Abstract
Beginning with the pioneering work of Harry Caudill, a rich legacy of scholarship has developed around exposing the injustices associated with coal mining in Central Appalachia. Much of that work has centered around explaining the factors that incite and contain resistance to the industry’s acts of economic exploitation, political domination, and ecological destruction. In recent years, Shannon Bell has been at the forefront of these efforts, having published several influential papers and a previous book that explore why so few Appalachians have involved themselves in the region’s environmental justice (EJ) movement. Her new book, Fighting King Coal: The Challenges to Micromobilization in Central Appalachia, synthesizes the findings from those studies with new data to offer a comprehensive analysis of the central problematics that impede mobilization against mining-related injustice. Below, I summarize the book, discuss its contributions, and provide a few thoughts regarding where subsequent work might move.
In the opening chapters, Bell argues that social protest generally turns on four factors: the degree to which potential movement participants are organized into robust social networks; the degree to which their personal identities correspond to the identities and values of movement organizers; the degree to which they recognize the injustices to which they are subject; and the degree towhich they inhabit a suitable “micro-mobilization context.” She then presents a series of studies that examine the barriers to these mobilization requirements in Central Appalachia’s coalfields.
Chapter Three probes solidarity processes. Drawing from an interview-based study that compares network connections and community trust in mining versus non-mining localities, Bell finds that the boom-bust cycles, primitive accumulation practices, and union-busting campaigns associated with coal production undermine the social capital needed for collective action against industrial abuse.
Chapter Four, based on a previous study with Yvonne Braun, probes processes of identity correspondence, focusing on gender dynamics. Drawing from 28 interviews with men and women in the EJ movement, they argue that the mother and protector roles that women inhabit provide moral authority to protest irresponsible mining practices that threaten family and community. The region’s working-class men, on the other hand, view mining-related labor as a vehicle for achieving hegemonic masculinity, which constrains their capacity for industrial critique.
Chapter Five, based on a previous study with Richard York, examines the degree to which Appalachians have achieved “cognitive liberation” from coal companies. Drawing from a content analysis of the industry’s public-relations materials, they find that companies falsely depict coal as the region’s economic anchor and that they work to articulate Appalachia’s heritage and cultural identity with coal mining. Chapter Six, co-authored with Sean P. Bemis, also examines cognitive liberation. Drawing from GIS viewshed data, the authors investigate the degree to which residents of West Virginia’s foremost coal-producing county can physically see coal-related blight from the roads on which they drive. They find that MTR (mountaintop removal) sites are less visible than other areas of the landscape, which limits residents’ ability to experience the consciousness transformation necessary for mobilization.
Chapters Eight, Nine, and Ten take the book in a new direction by examining Bell’s efforts to create a “micromobilization context” for environmental activism. To do this, she recruited 47 women in five West Virginia coal-mining communities who, despite living amid coal-related blight, had never participated in the EJ movement. The women agreed to participate in an eight-month “Photovoice” project, for which they were asked to take pictures that would “tell the story” of their communities—both its strengths and its problems. Every few weeks, the women met in community groups to share and discuss their photos. Within each group, Bell installed an environmental activist or two, hoping they would share pictures of mining-related problems. By identifying those who joined the EJ movement during the project versus those who did not, she sought to identify additional factors that hindered or facilitated movement recruitment.
Five Photovoice participants joined the EJ movement. Three of them, however, eventually disassociated from it, feeling like the “outsider” activists whom they associated with the broader EJ movement did not reflect their values, were too extreme, and utilized protest tactics they did not agree with. The “alternative lifestyle” they believed such individuals to embody was viewed with incredulity, if not scorn.
Bell’s book is essential reading for scholars who hold interests in grassroots environmental activism; the dynamics of social movement mobilization and demobilization; political quiescence and consent; and Appalachian studies. Although Bell might have devoted more attention to the more mundane factors that shape mobilization (e.g., biographical availability), the book’s strength undoubtedly rests in its dynamism. Bell’s analysis derives from a variety of studies and data sources, examines mobilization and quiescence from several vantage points, and was developed over years of study, follow-up, synthesis, and reflection. Her Photovoice study, moreover, serves as a methodological innovation in its own right—one that actualizes the ideal of participatory action research by generating knowledge that is useful to both academics and activists and that empowers participants during the process.
One important question that Bell’s study raises involves how EJ activists can overcome what Auyero and Swistun (2009) call“relational anchoring.” In Flammable, these authors observed how “toxic uncertainty”—ignorance about industrial risks and an inability to connect health problems to them—often prevails when pollution does not interrupt everyday routines. The participants in Bell’s study who experienced appreciable disruption, in my reading, did tend to express critical views toward coal production. It was those who suffered no direct or immediately recognizable consequences of mining who remained “quiescent.” Future work, therefore, might probe the factors that can galvanize these individuals to action.
Fighting King Coal also raises important questions about the relationships between mobilization and social consciousness. Much of the book examines the extent to which coalfield residents are “cognitively liberated,” the assumption being that exposure to “critical” information will facilitate social protest. Many scholars, however, have persuasively argued against this “information deficit model” of mobilization. Kari Norgaard (2011), for example, found that as information about climate change became more available to her research participants, they lost interest in pursuing solutions to it—especially when they discovered that no easy ones existed. Instead, they devoted their time to community problems that felt manageable.
A similar phenomenon occurred in Bell’s study. While her participants avoided direct criticism of coal companies, they showed a willingness to mobilize around less contentious issues that did not require them to directly challenge King Coal (e.g., poor road quality). This suggests that the challenge for activists may be less about exposing coalfield residents to “critical information” and moreabout destabilizing the industry’s hegemony—that is, the perception of the coal industry’s dominance, morality, and inevitability.
Future scholarship could clarify these questions in two ways. The first would involve investigating not only how coal companies attempt to delude and misinform Appalachians, but how Appalachians learn to actively deny and normalize mining-related injustices in their communities (to, for example, avoid unpleasant emotions). The second would involve exploring where the legitimation efforts that Bell documents fall short and how dissident citizens can disrupt them. Fighting King Coal begins the process by highlighting motherhood as a cultural domain that industrial polluters cannot incorporate. Bell argues that women activists reflexively protest the coal industry out of an “obligation to protect . . . their heritage, their family homeplace, and their way of life” (p.82).
As Rebecca Scott (2010) and I have both shown, however, many mountaineers actively support the coal industry for precisely the same reasons: because they view “coal heritage” as a way to protect and honor their culture, communities, and family. The tendency to view coal as both essential and antithetical to collective identity indicates that Appalachians are embroiled in a cultural struggle over who they are, what their heritage entails, and where coal mining fits in. To help EJ activists persevere in that struggle, subsequent research must shed more light on the processes of hegemonic leadership and counter-hegemonic insurgency that animate it.