Place-Based Global Ethnography

Abstract

Numerous Internet sites and web-based newspapers tell stories of economic and industrial change in the US town of Philomath in Oregon. These electronically mediated accounts illustrate the ways in which timber corporations virtually annihilated the forests surrounding the North American country town and neighbouring smaller logging towns. This corporately engineered environmental devastation was precipitated by the rise of mechanization in the timber industry. As logging technologies became increasingly advanced, logging labour became progressively more redundant. Many of those who were left unemployed by the timber industry needed new jobs and new vocational identities. One account, of Philomath man George Shroyer, emerges from a number of cyber stories. George’s tale speaks of difficult and often almost fatal risks encountered in the Philomath forests by the town’s loggers. George began working in a Philomath sawmill as a teenage boy. He was employed in various facets of the timber industry for his entire working history. His identity became embedded in his work and in the Philomath logging industry. At the age of 91, George was still behind the wheel of his truck (Hall with Wood 1998).