Looking South—Race, Gender, and the Transformation of Labor from Reconstruction to Globalization

Workers in the contemporary Global South—the developing nations of Central and Latin America, Africa, and much of Asia—live and work within a model of industrial development that first materialized in the red brick mills of the New South in the early twentieth century. Continuing through the present day, this model became the prototype used by U.S. companies as they expanded globally.

This development has had far-reaching effects on both workers and consumers at home and abroad. Unlike earlier models of industrialization in the United Kingdom and New England, in which regulatory laws, worker guilds, and unionization restrained the power of manufacturers, New South industrialization sustained and fostered persistent patterns of corporate control, low wages, and an antiunion climate reinforced by state and local governments.

??????????? While little of what we are witnessing in the Global South is new, the scale and scope of contemporary industrial development around the world are unprecedented. In Looking South, Mary E. Frederickson outlines the events, movements, and personalities involved in resisting industry’s relentless search for cheap labor. In eight compelling essays, she challenges us to better understand the complex historical landscape of the American South and its role in shaping the twenty-first-century world in which we live.

Mary E. Frederickson is professor of history at Miami University in Oxford, Ohio.