Defining the Region, V:
Revisionist Paradigms
Basic questions:
Who had defined it before, and how?
How and why have the definitions differed?
From what process(es) did the new definitions of the 1960s and later
arise?
How are scholars and activists rethinking definitions of the region
currently?
In general the shift involved a movement from
essentialist, universalist models derived from
uninterrogated values and assumptions
to
problematized, contextualized models based in
historical analysis
Late 19th century
an array of essentializing, universalizing definitions,
all of them presupposing
"a coherent region inhabited by a homogeneous
population possessing a uniform culture"
Shapiro
travelers: Appalachia as exotic; unknown; Other
local color writers:
picturesque Other
"strange land and peculiar people"
folklorists: traditional culture field / reservoir of fragile, endangered
survivals
Protestant church: WASP mission field
philanthropists / foundations:
"our contemporary ancestors"
native stock
entrepreneurs
reservoir of exploitable natural resources and labor power
preindustrial backwater
1930s government programs:
direct relief programs: temporary anomaly; hapless victims of
Depression who happen to be in Appalachia
Tennessee Valley Authority: premodern enclave
1960s
local / state / federal program bureaucrats and planners
problem is the people: "culture of poverty" model (War
on Poverty; Blackside
documentary film series)
problem is relationship to mainstream structures/institutions:
depressed area; "underdeveloped" area (Appalachian Regional Commission)
urban receiving center bureaucrats
not conceputalized; leaky reservoir of unwelcome, unmanageable, culturally
deviant immigrants
What impelled a revisionist analysis?
(1) set of socio-economic contradictions perceived as pan-regional:
poverty amidst abundance
poor health care
poor education
welfare dependency
(2) issues specific to coal fields:
depressed industry
widespread unemployment / outmigration
corruption in UMWA
black lung
growth of stripmining
(3) widespread anti-corporate sentiment of 60s:
complicity in V-N War
environmental issues
absentee ownership in Appalachia
analogous movements: (campus activism; migration of activists
to Appalachia)
civil rights
environmental
women
anti-Viet Nam war
(4) perceived "crisis" of Appalachian migration to cities
(5) JFK 1960 West Virginia campaign
(6) powerful journalism:
Ward Sinclair of Louisville Courier-Journal
Ben Franklin of New York Times
Tom Gish of Whitesburg KY Mountain Eagle
James Branscome (mentioned in Highlander article)
People's Appalachian Research Collective (WVU): People's Appalachia
(7) Highlander
Research and Education Center (John Glen article in Fisher book)
Appalachian Self-Education Project (ASEP)
Southern Appalachian Leadership Training program (SALT)
Appalachian Alliance
land ownership study
Sustainable
Communities initiatives
(8) spinoffs from 1960s federal programs:
WOP: VISTA and confrontational CAPS
(9) development of revisionist scholarship and the Appalachian studies
enterprise in the 1970s:
Appalachian Journal (1972-)
Ph.D. dissertations of late 1970s
Appalachian Studies Association
(1978-)
Shapiro, Appalachia on Our Mind (1978)
Whisnant, Modernizing the Mountaineer (1976/1980)
Hevener, Which Side Are You On?: The Harlan Coal Miners, 1931-1939
(1978)
McKinney, Southern Mountain Republicans, 1865-1900 (1978)
Emergent colonialist analysis (elements present from
early 1960s onward)
key texts:
Caudill, Night Comes to the Cumberlands (1962)
"last unchallenged stronghold
of western colonialism"
Lewis, Colonialism in Modern America: The Appalachian Case
(1978)
Eller, Miners, Miners, Millhands and Mountaineers (1982)
Appalachian Land Ownership Task Force, Who Owns Appalachia?
(1983)
attributes of internal colony (by analogy with urban ghettos, third
world client states)
raw materials needed and monopolized by colonial power (31
people and corps owned 4/5 of eKY coal)
mobilization and control of exploitable labor power
retention of effective political power at colonial center
infrastructure development to serve colonial power
hierarchical class and cultural relations
Recent efforts to move beyond colonialism model
challenge to Appalachian exceptionalism (both conventional [e.g., culture
of poverty] and revisionist [e.g., colonialist])
document and examine diversity within region that precludes universalizing
(class, gender, subregions)
emergence of "little community" studies (Dunn, Cades Cove; Waller,
Feud)
social origins of local elites
challenge to neo-populist perspective (Fisher, "Conclusion" in
Fighting Back in Appalachia):
forces/processes that neo-populists believe are chief threats
to democracy:
modernization
marketplace and market relations
concentration of money and power
large bureaucracies
antidotes:
"community"
"free spaces"
"popular democracy"
insufficiently problematized elements in neo-populist analysis/perspective:
"community" rent by race/class/gender differences.
"tradition" problematic for women, blacks, others
"democracy" assumes a majority of "the people" will make progressive
decisions
glorification of militant localism blinds to positive value of
state
"not all oppositional behavior has radical implications"
post-modern perspective (Banks, Billings, and Tice article in Fisher
[not assigned])
elements of post-modernism
skepticism about truth claims
reduced faith in "rationality"
skepticism about objectivity of science
inevitable narrativity in all accounts of reality
implications for Appalachian studies and conceptions of Appalachia
rejection of universalizing metanarratives (of whatever stamp)
"deconstructive strategy that takes apart falsely unified conceptions"
(e.g., "women," "Appalachia")
"replace unitary notions of Appalachian identity with ... complexly
constructed conceptions of social identity"
challenge to essentialist thinking (treatment of historical constructions
as fixed/absolute, binary opposites)
treat culture "as discursive forum rather than configuration of traits
or unitary structure of meaning"