Thomas Miller Klubock is Assistant Professor of History at Ohio State University.
Review
"Combining the explanatory power of theory with rich, evocative narrative, Klubock sets a new standard
for the treatment of gender relations and politics in Latin American labor history."
--Gil Joseph, Yale University
"Revealing a defining moment of modern Chilean history, Contested Communities is a crucially important
work. First-rate, fascinating labor history. . . remarkable for its boldness and originality."
--Jeffrey L. Gould, Indiana University
Duke University Press Web Site, March, 2000
Summary
In Contested Communities Thomas Miller Klubock analyzes the experiences of the El Teniente copper miners during
the first fifty years of the twentieth century. Describing the everyday life and culture of the mining community,
its impact on Chilean politics and national events, and the sense of self and identity working-class men and women
developed in the foreign-owned enclave, Klubock provides important insights into the cultural and social history
of Chile.
Klubock shows how a militant working-class community was established through the interplay between capitalist development,
state formation, and the ideologies of gender. In describing how the North American copper company attempted to
reconfigure and reform the work and social-cultural lives of men and women who migrated to the mine, Klubock demonstrates
how struggles between labor and capital took place on a gendered field of power and reconstituted social constructions
of masculinity and femininity. As a result, Contested Communities describes more accurately than any previous study
the nature of grassroots labor militancy, working-class culture, and everyday politics of gender relations during
crucial years of the Chilean Popular Front in the 1930s and 1940s.
