Lie Of The Land
eBook - PDF

Lie Of The Land

Migrant Workers and the California Landscape

  1. 260 pages
  2. English
  3. PDF
  4. Available on iOS & Android
eBook - PDF

Lie Of The Land

Migrant Workers and the California Landscape

About this book

The beauty of the California landscape is integral to its place in the imagination of generations of people around the world. In The Lie of the Land, geographer Don Mitchell looks at the human costs associated with this famous scenery. Through an account of the labor history of the state, Mitchell examines the material and ideological struggles over living and working conditions that played a large part in the construction of the contemporary California landscape. The Lie of the Land examines the way the California landscape was built on the backs of migrant workers, focusing on migratory labor and agribusiness before World War II. The book relates the historical geography of California to the processes of labor that made it, discussing not only significant strikes but also on the everyday existence of migrant workers in the labor camps, fields, and "Hoovervilles" where they lived. Mitchell places class struggle at the heart of social development, demonstrating concretely how farm workers affected their social and material environment, as well as exploring how farm owners responded to their workers' efforts to improve their living and working conditions. Mitchell also places "reformers" in context, revealing the actual nature of their role in relation to migrant workers' efforts—that of undermining the struggle for genuine social change. In addition, this volume captures the significance of the changing composition of the agricultural workforce, particularly in racial terms, as the class struggle evolved over a period of decades. Mitchell has written a narrative history that describes the intimate connection between landscape representations and the material form of geography. The Lie of the Land places people squarely in the middle of the landscapes they inhabit, shedding light on the complex and seemingly contradictory interactions between progressive state agents, radical workers, and California growers as they seek to remake the land in their own image.

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Yes, you can access Lie Of The Land by Don Mitchell in PDF and/or ePUB format, as well as other popular books in Social Sciences & Minority Studies. We have over one million books available in our catalogue for you to explore.

Table of contents

  1. Contents
  2. Acknowledgments
  3. Introduction / Migratory Workers and the California Landscape, 1913–1942
  4. 1 California: The Beautiful and the Damned
  5. 2 Labor and Landscape: The Wheatland Riot and Progressive State Intervention
  6. 3 Subversive Mobility and the Re-formation of Landscape
  7. 4 Marked Bodies: Patriotism, Race, and Landscape
  8. 5 The Political Economy of Landscape and the Return of Radicalism
  9. 6 The Disintegration of Landscape: The Workers' Revolt of 1933
  10. 7 Reclaiming the Landscape: Learning to Control the Spaces of Revolt
  11. 8 Workers as Objects/Workers as Subjects: Re-making Landscape
  12. Conclusion: The Lie of the Land
  13. Notes
  14. Index