Living in the Paraindustrial

Abstract

This article is an autoethnographic exploration of life in the former steel mill region of Southeast Chicago in the ‘Rust Belt’ of the Midwestern United States. It challenges assumptions about deindustrialization that depict one discrete historical stage following another (i.e., the postindustrial following the industrial) in favor of what is here defined as the ‘paraindustrial’ (or a setting in which active industry with minimal numbers of workers exists alongside defunct industry and toxic brownfields). This account centers upon the experiences of women who have too often been neglected in research on deindustrialized regions. In particular, it focuses on the author's elderly mother Arlene who has spent her entire life in Southeast Chicago. From her wheelchair on a backyard porch, Arlene observes this damaged landscape built out of the former Calumet wetlands. The article considers the relationships of care, centered around women, that continue to bind together and support the living despite decades of economic and environmental rupture and degradation. Utilizing the concept of a ‘palimpsest,’ the piece considers how different historical, ecological, and social realities and temporalities are both layered on top of each other and intermingle to create the complex landscape found in this former wetland region.