to the ebbs and flows of global capital make Bakken oil and labor in the patch a microcosm for the volatile and inhumane nature of the contemporary economy. This isn’t to suggest that Shackel and Roller are wrong in their reading of Northeastern Pennsylvania coal country as representing and anticipating the 20th century economy, but instead to wonder whether the Bakken might represent a depressing modern equivalent for the 21st century economy. 

Unfortunately, I’m struggling to find time to read (much less write) lately. Mostly this is good: I’m working on projects with the press and recharging my batteries before the start of the semester. But to some extent this is bad: I’m getting restless and my ideas need to discipline of thoughtful (or at least interested) reading and writing.