Power, culture, and sustainability in the making of public policy in an Appalachian headwaters community

The dominant economic paradigm in this headwaters region of western North Carolina is pro-growth. This objectifies and commodifies the environment and marginalizes a subaltern citizen class. Sustainability discourses remain in the margins as rapacious real estate development approaches overshoot of the community's water supply, triggers major shifts in land use, and threatens lifeways. This study sees the cultural as a site of contestation between pro-growth and sustainability ideologies. Three questions were posed in a discursive and structural analysis of dominant and subaltern actors' agency as they contested issues of sustainability: (1) Is sustainability a movement or is it imbedded in other movements? (2) How do actors contest agency as voices for sustainability? (3) Under what conditions can a local-level counter-discourse for sustainability emerge?;Situated as a participant-observer, the researcher aimed for a "movement-relevant theory" of sustainability, framed by the heuristic and analytical concepts of Satterfield's "triangular shape of cultural production" and Dryzek's "environmental discourse classifications." Peak oil, global warming, and neoliberal ideology were introduced into the critique. The multi-sited ethnography derived data from public policy venues and other community spaces where deliberations were held on water supply, steep slope development, and mountain ridge wind energy. The data revealed multi-faceted regimes appropriated by the pro-growth dominant discourse and more limited discourses available to fractured groups of subaltern actors. The classification of discourses appropriated by environmentalist subalterns produced opportunities for dominant and local subaltern actors to marginalize sustainability.;The implications for scholars and activists include insights for successful social action as well as further research in advancing sustainability praxis. The findings suggest necessary pre-conditions under which movements for justice and sustainability may succeed. A more flexible and innovative approach by environmentalist and sustainability advocates is required. The key to successful movement building is a project for rural sustainable development that utilizes innovative hybrid organizations and citizen participation for capacity building. A truth-seeking "rational public" is necessary; but how movements contest powerful truth-making regimes remains the strategic question. As this study shows, complex challenges must be met at the local and regional levels if sustainable communities and a sustainable world are possible.