“We're Not Going to Be a Coal Superpower Anymore”: Political Discourse, Elections, and Everyday Economics in the Coalfields of Southwest Virginia

Abstract

ABSTRACT In the coalfields of Appalachia, coal production and employment have steadily decreased over the last two decades, yet political discussions in every recent election cycle continue to focus on coal or fossil fuels as the answer to the region's economic woes. Based on 18 months of fieldwork conducted in 2012 and 2013, I investigate the ways that coalfield residents experienced the intersections of political discourse with everyday material realities. Following David Ruccio's concept of everyday economic representations, I explore the ways residents directly and indirectly contest the dominant narratives in electoral politics that suggest coal is the only means to fix the depressed coalfield economy. I further argue that votes cast in each election cycle do not provide an adequate picture of the region or the reasons people go, or do not go, to the polls at all. I finally offer some insights into more recent election cycles and the economic futures of the coalfields as residents creatively work toward a just transition.

Cite this work

No public copy is stored for this record, so only the metadata is cited.

Stored only when both papers are in the corpus — 2 citations exist upstream.

Papers that cite the same references — the relational fallback while embeddings are still backfilling.