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Deindustrialization became a pressing political issue and an object of research almost simultaneously in North America. This article inquires into the intellectual origins and radical roots of the deindustrialization thesis in Canada and the United States. Though the two countries share much in common, their distinctive formulations of the deindustrial problem in the 1970s and 1980s reflected key economic and political differences between them. Radical political economists in Canada and the United States turned to dependency theory and capital flight, respectively, in their theorization of deindustrialization. Barry Bluestone and Bennett Harrison's 1982 book, The Deindustrialization of America, in particular, is a founding text for the burgeoning field of deindustrialization studies. We can learn much from re-engaging with this early scholarship. In doing so, however, we need to bridge the continuing analytical divide between micro-level labour histories of working-class communities and macro-level studies of political economy and the international division of labour. Keywords: deindustrialization, political economy, dependency, staples, international division of labour, capital mobility La désindustrialisation est devenue un enjeu politique pressant et un objet de recherche presque simultanément en Amérique du Nord. Cet article interroge les origines intellectuelles et les racines radicales de la thèse de la désindustrialisation au Canada et aux États-Unis. Bien que les deux pays partagent beaucoup de points communs, leurs formulations distinctes du problème désindustriel dans les années 1970 et 1980 reflétaient des différences économiques et politiques essentielles entre eux. Les économistes politiques radicaux du Canada et des États-Unis se sont tournés vers la théorie de la dépendance et la fuite des capitaux, respectivement, dans leur théorisation de la désindustrialisation. Le livre de Barry Bluestone et Bennett Harrison de 1982, The Deindustrialization of America, en particulier, est un texte fondateur pour le domaine en plein essor des études sur la désindustrialisation. Nous pouvons apprendre beaucoup en renouant avec cette première bourse. Ce faisant, cependant, nous devons combler le fossé analytique persistant entre les histoires de travail au niveau micro des communautés ouvrières et les études au niveau macro de l'économie politique et de la division internationale du travail. Mots clefs : désindustrialisation, économie politique, dépendance, matières premières, division internationale du travail, mobilité du capital, 'A more fully theorized account of de-industrialization would surely have to take fuller measure of dependency theory and models from Latin America.' - Ian McKay, historian, 1987 ''Deindustrialization' is one [...]

THE POST-1945 DECADES ARE frequently remembered as a period of unionized prosperity. The French call these years 'les trentes glorieuses,' the British call them the 'long boom,' and American historian [...]

Jeremy Milloy and Joan Sangster, eds., The Violence of Work: New Essays in Canadian and US Labour History (Toronto: University of Toronto Press 2021) THIS RELATIVELY THIN volume consists of [...]

WORKING AT THE MILL HAD BEEN a family affair for generations of Sturgeon Falls' mill workers, as young men followed their fathers, uncles, older brothers, and occasionally mothers, into the [...]

Cedric Chatterley and Alicia J. Rouverol, 'I Was Content and Not Content': The Story of Linda Lord and the Closing of Penobscot Poultry (Carbondale: Southern Illinois University Press 2000) Jefferson [...]

Mark Reutter, Making Steel: Sparrows Point and the Rise and Ruin of American Industrial Might (Urbana: University of Illinois 2004) MARK REUTTER's book explores the history of the American steel [...]

Jeremy Brecher, Banded Together: Economic Democratization in the Brass Valley (Chicago: University of Illinois Press 2011) JEREMY BRECHER has spent much of the past 35 years documenting the rise and [...]

(Urbana: University of Illinois Press 2001) JAMES D. ROSE has given us a book of considerable depth and originality. In re-telling the story of the early days of steel unionism, [...]