Standing Our Ground. Joyce M. Barry
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has been transported out of the state. Chris Weiss, using the model of colonialism to assess this region’s social and economic problems, asserts, “The experience in the Appalachians with land and mineral ownership patterns is that of colonial people everywhere. Outside ownership and control of natural resources prevent communities from having strong local economies.”59 It should be noted that other researchers replaced the colonialism model with the core-periphery model, developed by Immanuel Wallerstein and employed by Appalachian studies scholars such as Wilma A. Dunaway.60 Nevertheless, this corporate hegemony thrives in West Virginia solely with the help of a state political system that ensures Big Coal’s needs are met, regardless of the costs to the state’s small communities. According to James O’Connor, this political-economic arrangement is endemic in capitalist economies where the state regulates the conditions of both production and distribution, and a pliable state apparatus is imperative to business interests. O’Connor says, “In terms of domestic policy, the state does little more than regulate capital’s access to nature, space, land, and laborpower.”61 Indeed, state regulators in West Virginia, many of them former coal company employees, give various coal corporations carte blanche to conduct business in the state. Activists such as Ohio Valley Environmental Coalition member Maria Gunnoe have experienced the effects of this political-economic structure firsthand, particularly in encounters with the Department of Environmental Protection. Gunnoe says:
The DEP is not there for the citizens, they’re there for the coal companies, and they enable the coal companies. In some cases they even lie to the citizens in order to continue the work on the mountaintop removal site. I’ve been lied to many times. I’ve had five DEP agents stand and look at me and tell me an eroded mountain wasn’t eroded. I have pictures and a lot of proof showing that it’s eroded. It’s like they were programmed to say—no matter what I said—that it was not eroded.62
In this climate, making coal companies more responsible to the communities in which they operate, and uplifting the social and economic conditions of West Virginians, has been quite difficult. However, activists continue to identify and resist the negative influence of the coal industry, while educating the public on the root causes of the destruction of the mountains and the culture of central Appalachia. Vivian Stockman, a member of the Ohio Valley Environmental Coalition, says, “It’s so terribly important that we spread the word of mountaintop removal beyond Appalachia, because West Virginia’s regulators and politicians seem so scared to stand up to the coal industry.”63
The policies of the ruling elites in West Virginia are akin to those Michael Parenti defines in his discussion of the “comprador class,” small groups of individuals residing in the “client state,” who cooperate with outside economic interests at the expense of the majority of those occupying these regions:
A client state is one that is open to investments on terms that are decidedly favorable to the foreign investors. In a client state, corporate investors enjoy direct subsidies and land grants, access to raw materials and cheap labor, light or nonexistent taxes, few effective labor unions, no minimum wage or child labor or occupational safety laws, and no consumer or environmental protections to speak of. The protective laws that do exist go largely unenforced.64
Although Parenti’s discussion refers to the relationship between developing and developed countries, this model is a useful one when examining how the coal industry operates in the client state of West Virginia. The reality of this arrangement is not lost on many women fighting to end MTR and the negative influence of coal in West Virginia. Anti-MTR activist Pauline Canterbury claims the biggest obstacle to fighting MTR and the coal industry is “the state and federal government. Because all the way down the line they change the laws to protect them (coal operators) and not us. The laws are out there to protect us, but they won’t abide by them, and the government doesn’t make them abide by them. . . . If somebody gets ahold of something and they take it to court, then they change it. It’s our government in Washington and in Charleston.”65 Despite this exploitative political-economic arrangement, some local residents, including many working-class women, continue to fight for social and environmental justice in the coalfields of southern West Virginia. Arguably, adverse material conditions precipitate the environmental justice activism of some working-class women in the state. This social phenomena is particularly noteworthy when considering how the structural component of gender has fruitfully served the coal industry over the years, and continues to be a tool used by Big Coal to maintain a committed and loyal male workforce.
Coalfield Gender Ideologies and Anti-MTR Activism in West Virginia
The coal-influenced political economy of West Virginia has uniquely influenced and utilized gender and family arrangements in the southern coalfields. Gender ideologies are particularly interesting in their connections to the material realities of women living in the area, and also in how they shape women’s activism against mountaintop removal coal mining in the state. In the coalfields of West Virginia, working-class women’s current anti-MTR activism is informed by the sexual division of labor that associates women with the private sphere of home and family, and men with the public arena of industrial work. Currently, some coalfield women seeking to save their homes, communities, cultural heritage, and the lush Appalachian environment from the ravages of the coal industry are influenced by entrenched gender ideologies shaped and solidified by coal in the region. However, these working-class women activists also challenge and defy separate spheres conventions through their work to end MTR. By participating in grassroots groups such as the Coal River Mountain Watch and the Ohio Valley Environmental Coalition, they publicly exert collective agency that can also be personally empowering. In coal-rich sections of Appalachia, separate spheres ideology and its manifestation in the lives of real people existed prior to the industry’s formation in the region, and some Appalachian scholars correctly note that these white, middle-class gender conventions were unavailable to the Native American, African American, and poor white women in Appalachia.66 Regardless of their existence prior to the entrance of coal in West Virginia, the inherent class and race partialities in these social constructs, gender ideologies, and cultural notions of the best and most natural spaces for men and women became uniquely solidified with the rise of industrialization in the Western world, including in the coalfields of West Virginia.
When examining the historical roots of separate spheres ideology, Ann Crittenden argues that the social, political, and economic manifestation of these beliefs discouraged women from public participation and expanded their responsibilities within the home, while simultaneously sanctioning men’s withdrawal from the domestic sphere.67 Additionally, Crittenden reveals the intrinsic class bias connected to this gendered social construction by arguing that the cultural weight applied to domestic duties, particularly child-rearing, was more than just a “strategy to distract women from participating in public life. It was also necessary to the development of a vibrant capitalist economy. . . . The rising bourgeoisie understood that their children would have to become educated, motivated little achievers if they were going to improve or even maintain their station in life.”68 In short, the emphasis on this new family, and the roles men and women were to assume within this arrangement, was a way in which the burgeoning middle class could distinguish itself from working-class white families and families of color. This new family structure was viewed as a modern construct, signifying the progress and enlightenment of all those who conformed to its dictates. Judith Stacey argues this newly touted industrial family form became a powerful symbol for modernity, signifying a break from the largely agrarian, traditional past. She contends that in the United States,
the modern family system arose in the nineteenth century when industrialization turned men into breadwinners and women into homemakers by separating paid work from households. Beginning first among white, middle-class people, this family pattern came to represent modernity and success. Indeed, the American way of life came to be so identified with this family form that the trade-union movement struggled for nearly a century to secure for male workers the material condition upon which it was based—the male breadwinner wage.69
As these modern gender ideologies and family arrangements gained traction in Western culture, many coalfield women retreated to the home, caring for husbands and children while becoming increasingly dependent upon male wages for material sustenance. Arguably,