Searching for home where mountains move: The collision of economy, environment, and an American community (West Virginia)

Dissertation field research focused in the Coal River region of West Virginia documents the changing relationships between the coal industry, communities, environment and economy. I approach the deeply divided conflict over mountaintop removal coal mining (an intense and expanding form of strip mining) through a local grassroots activist organization called Coal River Mountain Watch (CRMW). Made up of local citizens that have grown up in the region with personal ties to the coal industry, CRMW challenges notions of activism and environmentalism common in the political imaginary of the United States.; I trace the evolution of the mining industry alongside the history of coalfield communities and the United Mine Workers union. While historically very influential in the region, the membership and political power of the UMW has declined dramatically in the past thirty years. In response, the social issues that would have been championed by the union in the past lost their most significant source of representation. Local citizens, many of whom have a history with the union, have formed nonprofit community organizing groups like CRMW to coordinate opposition to mountaintop removal mining.; Political opponents describe CRMW and their collaborators with labels like "environmentalist" and "extremist." Activists challenge these labels with sophisticated arguments about the moral issues that underpin the conflict between industry, labor and communities. I argue that the turn towards community organizing, particularly under the aegis of the environment, represents a pragmatic effort to organize social issues in a new social space outside the purview of organized labor. Framing social and moral arguments in terms of the environment expands the social and political meanings of environmentalism and takes advantage of the particular political salience of environmentalism (in contrast to organized labor) in this historical moment. Innovative hybrid social movements like that of CRMW and their collaborators allows for the creation of a principled agenda for progressive social activism in the wake of changes brought about by late capitalism.