Deindustrializing History

This panel explores how industrial corporations and political elites navigated the processes of economic and technological transformation in the United States from the 1970s through the 1990s. This period is often discussed as an era of structural change, in which the US economy transitioned away from manufacturing and toward finance, service, and information sectors. By focusing on particular industries and policy intellectuals, these papers seek to offer a nuanced explanation of how, and to what extent, this transition unfolded. It discusses how individual policy elites and business leaders understood economic and technological change and how they made decisions that facilitated or disrupted these processes. Moreover, it interrogates the extent to which the US economy experienced a transition to “post-industrialism” by pointing to the persistence of US manufacturing production in these years. The panel therefore encourages a broader discussion of how historians should understand the oft-discussed transition to “post-industrialism,” with particular attention to continuities as well as changes.