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Most Americans today view mines as little more than ugly scars on the landscape, places with no connection to an American way of life. This creative new work will force many to rethink that impression: after an introduction to the history of mining in America, the authors present eight visual and historical essays about diverse sites across the nation, each of which reveals mines not simply as physical degradations but as evolving cultural artifacts of the American landscape.
"Over the past five hundred years, North Americans have increasingly turned to mining to produce many of their basic social and cultural objects. From cell phones to cars and roadways, metal pots to wall tile and even talcum powder, minerals products have become central to modern North American life. As this process has unfolded, mining has also indelibly shaped the natural world and North Americans' relationship with it. Mountains have been honeycombed, rivers poisoned, and forests leveled. The effects of these environmental transformations have fallen unevenly across North American societies. Mining North America examines these developments. Drawing on the work of scholars from Mexico, the United States, and Canada, this book explores how mining has shaped North America over the last half millennium. It covers an array of minerals and geographies while seeking to draw mining into the core debates that animate North American environmental history generally. Taken together, the authors' contributions make a powerful case for the centrality of mining in forging North American environments and societies"--Provided by publisher.
Works from an exhibition that proves mining can be as sublime as it is destructive. Landscapes of Extraction explores the art of mining, which completely transformed the American West. These landscapes of enterprise altered the natural environment on a spectacular scale, with open pit mines, coal tipples, and oil rigs. Yet artists have often found these scenes beautiful, even sublime. The four scholarly essays presented here explore how artists have portrayed the mining industry in the American West. The multiple landscapes created by large-scale mining inspired these artworks: the mines themselves, the towns that grew up around them, and the miners and their families who lived and worked there. The industry has shaped communities and landscapes throughout the West: Arizona, California, Colorado, Montana, New Mexico, Nevada, Oklahoma, Texas, and Utah. Landscapes of Extraction explores how a powerful regional narrative became a fundamental element of national identity and played out on a vast geographical scale.
For twenty-five years, Kendall Brown studied Potosí, Spanish America's greatest silver producer and perhaps the world's most famous mining district. He read about the flood of silver that flowed from its Cerro Rico and learned of the toil of its miners. Potosí symbolized fabulous wealth and unbelievable suffering. New World bullion stimulated the formation of the first world economy but at the same time it had profound consequences for labor, as mine operators and refiners resorted to extreme forms of coercion to secure workers. In many cases the environment also suffered devastating harm. All of this occurred in the name of wealth for individual entrepreneurs, companies, and the ruling states. Yet the question remains of how much economic development mining managed to produce in Latin America and what were its social and ecological consequences. Brown's focus on the legendary mines at Potosí and comparison of its operations to those of other mines in Latin America is a well-written and accessible study that is the first to span the colonial era to the present.