Skip to main content Accessibility help

We use cookies to distinguish you from other users and to provide you with a better experience on our websites. Close this message to accept cookies or find out how to manage your cookie settings.

Close cookie message
×
Hostname: page-component-78c5997874-m6dg7 Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-11-10T12:15:42.978Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false

26 - Rural Estrangement: Roadblocks and Roundabouts to Justice

from Part V - Social Justice

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  05 November 2020

By
John C. Jr. Canfield ,
Karl Galloway  and
Loka Ashwood
Edited by
Katharine Legun ,
Julie C. Keller ,
Michael Carolan  and
Michael M. Bell
Katharine Legun
Affiliation:
Wageningen University and Research, The Netherlands
Julie C. Keller
Affiliation:
University of Rhode Island
Michael Carolan
Affiliation:
Colorado State University
Michael M. Bell
Affiliation:
University of Wisconsin, Madison
Get access

Summary

This chapter uses an estrangement frame to explore the problem of rural injustice. We analyze four drivers of rural estrangement: stereotypes in favor of elites, mechanization in favor of resource extraction, corporate markets in favor of finance, and governance in favor of urbanity. While the concept of the rural “other” has value, we prefer the concept of estrangement because it treats the rural as diverse rather than monolithic. Doing so avoids the cultural and racial stereotypes that exacerbate the asymmetries of power between the rural and the urban, discrepancies frequently used to legitimize exploitation of rural peoples and the environment.Extractive and mechanization-intensive processes in resource-rich rural places globally often promote a transfer of wealth to urban absentee owners at the expense of the rural environment and public health. Likewise, corporatization makes rural areas vulnerable by collapsing local markets and dispossessing rural peoples. We also explore how the utilitarian orientation of the democratic state often results in what Ashwood (2018) calls a “for-profit democracy” that favors urbanity and diminishes the power of local governance. Finally, we propose some solutions to help mitigate the problems of rural estrangement.

Keywords

EstrangementJusticeRuralityDemocracy
Type
Chapter
Information
The Cambridge Handbook of Environmental Sociology , pp. 435 - 451
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
Print publication year: 2020

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

References

Alabama Forestry Commission. (2017). Forest Resource Report 2017. Montgomery, AL. Retrieved from www.forestry.alabama.gov/Pages/Education/PDFs/Forest_Resource_Report.pdf.Google Scholar
Appadurai, A. (1990). Disjuncture and difference in the global cultural economy. Theory, Culture & Society, 7(2–3), 295–310. https://doi.org/10.1177/026327690007002017Google Scholar
Ashwood, L. (2018). For-Profit Democracy: Why the Government Is Losing the Trust of Rural America. Yale University Press.Google Scholar
Ashwood, L., & MacTavish, K. (2016). Tyranny of the majority and rural environmental injustice. Journal of Rural Studies, 47, 271–277. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jrurstud.2016.06.017Google Scholar
Ashwood, L., Harden, N., Bell, M. M., & Bland, W. (2014). Linked and situated: Grounded knowledge. Rural Sociology, 79(4), 427–452. https://doi.org/10.1111/ruso.12042CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Bailey, C., Dyer, J. F., & Teeter, L. (2011). Assessing the rural development potential of lignocellulosic biofuels in Alabama. Biomass and Bioenergy, 35(4), 1408–1417. https://doi.org/10.1016/J.BIOMBIOE.2010.11.033Google Scholar
Bailey, C., Faupel, C. E., & Holland, S. F. (1992). Hazardous wastes and differing perceptions of risk in Sumter county, Alabama. Society & Natural Resources, 5(1), 21–36. https://doi.org/10.1080/08941929209380773Google Scholar
Baller, M., & Pantilat, L. J. (2007). Defenders of Appalachia: The campaign to eliminate mountaintop removal coal mining and the role of Public Justice. Environmental Law, 37(3), 629–663.Google Scholar
Bell, M. M. (1994). Childerley: Nature and Morality in a Country Village. University of Chicago Press.Google Scholar
Bell, M. M., & Bouquet, M. (1994). Childerley: Nature and morality in a country village. Sociologia Ruralis, 34(2), 259–260.Google Scholar
Bell, S. E. (2009). “There Ain’t No Bond in Town Like There Used to Be”: The Destruction of Social Capital in the West Virginia Coalfields 1. Sociological Forum 24(3), 631–657).Google Scholar
Bell, S. E. (2013). Our Roots Run Deep as Ironweed: Appalachian Women and the Fight for Environmental Justice. University of Illinois Press.Google Scholar
Bell, S. E., & York, R. (2010). Community economic identity: The coal industry and ideology construction in West Virginia. Rural Sociology, 75(1), 111–143. DOI:10.1111/j.1549-0831.2009.00004.xGoogle Scholar
Bell, S. E., & York, R. (2012). Coal, injustice, and environmental destruction: Introduction to the special issue on coal and the environment. Organization & Environment, 25(4), 359–367.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Bentley, M. L., & Adams, J. D. (2010). Toward awakening consciousness: A response to ecojustice education and science education. In Tippins, D. J., Mueller, M. P., & van Eijick, M. (eds.), Cultural Studies and Environmentalism (pp. 29–41). Springer.Google Scholar
Betz, M. R., Partridge, M. D., Farren, M., & Lobao, L. (2015). Coal mining, economic development, and the natural resources curse. Energy Economics, 50, 105–116.Google Scholar
Bhandari, R. (2013, March). Rise of the Global Corporatocracy. Monthly Review: An Independent Socialist Magazine. Monthly Review Foundation. Retrieved from http://search.ebscohost.com/login.aspx?direct=true&db=aph&AN=85698544&site=ehost-liveGoogle Scholar
Biggers, J. (2007). The United States of Appalachia: How Southern Mountaineers Brought Independence, Culture, and Enlightenment to America. Counterpoint Press.Google Scholar
Broadway, M. J., & Stull, D. D. (2010). The wages of food factories. Food and Foodways, 18(1–2), 43–65. https://doi.org/10.1080/07409711003708413Google Scholar
Cahn, E. S. (1999). Time dollars, work and community: From “why?” to “why not?”. Futures, 31(5), 499–509.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Caudill, H. (1963). Night Comes to the Cumberlands: A Biography of a Depressed Area. Atlantic Monthly Press.Google Scholar
Champlin, D., & Hake, E. (2006). Immigration as industrial strategy in American meatpacking. Review of Political Economy, 18(1), 49–70. https://doi.org/10.1080/09538250500354140Google Scholar
Cloke, P. J., & Little, J. (1997). Contested Countryside Cultures: Otherness, Marginalisation, and Rurality. Psychology Press.Google Scholar
Cohen, J. (2003). Deliberation and democratic legitimacy. In Matravers, D. & Pike, J. E. (eds.), Debates in Contemporary Political Philosophy: An Anthology (pp. 342–360). Routledge, in Association with the Open University.Google Scholar
Constance, D. H. (2008). The southern model of broiler production and its global implications. Culture & Agriculture, 30(1‐2), 17–31.Google Scholar
Cornwall, W. (2017). Demise of stream rule won’t revitalize coal industry. Science, 355(6326), 674–675. https://doi.org/10.1126/science.355.6326.674Google Scholar
Cramer, K. (2016). The Politics of Resentment: Rural Consciousness in Wisconsin and the Rise of Scott Walker. University of Chicago Press.Google Scholar
Dolea, C. (2010). Increasing Access to Health Workers in Remote and Rural Areas Through Improved Retention: Global Policy Recommendations. World Health Organization.Google Scholar
Donehower, K., Hogg, C., & Schell, E. E. (2012). Reclaiming the Rural: Essays on Literacy, Rhetoric, and Pedagogy. Southern Illinois University Press.Google Scholar
Duncan, C. M. (2014). Worlds Apart: Poverty and Politics in Rural America. Yale University Press.Google Scholar
Eason, J. M. (2017). Big House on the Prairie: Rise of the Rural Ghetto and Prison Proliferation. University of Chicago Press.Google Scholar
Eldridge, E. R. (2015). The continuum of coal violence and post-coal possibilities in the Appalachian South. Journal of Political Ecology, 22, 279–298.Google Scholar
Eller, R. L. (2008). Uneven Ground: Appalachia since 1945. University Press of Kentucky.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Ezzati, M., Friedman, A. B., Kulkarni, S. C., & Murray, C. J. L. (2008). The reversal of fortunes: Trends in county mortality and cross-county mortality disparities in the United States. PLoS Medicine, 5(4), 0557–0568. https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pmed.0050066Google ScholarPubMed
Fraser, N. (1990). Rethinking the public sphere: A contribution to the critique of actually existing democracy. Social Text (25/26), 56–80. https://doi.org/10.2307/466240CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Fung, A., & Wright, E. O. (2001). Deepening democracy: Innovations in empowered participatory governance. Politics & Society, 29(1), 5–41. https://doi.org/10.1177/0032329201029001002Google Scholar
Garcia, M. C., Faul, M., Massetti, G., et al. (2017). Reducing potentially excess deaths from the five leading causes of death in the rural United States. Morbidity and Mortality Weekly Report. Surveillance Summaries (Washington, D.C.: 2002), 66(2), 1–7. https://doi.org/10.15585/mmwr.ss6602a1Google Scholar
Gardullo, P. (2013). Spectacles of slavery: Pageantry, film and early twentieth-century public memory. Slavery and Abolition, 34(2), 222–235. https://doi.org/10.1080/0144039X.2013.791174Google Scholar
Gaventa, J. (1982). Power and Powerlessness: Quiescence and Rebellion in an Appalachian Valley. University of Illinois Press.Google Scholar
Gilens, M., & Page, B. I. (2014). Testing theories of American politics: elites, interest groups, and average citizens. Perspectives on Politics, 12(03), 564–581. https://doi.org/10.1017/S1537592714001595Google Scholar
Gopaul, A. (2017). The Socio-Economic Impact of Concentration of Timberland Ownership in Alabama. (Master’s Thesis) Retrieved from https://etd.auburn.edu/handle/10415/5725.Google Scholar
Graeber, D. (2013). The Democracy Project: A History, a Crisis, a Movement. Spiegel & Grau.Google Scholar
Gregory, D. (2004). The Colonial Present: Afghanistan, Palestine, Iraq. Blackwell Publishing.Google Scholar
Gunnoe, A. (2014). The political economy of institutional landownership: Neorentier society and the financialization of land. Rural Sociology, 79(4), 478–504. https://doi.org/10.1111/ruso.12045Google Scholar
Habermas, J. (1975). Legitimation Crisis. Beacon Press.Google Scholar
Haraway, D. (1988). Situated knowledges: The science question in feminism and the privilege of partial perspective. Feminist Studies, 14(3), 575–599. https://doi.org/10.2307/3178066CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Harrison, J. (2008). Abandoned bodies and spaces of sacrifice: Pesticide drift activism and the contestation of neoliberal environmental politics in California. Geoforum, 39(3), 1197–1214. https://doi.org/10.1016/J.GEOFORUM.2007.02.012Google Scholar
Hendryx, M., Wolfe, L., Luo, J., & Webb, B. (2012). Self-reported cancer rates in two rural areas of West Virginia with and without mountaintop coal mining. Journal of Community Health, 37(2), 320–327. https://doi.org/10.1007/s10900-011–9448-5Google Scholar
Hoggart, K. (1990). Let’s do away with rural. Journal of Rural Studies, 6(3), 245–257. https://doi.org/10.1016/0743–0167(90)90079-NGoogle Scholar
Jansson, D. R. (2005). “A geography of racism”: Internal orientalism and the construction of American national identity in the film Mississippi Burning. National Identities, 7(3), 265–285. https://doi.org/10.1080/14608940500201797Google Scholar
Kelly-Reif, K., & Wing, S. (2016). Urban-rural exploitation: An underappreciated dimension of environmental injustice. Journal of Rural Studies, 47, 350–358. https://doi.org/10.1016/J.JRURSTUD.2016.03.010Google Scholar
Lewis, J., Hoover, J., & MacKenzie, D. (2017). Mining and environmental health disparities in Native American Communities. Current Environmental Health Reports, 4(2), 130–141. https://doi.org/10.1007/s40572-017–0140-5Google Scholar
Light, K., Light, M., & Schell, O. (2006). Coal Hollow: Photographs and Oral Histories. University of California Press .Google Scholar
Lupo, C. (2010). The role of portable sawmill microenterprise adoption in promoting rural community development and its application in small-scale forest management (Doctoral dissertation). Proquest Dissertation Publishing. (UMI 3446212)Google Scholar
Lupo, C., Randle, A., & Barlow, B. (2014). Milling Dimensions: Characteristics of Portable Sawmill Owners and Operators. Retrieved from www.aces.edu/pubs/docs/F/FOR-2008/FOR-2008.pdfGoogle Scholar
Marley, B., & Fox, S. (2014). A world-ecological perspective on socio-ecological transformation in the Appalachian coal industry. Journal of World-Systems Research, 20(2), 257–280.Google Scholar
Marley, B. J. (2016). The coal crisis in Appalachia: Agrarian transformation, commodity frontiers and the geographies of capital. Journal of Agrarian Change, 16(2), 225–254. https://doi.org/10.1111/joac.12104Google Scholar
Martin, Phillip. (2009). Importing Poverty? Immigration and the Changing Face of Rural America. Yale University Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Marx, L. (2000). The Machine in the Garden: Technology and the Pastoral Ideal in America. Oxford University Press.Google Scholar
McMichael, P. (2009). A food regime analysis of the “world food crisis.” Agriculture and Human Values, 26(4), 281–295. https://doi.org/10.1007/s10460-009–9218-5Google Scholar
Nader, R. (2014). Unstoppable: The Emerging Left–Right Alliance to Dismantle the Corporate State. Nation Books.Google Scholar
Nevin, R. L., Bernt, J., & Hodgson, M. (2017). Association of poultry processing industry exposures with reports of occupational finger amputations. Journal of Occupational and Environmental Medicine, 59(10), e159–e163.Google Scholar
Ostrom, E. (1990). Governing the Commons: The Evolution of Institutions for Collective Action. Cambridge University Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Palmer, M. A., Bernhardt, E. S., Schlesinger, W. H., et al. (2010). Mountaintop mining consequences. Science, 327(5962), 148 LP-149. Retrieved from http://science.sciencemag.org/content/327/5962/148.abstractGoogle Scholar
Parkinson, J. (2012). Democratizing deliberative systems. In Parkinson, J. & Mansbridge, J. (eds.), Deliberative Systems: Deliberative Democracy at the Large Scale (Vol. 1, pp. 151–172). Cambridge University Press. https://doi.org/10.1017/CBO9781107415324.004Google Scholar
Pellow, D. N. (2016). Environmental justice and rural studies: A critical conversation and invitation to collaboration. Journal of Rural Studies, 47, 381–386. https://doi.org/10.1016/J.JRURSTUD.2016.06.018Google Scholar
Polanyi, K. (1944). The Great Transformation: The Political and Economic Origins of Our Time. Farrar & Rinehart Inc.Google Scholar
Richardson, L. J., Cleetus, R., Clemmer, S., & Deyette, J. (2014). Economic impacts on West Virginia from projected future coal production and implications for policymakers. Environmental Research Letters, 9(2), 024006.Google Scholar
Ryan-Collins, J., Stephens, L., & Coote, A. (2008) The New Wealth of Time: How Time Banking Helps People Build Public Services. New Economics Foundation.Google Scholar
Said, E. W. (1978). Orientalism (1st ed.). Pantheon Books.Google Scholar
Salamon, S., & MacTavish, K. (2017). Singlewide: Chasing the American Dream in a Rural Trailer Park. Ithaca: Cornell University Press.Google Scholar
Sanders, L. M. (1997). Against deliberation. Political Theory, 25(3), 347–376.Google Scholar
Schafft, K. A., Borlu, Y., & Glenna, L. (2013). The Relationship between Marcellus Shale gas development in Pennsylvania and local perceptions of risk and opportunity. Rural Sociology, 78(2), 143–166. https://doi.org/10.1111/ruso.12004Google Scholar
Schlozman, K. L., Brady, H. E., & Verba, S. (2018). Unequal and Unrepresented: Political Inequality and the People’s Voice in the New Gilded Age. Princeton University Press.Google Scholar
Scott, J. C. (1998). Seeing Like a State: How Certain Schemes to Improve the Human Condition Have Failed. Yale University Press.Google Scholar
Scott, R. (2009). The sociology of coal hollow: Safety, othering, and representations of inequality. Journal of Appalachian Studies, 15(1/2), 7–25. Retrieved from www.jstor.org/stable/41446816Google Scholar
Sklar, M. J. (1988). The Corporate Reconstruction of American Capitalism, 1890–1916: The Market, The Law, And Politics. Cambridge University Press.Google Scholar
Sleeter, C. E. (2008). Teaching for democracy in an age of corporatocracy. Teachers College Record, 110(1), 139–159.Google Scholar
Somerville, P., Smith, R., & McElwee, G. (2015). The dark side of the rural idyll: Stories of illegal/illicit economic activity in the UK countryside. Journal of Rural Studies, 39, 219–228. https://doi.org/10.1016/J.JRURSTUD.2014.12.001CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Spence, B., Kunkel, C., Schewel, E., Boettner, T., & Martin, L. (2013). Who Owns West Virginia. West Virginia Center on Budget & Policy. Retrieved from https://wvpolicy.org/wp-content/uploads/2018/5/land-study-paper-final3.pdfGoogle Scholar
Stuesse, A. (2016). Scratching out a Living: Latinos, Race, and Work in the Deep South. University of California Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Thompsom, G. (2012). Work Till You Drop. Nation, 294(20), 24–26. Retrieved from http://search.ebscohost.com/login.aspx?direct=true&db=aph&AN=74602465&site=ehost-liveGoogle Scholar
US Energy Information Administration. (2018). Annual Energy Outlook 2018 with Projections to 2050. Washington, DC. Retrieved from www.eia.gov/outlooks/aeo/pdf/AEO2018.pdfGoogle Scholar
United States Department of Agriculture. 1974. “Table 1. Farms, Land in Farms, and Land Use: 1940 to 1974.” Retrieved from http://usda.mannlib.cornell.edu/usda/AgCensusImages/1974/01/51/304/Table-01.pdfGoogle Scholar
United States Department of Agriculture. 2012. “Historical Highlights: 2012 and Earlier Census Years.” Retrieved from www.nass.usda.gov/Publications/AgCensus/2012/Full_Report/Volume_1,_Chapter_1_US/st99_1_001_001.pdf.Google Scholar
Urry, J. (1995). Consuming Places. Routledge.Google Scholar
Vance, J. D. (2016). Hillbilly Elegy. HarperCollins.Google Scholar
Volcovici, V. (2018, June 12). U.S. Interior Department axed health study on coal without clear reason: watchdog. Reuters. Retrieved from www.reuters.com/article/us-usa-interior-coal/u-s-interior-department-axed-health-study-on-coal-without-clear-reason-watchdog-idUSKBN1J82Z5Google Scholar
Williams, R. (1973). The City and the Country. Chatto and Windus.Google Scholar
Young, I. M. (2002). Inclusion and Democracy. Oxford University Press on Demand.Google Scholar
Zullig, K. J., & Hendryx, M. (2010). A comparative analysis of health-related quality of life for residents of US counties with and without coal mining. Public Health Reports, 125(4), 548–555.Google Scholar

Save book to Kindle

To save this book to your Kindle, first ensure coreplatform@cambridge.org is added to your Approved Personal Document E-mail List under your Personal Document Settings on the Manage Your Content and Devices page of your Amazon account. Then enter the ‘name’ part of your Kindle email address below. Find out more about saving to your Kindle.

Note you can select to save to either the @free.kindle.com or @kindle.com variations. ‘@free.kindle.com’ emails are free but can only be saved to your device when it is connected to wi-fi. ‘@kindle.com’ emails can be delivered even when you are not connected to wi-fi, but note that service fees apply.

Find out more about the Kindle Personal Document Service.

Available formats
×

Save book to Dropbox

To save content items to your account, please confirm that you agree to abide by our usage policies. If this is the first time you use this feature, you will be asked to authorise Cambridge Core to connect with your account. Find out more about saving content to Dropbox.

Available formats
×

Save book to Google Drive

To save content items to your account, please confirm that you agree to abide by our usage policies. If this is the first time you use this feature, you will be asked to authorise Cambridge Core to connect with your account. Find out more about saving content to Google Drive.

Available formats
×