The political economy of mountaintop removal mining in West Virginia: Hegemony and resistance

This study examines how the coal industry has maintained its dominant status in Central Appalachia---despite the documented significant social, economic, and ecological costs of coal extraction. In particular, the research focuses on the especially destructive practice of mountaintop removal mining (MTR), which has precipitated a sharp loss of coal mining labor---largely through mechanization---and the marked degradation of forests, water, and air. Using a Gramscian theoretical lens, I analyze the construction of hegemony and the emergence of a counterhegemonic movement. My investigation of hegemony includes the pro-coal narratives propagated by the coal industry and the state's erection of institutional obstacles to perturb social change and transition away from a coal-based mono-economy.;The analysis of hegemony and counterhegemony is predicated upon indicators that I derived from a synthesis of data collected, through interviews and participant observation, in the field. The indicators enable a systematic assessment of hegemony and resistance, and empirical verification of both. In the field, I also identified three important mechanisms by which the coal industry reproduces hegemony, which are the media, education, and the apparatus of the captive state, achieved through campaign finance. The industry has spent millions of dollars crafting messaging that centralizes, in descending order of emphasis, jobs and affordability, domestic abundance and efficiency, and clean coal technology. In addition, the coal industry invested ;The counterhegemonic movement is working to challenging not only MTR, but a historical legacy of institutionalized inequality (i.e., resource ownership concentrated in the hands of a few). The movement arises out of a complex terrain of struggles to control the distribution of West Virginia's wealth. In so doing, the movement emphasizes broad-based coalition-building to build healthy communities and healthy economies, and preserve nature. Drawing from eco-Marxism, I analyze the role of labor with respect to facilitating change toward the resistance's objectives. Contrary to some of the previous research, my analysis of data indicates that Appalachian grassroots activists are indeed concerned about the plight of workers---constituting a disruption of the false, industry-backed jobs-versus-environment dichotomy---and that environmental activists are integrating rank-and-file workers into the movement, instead of focusing on failing/failed attempts to sway union leadership. Working through the media, schools, and institutions of the state, activists are channeling their energies into creating community solidarity that offers acceptance and security for all, workers included, as it challenges the hierarchies of the capitalist mode of production, in the context of neo-liberalism. Community solidarity turns its attention to the creation of alternative local economies and the construction of alternative forms of capital, including intellectual, social, and natural.