Development of advanced capitalism: a case study of retired coal miners in southern West Virginia
This dissertation develops a critical analysis of changes in American society during the last fifty years. It is focused in particular on the southern West Virginia coal fields, and examines the changes in class structure (specifically, coal miners), the labor process, the union, class consciousness, community and leisure. The study is grounded within a theoretical perspective that is dialectical. It is concerned with the interaction between specific social categories (such as the union) and the greater whole of capitalist development. It is centrally concerned with continuing a research orientation to which the Frankfurt School gave a powerful contribution: the development of advanced capitalism in the modern epoch. The study utilizes life-history interviews with retired coal miners, almost all of whom had experience with the exploitive company towns of an earlier time. Thus, techniques for the study of oral history are instrumental in developing an analysis of social developments, inasmuch as they provide data appropriate for an analysis of the transformation from early to late capitalism. Finally, this dissertation examines a problem central to dialectical theory, that of the relation between theory and praxis, by approaching the life histories as exemplifications of collective (i.e., social) experience. It integrates the biographical experience of individual miners with the theoretical dimensions of political economy in early and late capitalism. The current crisis in the coal fields is examined, with a view to possible transformation.
- OSTI ID:
- 6730937
- Resource Relation:
- Other Information: Thesis (Ph. D.)
- Country of Publication:
- United States
- Language:
- English
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