America’s Assembly Line by David Nye (review)

This very timely publication deals with the cultural consequences of the assembly line in the 20^th century: It discusses the standardization of products, the changing working patterns and production practices, and their respective critiques. It aims to address the link between culture and technological progress in its specific relation to both the American Dream and the image of “America” around the world. As can be expected from a study of the assembly line, the book’s central storyline starts and ends in Detroit, the place from where it emerged and moved on to change the world; while it is not a study of the urban crisis of the city that was once so intimately tied to the assembly line, Nye’s work connects the changes in Detroit to the transformation of the role of industrial work, without, however, leaving other reasons out.

In ten chapters, the study deals with the invention and emergence of the assembly line, its celebration, distribution and critique, and its status in the globalized world. Overall, the book is interdisciplinary in focus and points to social and environmental consequences of the technology as well as to its literary representations. It contains statistical data and photographs, allowing the reader a glimpse of important moments in technological history. While the study bears the name America’s Assembly Line, its focus goes far beyond the United States and also deals with the assembly line and its complex negotiation in the European and Asian contexts. Its main line of argument with regard to these different places is that they did not just adopt the assembly line, but transformed it in important ways. In each of these places, cultural judgments go along with the emergence of mass production, which also became known as Ford-ism and was discussed under the header of “Americanization” in much of Europe. Nowadays, of course, the United States attempts to learn from other countries, such as Japan, in order to compete on the market. Thus, the assembly line changed within the American context as well, and was criticized under a variety of different signs throughout its history, with regard to the monotony of the work and the perceived threat of mechanization, homogenization and, in the long run, unemployment. At the same time, it was praised, such as with regard to how it shortened workdays and helped along the emergence of a welfare system.

The study very much succeeds in making clear that culture and technology are not opposites, but that they impact each other in significant ways. It discusses the impact of the assembly line not so much from a technological, but from a narrative angle and points out how the assembly line as industrial practice and as cultural phenomenon has, throughout its history, not only shaped perceptions of progress, but also changed organizational patterns and ways of relating to work itself. After all, the story of the American Dream and its failure can be told in one of its many variations along the emergence, powerful moment, and downfall of the assembly line.