Signs of critical endurance on the Marcellus Shale landscape

Bradford and Susquehanna Counties are rural communities in northeastern Pennsylvania long dependent on agricultural production, timber extraction and manufacturing. These counties also sit above the Marcellus Shale, a rock formation roughly a mile below the earth’s surface containing vast deposits of natural gas. Drawing on ethnographic work conducted in the summer and fall of 2011, I illustrate herein how residents of Bradford and Susquehanna Counties critically endure the social, economic and environmental changes attributable to recent oil and gas exploration in the region. I have focused on narrative, material culture and landscape as expressive forms of resistance to the many challenges of oil and gas exploration. Expressed ambiguously and non-confrontationally, these verbal and material acts uphold a local social contract, and ensure community- and self-preservation in a time of flux.