Post-Fordist Death: A Comparative Ethnographic Analysis of Milling and Mining in Northern England

Building on work on post-Fordist affect, we argue that the group-based and person-centered forms of production in mining and milling, respectively, produce contingent conceptualizations of culture, identity, and personhood and, in turn, of dying and death. The “communal solidarism” characteristic of post-mining milieu engenders senses of dying and death entailing a communal merging of erstwhile individual selfhoods. In post-milling milieu dying and death are conceptualized as individuated, but subject to social evaluation. The evaluative criterion in this regard is ability to “perform” dying and death in ways that reflect the valorized essence of local culture, identity, and personhood, “resilient autonomy.”