Removing Mountains: Extracting Nature and Identity in the Appalachian Coalfields
A coal mining technique practiced in southern West Virginia known as mountaintop removal is drastically altering the terrain of the Appalachian Mountains. Peaks are flattened and valleys are filled as the coal industry levels thousands of acres of forest to access the coal, in the process turning the forest into scrubby shrublands and poisoning the water. This is dangerous and environmentally devastating work, but as Rebecca R. Scott shows in Removing Mountains, the issues at play are vastly complicated.

In this rich ethnography of life in Appalachia, Scott examines mountaintop removal in light of controversy and protests from environmental groups calling for its abolishment. But Removing Mountains takes the conversation in a new direction, telling the stories of the businesspeople, miners, and families who believe they depend on the industry to survive. Scott reveals these southern Appalachian coalfields as a meaningful landscape where everyday practices and representations help shape a community's relationship to the environment.

Removing Mountains demonstrates that the paradox that faces this community-forced to destroy their land to make a wage-raises important questions related not only to the environment but also to American national identity, place, and white working-class masculinity.
1116295019
Removing Mountains: Extracting Nature and Identity in the Appalachian Coalfields
A coal mining technique practiced in southern West Virginia known as mountaintop removal is drastically altering the terrain of the Appalachian Mountains. Peaks are flattened and valleys are filled as the coal industry levels thousands of acres of forest to access the coal, in the process turning the forest into scrubby shrublands and poisoning the water. This is dangerous and environmentally devastating work, but as Rebecca R. Scott shows in Removing Mountains, the issues at play are vastly complicated.

In this rich ethnography of life in Appalachia, Scott examines mountaintop removal in light of controversy and protests from environmental groups calling for its abolishment. But Removing Mountains takes the conversation in a new direction, telling the stories of the businesspeople, miners, and families who believe they depend on the industry to survive. Scott reveals these southern Appalachian coalfields as a meaningful landscape where everyday practices and representations help shape a community's relationship to the environment.

Removing Mountains demonstrates that the paradox that faces this community-forced to destroy their land to make a wage-raises important questions related not only to the environment but also to American national identity, place, and white working-class masculinity.
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Removing Mountains: Extracting Nature and Identity in the Appalachian Coalfields

Removing Mountains: Extracting Nature and Identity in the Appalachian Coalfields

by Rebecca R. Scott
Removing Mountains: Extracting Nature and Identity in the Appalachian Coalfields

Removing Mountains: Extracting Nature and Identity in the Appalachian Coalfields

by Rebecca R. Scott

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Overview

A coal mining technique practiced in southern West Virginia known as mountaintop removal is drastically altering the terrain of the Appalachian Mountains. Peaks are flattened and valleys are filled as the coal industry levels thousands of acres of forest to access the coal, in the process turning the forest into scrubby shrublands and poisoning the water. This is dangerous and environmentally devastating work, but as Rebecca R. Scott shows in Removing Mountains, the issues at play are vastly complicated.

In this rich ethnography of life in Appalachia, Scott examines mountaintop removal in light of controversy and protests from environmental groups calling for its abolishment. But Removing Mountains takes the conversation in a new direction, telling the stories of the businesspeople, miners, and families who believe they depend on the industry to survive. Scott reveals these southern Appalachian coalfields as a meaningful landscape where everyday practices and representations help shape a community's relationship to the environment.

Removing Mountains demonstrates that the paradox that faces this community-forced to destroy their land to make a wage-raises important questions related not only to the environment but also to American national identity, place, and white working-class masculinity.

Product Details

ISBN-13: 9780816666003
Publisher: University of Minnesota Press
Publication date: 08/04/2010
Series: A Quadrant Book
Edition description: New Edition
Pages: 296
Product dimensions: 5.50(w) x 8.40(h) x 0.80(d)

About the Author

Rebecca R. Scott is assistant professor of sociology at the University of Missouri.

Table of Contents

Contents
Preface
Acknowledgments
Introduction: The Logic of Extraction
1. Hillbillies and Coal Miners: Representations of a National Sacrifice Zone
2. Men Moving Mountains: Coal Mining Masculinities and Mountaintop Removal
3. The Gendered Politics of Pro-Mountaintop Removal Discourse
4. ATVs in Action: Transgression, Property Rights, and Tourism on the Hatfield-McCoy Trail
5. Coal Heritage/Coal History: Appalachia, America, and Mountaintop Removal
6. Traces of History: "White" People, Black Coal
Conclusion: Coal Facts
Appendix: Guide to Participants
Notes
Bibliography
Index
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