Participation Type
Paper
Session Title
Session 2.02 Coal and labor
Presentation #1 Title
“Broken Promises, Broken Lives”: Narratives of Corporate Greed and Corruption Among the United Mine Workers of America and Environmental Activists in the Coalfields of Appalachia
Presentation #1 Abstract or Summary
This paper examines the connections between members of the United Mine Workers of America (UMWA) and local environmental activists in relation to critiques of corporate greed and corruption in the coalfield region of Southwest Virginia. Delving into union-based narratives of mistreatment of coal miners and unsafe working conditions and environmental activists’ stories of pollution caused by a radical form of coal mining called mountaintop removal, this paper explores how class and identity influence the way critiques of corporate greed are formed and expressed. Utilizing concepts of class and labor as theorized by Karen Brodkin (2009), Shauna Scott (1995), and David Harvey (2005), I argue that narratives criticizing the coal industry fluctuate because of fluid notions of class struggle and identity; meaning that individuals experienced and expressed both competing and complementary aspects of coal mining in their communities. For most UMWA members, the discussion of greed and corruption in the coal industry primarily started and stopped with the treatment of workers and conditions in the mines, although they often expanded their critique to include corruption in Corporate America more generally. Local environmental activists viewed environmental pollution caused by mining as a consequence of the corporate greed and corruption that drives coal companies to mine the land using the cheapest (and therefore most environmentally detrimental) method possible. Environmentalists further connected the greed of the coal industry to more than one issue; that is, they understood that the operations of coal companies were harmful to both miners and local communities.
At-A-Glance Bio- Presenter #1
Julie Shepherd-Powell is a doctoral candidate in the Department of Anthropology at the University of Kentucky. She currently lives in Lexington, Kentucky, where she is writing her dissertation on coalfield struggles in southwest Virginia.
“Broken Promises, Broken Lives”: Narratives of Corporate Greed and Corruption Among the United Mine Workers of America and Environmental Activists in the Coalfields of Appalachia
This paper examines the connections between members of the United Mine Workers of America (UMWA) and local environmental activists in relation to critiques of corporate greed and corruption in the coalfield region of Southwest Virginia. Delving into union-based narratives of mistreatment of coal miners and unsafe working conditions and environmental activists’ stories of pollution caused by a radical form of coal mining called mountaintop removal, this paper explores how class and identity influence the way critiques of corporate greed are formed and expressed. Utilizing concepts of class and labor as theorized by Karen Brodkin (2009), Shauna Scott (1995), and David Harvey (2005), I argue that narratives criticizing the coal industry fluctuate because of fluid notions of class struggle and identity; meaning that individuals experienced and expressed both competing and complementary aspects of coal mining in their communities. For most UMWA members, the discussion of greed and corruption in the coal industry primarily started and stopped with the treatment of workers and conditions in the mines, although they often expanded their critique to include corruption in Corporate America more generally. Local environmental activists viewed environmental pollution caused by mining as a consequence of the corporate greed and corruption that drives coal companies to mine the land using the cheapest (and therefore most environmentally detrimental) method possible. Environmentalists further connected the greed of the coal industry to more than one issue; that is, they understood that the operations of coal companies were harmful to both miners and local communities.
