Company Towns and Class Processes: A Study of the Coal Towns of Central Queensland

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Abstract
The growth of the international export coal market during the 1960s and 1970s prompted, in Australia, a massive injection of global and national capital into coal-mine and town development, especially in rural areas of Central Queensland. A new and distinctive set of ‘localities' were created. In this paper some of the social processes set in motion by this development are examined with particular focus upon the role of capitalist class processes in the region. A number of struggles involving miners and their employers, town residents and the state, and workers and residents which have occurred over the last twenty years are discussed. The complex and at times contradictory interactions of class and nonclass processes within these struggles are explored, each case highlighting a different moment in class (and place) formation.