Shaunna L. Scott - Böcker

In this collection, contributors reflect on scholarly, artistic, activist, educational, and practical endeavor known as Appalachian Studies. Following an introduction to the field, the writers discuss how Appalachian Studies illustrates the ways interdisciplinary studies emerge, organize, and institutionalize themselves, and how they engage with intellectual, political, and economic forces both locally and around the world.  Essayists argue for Appalachian Studies' integration with kindred fields like African American studies, women's studies, and Southern studies, and they urge those involved in the field to globalize the perspective of Appalachian Studies; to commit to continued applied, participatory action, and community-based research; to embrace more fully the field's capacity for bringing about social justice; to advocate for a more accurate understanding of Appalachia and its people; and to understand and overcome the obstacles interdisciplinary studies face in the social and institutional construction of knowledge.  Contributors: Chris Baker, Chad Berry, Donald Edward Davis, Amanda Fickey, Chris Green, Erica Abrams Locklear, Phillip J. Obermiller, Douglas Reichert Powell, Michael Samers, Shaunna L. Scott, and Barbara Ellen Smith.

An ethnography and oral history of miners and their families in Kentucky focusing on political ideology and working class consciousnessThis is an oral history and ethnography of miners and their families in Kentucky focusing on political ideology and working class consciousness.Harlan County, Kentucky emerged in the public eye during the 1930s when poverty, unemployment, and violent unionization struggles caught the attention of the national news media and the American people. It burst on the scene again during the 1972-73 Brookside strike, an event chronicled in the Academy Award-winning film, "Harlan County, U.S.A." In this book the author brings the American reader up to date on this interesting community by documenting the everyday lives of Harlan miners and their families in the mid-1980s.Using a neo-Marxian perspective, Two Sides to Everything characterizes the nature, limitations, and transformative potential of class consciousness among two generations of Harlan miners. It also elucidates the apparent contradictions between popular images of central Appalachians, as militant labor activists, on one hand, and passive, traditional, fatalistic "hillbillies," on the other. The book accomplishes these tasks through a systematic consideration of the relationship between the central experiential bases and sources of identity among Harlan county miners-class, kinship, community, religion, and gender.

Central Appalachia has long endured the exploitation of its abundant natural resources, like timber and coal, and suffered the ensuing fallout, including high poverty, low educational attainment, and persistent health and environmental problems. In Toward Just Transitions, editors Shaunna L. Scott and Kathryn Engle explore the regional damage wrought by extractive capitalism and outline the need for "just transitions."_x000D_A just transition is "a vision-led, unifying, and place-based set of principles, processes, and practices that build economic and political power to shift from an extractive economy to a regenerative economy," which supports conservation and faces climate change head-on. The just transitions movement emphasizes locally based solutions and democratic decision-making, recognizing there are many perspectives on strategies that will help "provide dignified, productive, and ecologically sustainable livelihoods" for all._x000D_Just as central Appalachia follows global trends of predatory capitalism, so too can it become an example of rectifying them. Toward Just Transitions offers solutions for wresting power from corporations and oligarchs and returning it to the communities and marginalized groups their actions have harmed most.