Meatpacking America

An engaging look at meatpacking in Iowa and the people connected by it, Kristy Nabhan-Warren's Meatpacking America weaves a story of religion, community, and the push and pull of belonging. Taking the reader from the killing floors of pork processing plants to the decaying gardens of closed Catholic parishes, Nabhan-Warren sheds light on the complicated nature of current migration patterns and refugee experiences. She insists that small-town Iowa is far more diverse than the media tropes portray. While there is tension, Nabhan-Warren contends that there is also inclusivity and welcome. At the heart of these multiethnic and multilinguistic places is a mutual respect for faith and family.Many of Nabhan-Warren's arguments will not be new to agricultural historians; the Midwest and its people have never been a monolith. Furthermore, we will recognize and commend her attempts to place Iowa in a global context. What is new, however, is her use of faith as a lens of analysis. She utilizes religion to interrogate how faith transcends its traditional boundaries. Rural priests attempt to blend their diverse congregations amid uncertain political climates. Packers and their employees lean on religious ideology to get them through the gruesome task of providing meat for a hungry world. Refugees find solace in God as they navigate unfamiliar environments. Nabhan-Warren accomplishes two of her major goals here; she successfully demonstrates that these are diverse multifaceted places and that religion is a major connective tissue holding them together.Just as Nabhan-Warren describes the interactions between white Iowans and recent refugees as “complicated,” so too must I confess that my feelings toward this book are also complex. Several chapters include some of the best descriptions of meatpacking I have ever read, in particular “In the Belly of the Beast.” With great and sometimes painful detail, she explains how animals are dismantled for our eating pleasure. The descriptions of backbreaking labor and machine-line nature was equally enlightening and disturbing. Overall, Nabhan-Warren is a fabulous writer. I found myself turning page after page to learn more about her diverse array of characters and their stories. Her thorough exploration into the experiences of refugees and their drive to support their families was deeply emotional and at times heartbreaking. One of the highest praises I can give is that I felt like I knew who these people were, even if I never met them in real life.Yet, even as I read Meatpacking America, I kept thinking that perhaps this book was missing important pieces of the story. It seemed that just as Nabhan-Warren began to nibble at the edges of power dynamics, she would pull back. As an ethnographer, she needs to carefully consider all her subjects, including the company management of Tyson and IBP. In many ways, historians have an easier time; our subjects, for the most part, are never going to read our work. But I found that my biggest questions about labor and power were frustratingly unanswered. While Nabhan-Warren included some cursory discussions of the “right to work,” there was a distinct lack of information on current union organizing. Are there any political discussions among these refugee workers? How do these companies who claim paternalistic care for their employees feel about this possible organizing? Furthermore, as historians Roland Marchand and Bartow Elmore have shown, companies desperately try to humanize themselves to make their institutions more palatable to the masses. This includes religion. I could not help but sense that there was a coercive element to this corporate faith. How does a corporate chaplain who offers spiritual counseling deal with employees unhappy with working conditions? What difference in analysis would there have been if Nabhan-Warren had asked these questions? Did she inquire and there was nothing to share? Without addressing these questions, her subjects seem like they operate on an equal playing field, which flattens the very real power differences between multiple billion-dollar corporations and some of the most vulnerable people in the United States. Despite these unanswered questions, Nabhan-Warren does an excellent job of telling a nuanced and important story of rural life in the modern Midwest

Archaeology · Context (archaeology · Faith · Ideology · Media studies · Political science · Politics · Refugee · Sociology · Theology · Gender Studies · History · Law · Mormonism, Religion, and History

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