Meatpacking America

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Rev. Dr. Tony Lin talks to Dr. Kristy Nabhan-Warren about her book on how migration, work, and faith unite and divide the American heartland

“U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA) meat inspectors and graders perform their mission,” 2018. Photo: Preston Keres, USDA

 
 

In this episode of OP Talks, cultural sociologist Rev. Dr. Tony Lin talks to religion ethnographer Dr. Kristy Nabhan-Warren about her book Meatpacking America: How Migration, Work, and Faith Unite and Divide the Heartland (The University of North Carolina Press, 2021). A native midwesterner, Dr. Nabhan-Warren spent years interviewing workers at meatpacking plants—including recent migrants from Latin America, Africa, and Asia—about their passion for religious faith and desire to work hard for their families. The Protestants, Catholics and Muslims she documented shared stories that expose how faith-based aspirations for mutual understanding blend uneasily with rampant economic exploitation and racial biases.

On the inspiration for her work, Dr. Nabhan-Warren says, "I just sort of followed my intuition and my love of the food and the culture and, for the last 20 years or so, have just really been a student.” Her desire is to “keep trying to understand all the different layers of Latino Catholicism, Latino religions in the U.S. But also, increasingly…Latinos in relationship with other migrant refugee groups."

 

ADDITIONAL RESOURCES

Recent Immigrant Workers in Iowa's Meatpacking Industry: Archie Green Fellows Project, 2015 to 2016. Oral histories from the Occupational Folklife Project, American Folklife Center, Library of Congress.

 

Meatpacking America: How Migration, Work, and Faith Unite and Divide the Heartland by Kristy Nabhan-Warren
University of North Carolina Press, 2021

 
 

“Anyone interested in faith and work, immigration, American history, or even just a good story will find this to be a fascinating, emotional, and vitally important book. In its pages, abstract political debates break away in the face of the messier reality of migration as a new “religion of real life” is uncovered."

—The Christian Century

 
Featured
Tony Lin

Rev. Dr. Tony Tian-Ren Lin is a Research Professor at New York Theological Seminary. He is a cultural sociologist whose scholarship focuses on the intersection of religion, immigration, race, and ethnicity. He is the author of Prosperity Gospel Latinos and Their American Dream (University of North Carolina Press, 2020), which Publisher’s Weekly praises as a “well-reasoned,” “evocative debut” that “immerse[s] readers in the lives of his subjects.” He was previously a Research Scholar at the Institute for Advanced Studies in Culture at the University of Virginia where he held numerous academic and administrative positions. Rev. Dr. Lin was born in Taiwan and grew up in Argentina. He holds a bachelor degree from Boston University, a Master of Divinity and Master of Theology from Princeton Theological Seminary, and a Master and Doctor of Philosophy in sociology from the University of Virginia. He is an ordained Presbyterian minister who has served churches in New Jersey and Virginia. His work has been featured in The Atlantic Monthly, The Washington Post, LatinoUSA, WNYC, and other venues.

Featured
Kristy Nabhan-Warren

Dr. Kristy Nabhan-Warren is Professor and the inaugural V.O. and Elizabeth Kahl Figge Chair in Catholic Studies in the Departments of Religious Studies and of Gender, Women's, and Sexuality Studies at the University of Iowa. Her teaching and scholarship focus on the lived, daily experiences of American Christians and their communities, with research interests that include: American Religions; Ethnographic approaches to the study of religion; Catholic Studies; and Latinx Studies. Dr. Nabhan-Warren holds a BA in Religious Studies and Political Science, and a PhD in Religious Studies, both from Indiana University; she also holds an MA in Religious Studies from Arizona University.

Dr. Nabhan-Warren is a member of The American Academy of Religion, serving as Co-Chair of the Religion and Social Science (RSS) unit. She is the elected Vice-Chair of the Council of Graduate Studies in Religion (CGSR) and serves on the Steering Committee of the journal Spiritus: A Journal of Christianity. Dr. Nabhan-Warren is the author The Cursillo Movement in America: Catholics, Protestants, and Fourth-Day Spirituality (2013) and Meatpacking America: How Migration, Work, and Faith Unite and Divide the Heartland (2021), both published by The University of North Carolina Press, where she is also the creator and editor of Where Religion Lives, a book series on innovative ethnographies of religion. Her other books include The Virgin of El Barrio: Marian Apparitions, Catholic Evangelizing, and Mexican American Activism (New York University Press, 2005); Américan Woman: The Virgin of Guadalupe, Latinas/os, and Accompaniment (Loyola Marymount University Press, 2018); and The Oxford Handbook on Latinx Christianities in the United States (Oxford University Press, 2022).

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