Summary Of Women, Power And Dissent In The Hills Of Carolina

Women, Power and Dissent in the Hills of Carolina is an ethnography by Mary K. Anglin about women’s labor in the declining mica industry in Southern Appalachia, specifically the Moth Hill Mica Company. Anglin begins her research by first analyzing government documents as a contextual base for the social and economic environment of North Carolina. Then, she conducts eight months of field research in which she interacts and has daily conversations and interviews with workers in order to get first-hand accounts of the women’s experiences both inside and outside of the factory. Through this research, Anglin argues that women are essential contributors to both household and regional economies; they cannot be reduced to one or the other. She also
Through her time spent with Hazel and Zona outside of work, Anglin finds that factory life is not the most meaningful aspect of the mica women’s lives; rather, they are multifaceted people who find meaning in religion, kinship and community (Anglin 2002: 98). In Chapter 6, “Paternalism, Protest and Back Talk,” Anglin uses the research of her previous chapters to argue that the kinship based networks “took the place of formalized dissent and provided the means for women to negotiate the politics of the shop floor” (Anglin 2002: 104). Since women were not able to gain influence through authority positions such as men when the mica industry began to decline, they had to find other means of strategizing and navigating efficiently through the workplace, and they did this by bringing kinship and family life into the factory. Through this, women were able to make factory life more bearable and “contain men’s authority” to an extent (Anglin 2002: 117). However, class often limited these relationships as it had the ability to create rifts even between kin (Anglin 2002: