LOCAL POLITICAL PRACTICE IN RESPONSE TO A MANUFACTURING PLANT CLOSURE: HOW GEOGRAPHY COMPLICATES CLASS ANALYSIS

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Abstract
This paper analyzes the responses to two separate closures of a large glass manufacturing plant in Clarksburg, West Virginia, to examine how geography has been integral to the conduct of local political practice in this community. When the plant, by far the local area's largest manufacturing employer, first closed in 1979 the state and local government put together a considerable package of incentives to attract a purchaser for the facility. However, although glass production continued, the plant was again closed in 1987 after a corporate takeover. In response to this second closure the characteristically pro‐business Governor of West Virginia initiated an almost $650 million lawsuit against the plant's new owners. The plant's union leaders on the other hand collaborated with city government officials and local business interests to constrain community opposition to the closure. The paper argues that this paradoxical situation, of actors taking up positions contrary to those which an ageographical class analysis would have predicted, was the result precisely of their locality dependence in the face of mobile capital.