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Community Economic Identity: The Coal Industry andIdeology Construction in West Virginia*

Shannon Elizabeth BellDepartment of SociologyUniversity of Oregon

Richard YorkDepartment of SociologyUniversity of Oregon

Abstract Economic changes and the machinations of the treadmill ofproduction have dramatically reduced the number of jobs provided by extrac-tive industries, such as mining and timber, in the United States and otheraffluent nations in the post–World War II era. As the importance of theseindustries to national, regional, and local economies wanes, community resis-tance to ecologically and socially destructive industry practices threatens thepolitical power of corporations engaged in natural-resource extraction. Herewe argue that to maintain their power (and profits) as their contribution toemployment declines, extractive industries have increased their efforts tomaintain and amplify the extent to which the “economic identity” of commu-nities is connected with the industry that was historically an important sourceof employment. We fit this argument within the neo-Marxian theoreticaltradition, which emphasizes the roles ideology and legitimation play in main-taining elite rule. We illustrate this theorized process by analyzing the effortsof the West Virginia coal industry, which, through its (faux) “grassroots” frontgroup “Friends of Coal,” attempts to construct the image that West Virginia’seconomy and cultural identity are centered on coal production. Our analysisrelies on content analysis of various sources and on experience gained fromfield research. We find that key strategies of the Friends of Coal includeefforts to become pervasively visible in the social landscape and the appro-priation of cultural icons that exploit the hegemonic masculinity of theregion. These findings have implications for how industries around thecountry, and the world, work to maintain their power through ideologicalmanipulation.

In the wake of industrialization and “postindustrialization,” natural-resource extraction has played a diminishing role in the economies ofaffluent nations. Although the United States, like other countries of theGlobal North, has continued to consume vast quantities of naturalresources, the contribution of extractive industries to total employmentand to total national economic production—as typically measured by

* An earlier version of this paper was presented at the American Sociological Associationmeetings in San Francisco, August 2009. We are very grateful to Michael Schulman and thethree anonymous reviewers for their careful reading of our paper and insightful sugges-tions for improvement.

Rural Sociology 75(1), 2010, pp. 111–143Copyright © 2010, by the Rural Sociological Society

gross domestic product—has been declining for decades. This declineprimarily has been due to mechanization and to imports of raw materialsfrom the Global South. This national-level pattern has manifested itselfacross the United States in a variety of communities that historically wereclosely connected to extractive industries, such as timber and mining.Due to this legacy, many rural communities are left with an identity tiedto a particular extractive industry, even though that industry no longerprovides many jobs or plays a dominant role in the local or regionaleconomy. This tendency for many in a community to identify with anindustry that was historically important in the local economy, but that maynot be any longer, is regularly exploited by extractive industries tomaintain their political influence, which is often used to avoid govern-ment regulations aimed at ensuring the protection of the environmentand public health.

Here we provide some theoretical conceptualizations for understand-ing the development and perpetuation of community economic identitiestied to extractive industries, focusing on how economic identity is influ-enced by the active contemporary framing1 efforts (Snow et al. 1986) ofthese industries, which aim to define themselves as the backbone of localand regional economies. We identify the industries’ framing work as“economic identity maintenance” and “amplification.” As part of thistheorization, we document how the contribution of extractive industriesto the economies of communities around the nation has declined dra-matically while these extractive industries continue to create large-scaleenvironmental problems. In particular, with the massive job losses that arethe typical outcome of the “treadmill of production” (Schnaiberg 1980),the bond that has historically maintained the loyalties of many ruralcommunities to extractive industries has been dramatically weakened, ifnot destroyed. One of our key aims is to help determine why somecommunities continue to support industries that cause harm—forexample, by degrading the environment—while providing few (anddeclining) benefits, such as reliable high-paying jobs. To illustrate theprocesses we discuss, we provide an empirical assessment of how the coalindustry in West Virginia attempts to suppress political opposition to thedestructive effects of coal mining by actively working to maintain and

1 “Framing,” also referred to as “frame alignment,” is a process of “assign[ing] meaningto and interpret[ing]” certain “events and conditions in ways that are intended to mobilizepotential adherents and constituents, to garner bystander support, and to demobilizeantagonists” (Snow and Benford 1988:198). In other words, framing is the way in whichorganizations package their message for their intended audience in an attempt to makethe activities, goals, and ideology of the organization appear “congruent and complemen-tary” with the values, beliefs, and interests of the public (Snow et al. 1986:464).

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reinforce the centrality of coal to the identity of the state and localcommunities.

The Treadmill of Production and the Legitimation Process

The “treadmill of production” model is one of the most influential andimportant theories in the environmental sociology literature (Buttel2004; Foster 2005; Foster and York 2004). First introduced by AllanSchnaiberg (1980) in order to explain why environmental degradationin the United States had grown dramatically since World War II, thetreadmill of production model argues that ecological destruction isintrinsic to capitalist (as well as some other) modes of production.Schnaiberg contended that the economic boom following World War IIled to increased production and profits, which were invested in thedevelopment of new production technologies. These technologies camewith large operating expenses that needed to be financed, however, andindustries responded to these fixed costs by further increasing produc-tion so as to increase profits. The increase in production led to anescalating need for natural resources, which were extracted at greaterrates and used in ways that “substantially increased both the volume ofproduction waste and the toxicity of wastes” (Gould, Pellow, andSchnaiberg 2004:300). This pattern of increasing extraction and degra-dation in order to generate greater and greater profits has become thecentral operating framework of the global market. It is widely held thatthe treadmill of production, along with the ecological degradation itgenerates, is unavoidable unless the relations of production under cor-porate capitalism are changed (Buttel 2004; Foster 2005; Foster and York2004; Gould et al. 2004; Schnaiberg 1980).

The effects of the treadmill of production are not limited to theecological, however; displaced workers are another result. “Improve-ments” in technology lead to an increase in “worker productivity,” whichaccelerates the treadmill, “producing higher production and profits withfewer workers” (Gould et al. 2004:306). This pattern, where jobs declineeven while production expands, is clearly visible in the case of natural-resource extraction industries, particularly timber and mining. Forexample, in an analysis of the connection between timber jobs andfederal timber harvests, Freudenburg, Wilson, and O’Leary (1998) showthat following World War II, both in the Pacific Northwest and in theUnited States as a whole, the number of timber jobs declined dramati-cally while federal timber harvests increased. In fact, they note that joblosses were highest before the implementation of federal environmentallaws in the 1960s and ’70s, refuting the claim that environmental regu-

Community Economic Identity — Bell and York 113

lations, such as those giving protection to the northern spotted owl inthe Pacific Northwest, were the primary cause of the decline of ruraltimber economies in the 1980s and ’90s. Similarly, as Figure 1 reveals,while coal production increased dramatically in West Virginia from thelate 1970s to the 1990s, coal-mining employment declined substantially,as it has generally done in the postwar era. This trend was not limited toWest Virginia; as Figure 2 shows, national-level data on coal productionand employment reveal an even starker negative association, where pro-duction rose as jobs declined. As the above evidence indicates, a patternexists among extractive industries: consistent with treadmill of produc-tion theorizing, even when production increases in these industries,employment levels decrease.2

2 The overall consequences of corporate capitalism for the economy and employmentstructure are, of course, more complicated than the treadmill model may suggest. Newtypes of jobs (e.g., information technology) may be created as other types of jobs (e.g.,mining) disappear, so that the net effect of the treadmill may not always be overall joblosses. However, the pattern described by the treadmill model does generally hold whenfocusing on manufacturing and extractive industry jobs.

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Figure 1. West Virginia Coal Employment and ProductionSources: Workforce West Virginia (2000a, 2000b, 2001, 2002, 2003, 2004, 2005, 2006,2007), Energy Information Administration’s Annual Coal Report (2002, 2004, 2006), andUnited States Census Bureau’s Statistical Abstract of the United States (1961, 1971, 1981, 1991,1994, 2000, 2005).


Gould et al. (2004) draw attention to an important intersectionbetween ecological degradation and jobs: Historically, those individualswho are the most affected by industrial pollution and environmentaldamage also typically have been dependent on the jobs within the pol-luting industries. Pollution and degradation have become “geographi-cally and socially removed” from the middle class, which has the moneyto move upstream and upwind from the contamination and destruction,while blue-collar workers have been “induced and/or coerced” to live inclose proximity to pollution, in part due to the lower housing prices inthese areas (298). Thus, many of the people suffering the most acutecosts of ecological degradation are some of the least likely to fight againstthe treadmill processes because of their economic dependence on thedestructive industries. Furthermore, many will even fight for the compa-nies polluting their communities or destroying their ecosystems becausethey fear further job losses if environmental regulations are tightened.This system works to discourage mobilization against these industries,while at the same time producing an arsenal of workers that can bemobilized to create a countermovement for the industry in opposition toany efforts to impose stricter environmental regulations and disrupttreadmill processes.

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Figure 2. United States Coal Employment and ProductionSource: National Mining Association (2008).


However, when there is a large-scale reduction in jobs, and employ-ment no longer connects an industry to the community it pollutes, whydo communities continue to support industry, even though industrialpractices have detrimental social and environmental effects? This ques-tion points to a lacuna in the treadmill theory, which has not focused onanalyzing the various ways industry gains compliance from workers andthe general public other than through providing jobs. In an effort toadvance treadmill theory, here we examine the role ideology plays inlegitimating the dominance of industries. We argue that public acquies-cence to the wishes of industry is in part achieved by industries’ calcu-lated efforts to reconstruct a bond with the communities they degrade,attempting to replace the employment connection between industry andcommunity with a constructed ideology of dependency and economicidentity.

Critical traditions, from Marxism to feminism, have often emphasizedhow ideology is employed to further the interests of those in power bymystifying the nature of social relations and the causes of oppression.The role of ideology in maintaining capitalism was explored by Marx andEngels (1991) and has been a central theme of Western Marxism sinceits foundation in the works of Lukács ([1923] 1972) and Gramsci (1971).Horkheimer and Adorno (1972), leading lights of the Frankfurt School,where “critical theory” was born, produced particularly influential workexamining the emergence of a “culture industry” in capitalist societies,which manufactured cultural goods for mass consumption (e.g., Holly-wood movies, corporate media) that lulled the public into accepting thecapitalist status quo. Since these foundational works, analyses of howculture and ideology are manufactured and manipulated in order tofurther elite interests have become a central part of research on thepower structure (Habermas 1975; Herman and Chomsky 2002; Lukes1974; Mann 1970; Mészáros 1989).

The work of Jürgen Habermas, the most renowned heir to the tradi-tion of the Frankfurt School, is particularly relevant to our analysis. Heclearly recognized the ecological threats created in capitalist societiesand the social challenges that accompany these threats:

The rapid growth processes of advanced-capitalist societies haveconfronted world society with . . . disturbance to ecologicalbalance, violation of the consistency requirements of the per-sonality system (alienation), and potentially explosive strains oninternational relations. With growing complexity, the system ofworld society shifts its boundaries so far into its environmentthat it runs up against limits of outer as well as inner nature.Ecological balance designates an absolute limit to growth. The


less palpable anthropological balance designates another limit,which can be overstepped only at the price of altering thesocio-cultural identity of social systems. (1975:41)

Habermas has written extensively on the process by which social systemsare legitimized and the factors that lead to legitimation crises, whereinthe public comes to reject ideological justifications for the prevailingsocial system.

Although the work of Habermas is generally aimed at a grandscale—understanding how entire social-political-economic systems, suchas capitalism, operate—rather than the specifics of how particular corpo-rations or industries work to retain their privilege, the theoretical con-cepts Habermas developed prove relevant at a smaller scale as well. Thedecline in the number of jobs provided by extractive industries can beseen as a factor potentially leading to a legitimation crisis for theseindustries, since it can lead the public to question the propriety of industrymanagement of natural resources. Thus, industry works to avoid this crisisby furthering its efforts at legitimation. The argument that we developbelow is that owners and managers of extractive industries actively con-struct, maintain, and amplify community economic identity in order toensure that certain ideologies dominate in communities that historicallydepended on natural-resource extraction, thereby averting a legitimationcrisis. Maintaining and reinforcing community economic identity is criti-cal to avoiding a legitimation crisis, for, as Habermas argued, “traditionscan retain legitimizing force only as long as they are not torn out ofinterpretive systems that guarantee continuity and identity” (Habermas1975:71).

Industry efforts at legitimation via ideology manipulation can beunderstood as part of what Habermas (1984, 1987) has identified as thecolonization of the “lifeworld” (the realm of everyday, lived experiencewhere people find meaning from culturally grounded traditions of inter-pretation). Habermas observed that in modern societies, particularlycapitalist ones, the lifeworld is increasingly invaded by the overarchingsocial system. For example, the marketing industry aims to define whatour goals in life should be (consumption—our life’s purpose becomes toaccumulate mass-produced goods, and people come to see themselves as“consumers”), and the state aims to define key features of our identity(nationalism/patriotism—people come to identify as, for example,Americans, rather than as community members, human beings, etc.).The efforts of extractive industries to lure the public into identifyingwith industry are part of this same process, where logging and mining,for example, come to be seen not simply as sources of employment but


rather as key features of individuals’ and communities’ identities—thatis, workers often come to identify first and foremost as loggers or miners,and communities come to identify as logging or mining communities.

Here, we focus on the coal industry in West Virginia to explore theprocess of legitimation via ideology construction and cultural manipula-tion. However, it is important to note that there are a number of otherexamples of industry ideology construction aimed at securing for extrac-tive industries inordinate political influence despite their meager contri-bution to regional or national economies. It is noteworthy, for example,that many rural communities throughout the United States, and thePacific Northwest in particular, identify with the timber industry, despitethe fact that few people are now dependent on this industry for employ-ment. In addition, the valorization of the “cowboy” and rancher in U.S.culture is another striking example of identities constructed around anindustry that is of little importance in the modern economy and contrib-utes to a vast array of environmental problems, including water pollution,biodiversity loss, and land degradation (Wuerthner and Matteson 2002).Although not as prone to mechanization as other extractive industries,livestock grazing provides few jobs to rural economies, and most of theaccess to rangeland is controlled by a few large-scale operations, notfamily ranchers. The U.S. Department of the Interior (1994) estimatedthat the elimination of all public-lands livestock grazing would result inthe loss of only about 18,000 jobs across the entire West, about 0.1 percentof total employment. In light of the fact that these jobs are also dependenton substantial subsidies from the federal taxpayer (Moskowitz andRomaniello 2002), from the perspective of society as a whole, the eco-nomic rationality of public-lands grazing is highly suspect, and its con-tinuation appears to have more to do with the political power of thelivestock industry, stemming in part from industry ideology, than thehealth of rural economies. Thus, it appears that it is far from uncommonfor communities to identify with industries that do not do much tosupport local and regional economies. In the remainder of this article, wefocus on the coal industry in West Virginia to further explore the ways inwhich community economic identities are actively constructed, main-tained, and amplified to the benefit of extractive industries, and, in manycases, to the detriment of rural communities.

The Historical Roots of Dependency

As the second-leading coal producer in the United States (behindWyoming), and the top coal-producing state in Appalachia, West Virgin-ia’s historical ties with the coal industry have strongly influenced the


economic, political, and social structures of the state. While Americancapitalists knew of the rich mineral and timber resources held within theAppalachian Mountains as early as 1740, it was not until the post–CivilWar years, and the birth of the American industrial revolution, thatinterest in the coal and iron deposits of the Appalachians brought largenumbers of speculators into the region (Eller 1982). In the late 1800s,eager entrepreneurs from outside Appalachia poured into the hills,procuring millions of acres of land and mineral rights at exceptionallylow prices. Local residents, most of whom had been subsistence farmersuntil that point (Haynes 1997), had no idea of the value of the mineralsbeneath their land. Many are reported to have “ ‘voluntarily’ sold [their]land for 50 cents or one dollar an acre” (Gaventa 1978:144), while stillothers were duped into different types of unfair exchanges. For instance,an entire mountain, which in the late 1970s supplied Georgia Power 1million tons of coal annually, was reported to have been traded to acompany agent for a hog rifle (Gaventa 1978:144). Others who refusedto sell their land became victims of legal traps, such as being jailed andthen offered bond in exchange for their land (Gaventa 1978).

Numerous scholars have referred to Central Appalachia as an “inter-nal colony” (Gaventa 1978; Lewis and Knipe 1978; Weller 1978) or an“internal periphery” (Walls 1978) created to provide cheap resources tofuel the rest of the country. Both of these models point to outsideinterests’ exploitation of the resources of Central Appalachia throughthe subjugation and domination of its people. Part of this continueddomination has been achieved through corporate ownership of themajority of the land,3 effectively blocking other industries from enteringthe region in an attempt to maintain this part of Appalachia as a mono-economy. As Lewis and Knipe (1978) assert, “it is advantageous for coalmining to operate in isolation without competing companies” becausethe extraction process is tied to a particular location and the work ishazardous and strenuous (19).

A cheap workforce was the foundation of early mining, and it wasessential for the coal barons to remove the Appalachian people fromtheir land in order to “turn them into a docile workforce” (Haynes1997:49). Another method to ensure a cheap—and captive—workforcewas the establishment of company towns. In the late 1800s and early

3 The Appalachian Land Ownership Task Force’s (1983) study of land ownership pat-terns in 80 counties in Central and southern Appalachia found that 72 percent of the 13million acres of surface land in the study were owned by absentee owners, and of the top50 private owners, 46 were corporations. This pattern is even more dramatic in the highestcoal-producing regions of Appalachia: four of the five counties with the most corporatelyheld land are in the coalfields of southern West Virginia, and in those counties nearly90 percent of the land is owned by corporations.


1900s, men were recruited into the state by the tens of thousands to workin the booming mining industry. The population skyrocketed duringthis period, and hundreds of company towns and coal camps, which werecompletely owned and controlled by the coal companies, sprang upthroughout Central Appalachia. In these towns, the coal companiesowned the houses, the streets, the schools, the water systems, thechurches, the recreational facilities (if there were any), the doctor’soffice, and the company store, which was the only store in the townwhere one could buy groceries, furniture, clothes, and other goods. Inaddition, most coal companies paid their employees in “scrip,” their ownmonetary system redeemable only within that particular company’s town(Lockard 1998). The use of scrip ensured that the miners and theirfamilies were unable to travel outside the town to buy fundamentalsupplies and that the company store was able to charge monopolisticprices for its goods. The company store system and the other company-supplied services for which miners were charged, such as tool sharpen-ing, health care, and housing rent, were “a key mechanism . . . forincreasing company profits” (Cook 2000:192).

Also integral to maximizing profits was reinforcing the traditionalgender ideology regarding the “appropriate” roles for men and womenin society, that is, men as the breadwinners and women as the caretakersof the home. These social norms, not at all unique to Appalachia, havehistorically forced households in capitalist economies to subsidize pro-duction through the unpaid work of women, allowing businesses to paylaborers wages that fall far below the cost of reproducing the household(Dunaway 2001). Through their unpaid cooking, cleaning, washing,child care, and other duties of domestic work, women have made itpossible for capitalism to remain profitable, for, as Dunaway (2001)asserts, “If capitalists compensated women for all their externalized costsand unpaid labor, prices would be driven up so high that most com-modities would not be competitive in the world economy” (22). Coaltowns in Central Appalachia were constructed to exploit and reinforcethis gender ideology by placing men in the mines and women in theclose-by homes. By intentionally “equating masculinity with a willingnessto work in dangerous conditions,” and femininity with “domestic laborinside coal camps,” the coal industry was able to keep the costs of laborand worksite maintenance low (Maggard 1994:30, 18). This gender ide-ology has not only had implications for who does what work, it has alsomeant that men are favored as the center of community, work, andpolitics in Central Appalachia.

Since the 1980s, however, there has been a shift in the Appalachiancoalfields’ economy, threatening the coal industry’s stranglehold on the


region. During the 1980s, the Appalachian coalfields saw a diversifica-tion in the region’s economy, wherein service sector jobs replacedmining jobs as the leading source of employment and earnings(Maggard 1994; Miewald and McCann 2004). Increased mechanizationin the coal mines and the advent of mountaintop removal coal mininghave drastically reduced the number of mining jobs throughout CentralAppalachia, and West Virginia in particular (Burns 2005). As miningjobs have continued to drop off, service-sector jobs have risen, callinginto question the coal industry’s status as the “backbone” of the state.

Coal and the West Virginia Economy

The $3.5 billion coal contributed to West Virginia’s gross state product in2004 represented only 7 percent of the total gross state product, rankingbehind retail trade ($4.0 billion), real estate and rentals ($4.6 billion),health care and social assistance ($4.8 billion), and government ($8.4billion) (U.S. Department of Commerce 2005). Furthermore, mining’scontributions to the West Virginia state product declined from the late1990s into the 2000s (Witt and Fletcher 2005), and its contributions areforecast to continue declining over the next thirty years (Witt andLeguizamon 2007). The tax revenue generated from coal severance taxrepresents less than 7 percent of the General Revenue Fund for the state(whereas personal income tax represents 37 percent) (State of WestVirginia 2007), and the West Virginia Executive Budget forecasts a 9percent decline in severance tax revenues by 2010 (State of West Virginia2007:70). Very little of this coal severance tax actually goes to the coalfieldtowns, which must bear the brunt of the numerous social, economic, andenvironmental injustices related to coal-mining practices. The town ofSylvester, for instance, which sits next to the enormous Elk Run CoalPreparation Plant and a mountaintop removal coal mine and beneath anenormous slurry impoundment with the capacity to hold 769 milliongallons of coal waste, received only $701.42 in coal severance tax duringthe 2006–2007 fiscal year (West Virginia State Treasurer’s Office 2007).

As Figure 1 shows, coal employment in West Virginia has steadilydeclined since the 1940s. This reduction in mining jobs has caused amassive exodus from the state: Since 1950, West Virginia has experienceda net out-migration of 40 percent of its population (West Virginia HealthStatistics Center 2002).4 In 1948 there were 131,700 coal miners in thestate, while in 2006 there were only 20,100. This represents a more thanfive-fold reduction in the number of jobs even after controlling for the

4 However, West Virginia’s population declined by only about 10 percent over thisperiod due to natural increase.


decline in the population. Even if we incorporate contract workers (suchas coal-truck drivers) into the employment data, which would increase thetotal coal employment to 40,924 individuals, coal industry employment inWest Virginia still only accounted for 5 percent of the total employedcivilian labor force in 2005. Health care, hospitality services, retail trade,professional and business services, and local, state, and federal govern-ment were each far more significant employers within the state than coal(West Virginia Bureau of Employment Programs 2005).

The decline in mining jobs since the mid-twentieth century was notbecause of a decline in the scale of coal production, since, although itswung up and down over this period, coal production was about thesame at the beginning of the twenty-first century as it was in the late1940s (see Figure 1). Job losses were clearly due to the ongoing processesof the treadmill of production where workers are replaced by machines.Changes in coal-extraction practices meant that the same amount of coalcould be extracted in the twenty-first century by employing only one-sixth the workers required in the mid-twentieth century. Coal was acentral part of the building of West Virginia’s economy. However, withthe advent of the continuous mining machine, the longwall miningmachine, and most recently, mountaintop removal mining, a vast work-force of coal miners is no longer needed.

The periodic reductions in coal production indicated in Figure 1correlate with a number of important events, particularly the implemen-tation of various environmental laws in the late 1960s and 1970s, such asthe Coal Mine Safety and Health Act, the Clean Air Act, the FederalWater Pollution Control Act, and the Surface Mining Control and Rec-lamation Act. The significant production decline from 1970 to 1978 canbe attributed in part to the much stricter sulfur dioxide emissions stan-dards for coal-fired power plants, which made Western (e.g., Wyoming)coal, which is extremely low sulfur, the “most cost effective choice formeeting sulfur dioxide limits without the installation of expensive equip-ment retrofits” (Bonskowski, Watson, and Freme 2006:2). This shiftcaused a decrease in the use of Appalachian coal in the 1970s. However,as Figure 1 shows, this was only a temporary trend; Appalachian coalproduction quickly began to rise again to keep up with energy demandin the United States.

While the periodic declines in production described above haveundoubtedly had some effects on employment, the primary driving forcebehind job losses has been technological changes in mining practices(Burns 2005). This is evidenced in the trend seen throughout the 1980sand into the early 1990s, when jobs continued to decline despite sharpincreases in coal production (see Figure 1). This increase in output can


be traced to technological advances in longwall mining, which becameone of the principal methods of underground coal extraction duringthis time period (Energy Information Administration 1995:1).

As discussed above, treadmill of production theory posits thatincreases in productivity will typically lead to escalating ecological deg-radation. The Appalachian coal case is no exception. Technologicaladvances in the methods of coal extraction and processing have hadgrowing impacts on the health, safety, and livelihoods of people living inthe coalfields. Below we briefly describe some of the most serious envi-ronmental consequences of coal mining so as to clarify the reasons thatresistance to the coal industry has emerged and, consequently, industryefforts to further the ideology of the coal industry have intensified.

Environmental Consequences of Coal Mining

Mountaintop removal coal mining and the resulting valley fills havespurred a great deal of controversy within “coal communities” and thelarger region. This form of coal extraction has become widespreadthroughout Central Appalachia, particularly in southern West Virginiaand eastern Kentucky. Under the mountains in these areas lie thin layersof low-sulfur coal, which are extremely valuable and are too narrow to bemined by more traditional methods of deep mining. In order to reachthis coal, mining operations must remove the “overburden” (whichincludes the tops of mountains, forests, etc.) to expose the coal seambelow. Surplus volume of broken rock, called “excess spoil,” is generatedthrough this mining technique and must be disposed of. Typically, it isdumped in valleys that are adjacent to the surface mines, creating “valleyfills” (United States Environmental Protection Agency 2003). Accordingto the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency’s “Environmental ImpactStatement: Mountaintop Mining/Valley Fills in Appalachia” (2005),mountaintop removal mining and/or valley fills directly impacted 1,200miles of headwater streams between 1992 and 2002. In fact, from 1985 to2001 valley fills buried an estimated 724 miles of streams in Appalachia.

Among its many consequences, mountaintop removal mining leads toflooding. In the steep mountain terrain of southern West Virginia, mosthomes have been built in the valleys next to creek banks. When themountains above these homes are deforested and flattened, there isnothing left to stop the rain from washing down the mountainsides.Thus, flooding has destroyed the homes of numerous coalfield residents.A study conducted by the Flood Advisory Technical Taskforce of theWest Virginia Department of Environmental Protection (2002) foundthat “mining and timbering impacts did influence the study watersheds


by increasing surface water runoff and the resulting stream flows” (71),increasing the runoff up to 21 percent in some cases, and, thus, contrib-uted to the massive flooding that southern West Virginia experienced in2001.

Another major environmental problem associated with mining stemsfrom “coal-sludge dams” (also termed “slurry impoundments”). Beforecoal is sent to market for processing, it must be cleaned in order toreduce sulfur and noncombustible materials present in the coal. Thewaste generated by the cleaning process is called coal slurry (or “sludge”)and consists of “water, fine particles derived from the coal, and chemi-cals used in coal washing” (Orem 2006). This black chemical sludge iseither stored in huge impoundments on the surface of flattened moun-taintops or injected into abandoned underground coal mines (Orem2006). There are currently 111 coal-sludge impoundments in West Vir-ginia (Coal Impoundment Location and Information System 2005).Many of these enormous black lakes are situated on mountaintopsdirectly above small communities.

Sometimes these impoundments leak, and even completely give way.The 1972 Buffalo Creek Disaster was one such instance. Buffalo CreekHollow in Logan County, West Virginia, was home to some 5,000 peopleand was situated downstream of a coal-sludge impoundment holding back132 million gallons of coal waste. On the morning of February 26, 1972,the dam collapsed, releasing a torrent of black sludge water, which torethrough the hollow, taking with it everything in its path. One hundredtwenty-five people died that day, and thousands were left homeless andforever scarred by the devastation they witnessed (Erikson 1976).

A more recent coal-slurry disaster occurred in 2000 in Martin County,Kentucky. The impoundment collapsed, spilling 250 million gallons ofcoal waste (20 times greater than the Exxon Valdez oil spill), pollutingmore than 70 miles of West Virginia and Kentucky waterways, killingwildlife, and razing habitat. Homes were destroyed by the thick, blacksludge. Although there was little national media coverage, the EPAcalled it “one of the worst environmental disasters in the history of theSoutheastern United States” (Eades 2000). Forty-five other slurryimpoundments in West Virginia are considered to be at high risk forfailure, and thirty-two are at moderate risk (Eades 2000).5

5 Slurry impoundments are not limited to the coal preparation process. Coal burned atcoal-fired power plants generates coal fly-ash slurry, which is stored in impoundments. InDecember 2008, 1.1 billion gallons of coal fly-ash slurry broke through an impoundmentat the Tennessee Valley Authority (TVA) Kingston Fossil Plant in Harriman, Tennessee,contaminating a branch of the Emory River and approximately 300 acres of the surround-ing land (U.S. Environmental Protection Agency 2009).


Not all coal waste ends up in sludge impoundments. Instead, somecoal operations inject the slurry underground into abandoned coalmines. This method of “disposal” creates an entirely new set of problemsincluding well water contamination and the health problems it can leadto, such as liver and kidney cancers, colitis, skin disorders, and organfailure (Orem 2006; Wells 2006).

Jack Spadaro, former superintendent of training for the NationalMine Health and Safety Academy of the Mine Safety and Health Admin-istration (MSHA), asserts that the type of coal cleaning that generates aneed for coal-sludge impoundments and slurry injections is not neces-sary, but that the coal industry uses this method because it “saves a dollara ton in processing.” He goes on to reveal:

There are other technologies, such as dry filter press systems.Coal impoundments are not at all necessary. There’s been tech-nology around since the 1960s. . . . [I]t would only cost about adollar a ton more. . . .

Overall the industry simply doesn’t give a damn about thepeople or the environment in this region [of the country]. AndI can say that with authority. (Stockman 2006:6–7)

Flooding and coal-slurry impoundments and injections are only thebeginning of the many ways in which coal adversely affects the environ-ment and residents of the southern coalfields. Damage from blasting;respiratory problems from coal dust; accidents caused by overweight,speeding coal trucks; and the loss of hunting grounds and homesteadsare a few more of the consequences of coal for these rural communities.Even the laws that are in place to protect the land and people, such asthe Clean Water Act, have been largely ignored by many coal companies,as evidenced by the fact that coal giant Massey Energy was charged with4,633 violations of the Clean Water Act between January 2000 andDecember 2006 (Associated Press 2007).

The people living in coal-mining regions of Appalachia have foundthemselves in a conflicted situation. Most people living in the coalfieldshave been dependent, at some point in their lives, on the industry thatis now destroying their homes, health, and safety. While many areaffected by irresponsible mining, until recent years most residents haveremained silent while the coal industry has continued to dominate thisregion. However, due to the seriousness of the environmental prob-lems generated by the coal industry, a grassroots movement hassteadily grown in numbers and power within Central Appalachia overthe past decade. The Coal River Mountain Watch, Ohio Valley Envi-ronmental Coalition, Citizens Coal Council, Kentuckians for the Com-


monwealth, the Sludge Safety Project, and the newly emerged collegemovement Mountain Justice are just a few of the organizations thathave been engaging in forms of resistance and direct action. Stagingnonviolent protests, generating publications, lobbying the legislature,filing lawsuits, blocking new mining permits, and working with film-makers and journalists to expose the devastation coal has caused to theenvironment and rural communities are a few of the strategies theseorganizations have utilized to hold the coal industry accountable.

Industry Ideology: The Birth of the “Friends of Coal”

According to coal analyst Richard Bonskowski (2004), the grassrootsefforts at resistance described above are in part responsible for therecent small decline in coal production within West Virginia, as well asAppalachia as a whole. In particular, efforts relating to litigation andpermitting delays for new mountaintop-removal mines and stricterenforcement of coal-truck weight limits and license fees have been espe-cially influential. However, the coal industry has not stood idly by in theface of these challenges. This became especially apparent in the coalindustry’s strategy to win one of the most contentious legislative debatesin West Virginia in recent years: coal-truck weight limits. Through itsefforts to win this battle, the West Virginia Coal Association constructeda countermovement to the environmental justice movement, calling theorganization it created the “Friends of Coal,” which has engaged inelaborate framing efforts to maintain and amplify coal’s status as theeconomic identity of West Virginia.

In 2002, in response to a series of recent deaths from accidentsinvolving overweight coal trucks (some that were more than double thelegal limit), Delegate Mike Caputo (D-Marion) introduced a bill in theWest Virginia legislature to increase enforcement of the truck weightlimits. Coal industry–supporting legislators quickly introduced retalia-tory legislation that would raise maximum legal weight limits for coaltrucks from 80,000 pounds to 132,000 pounds (with a 5 percent vari-ance) (Nyden 2002). Neither bill passed, but legislative efforts on bothsides continued to stir controversy in the state.

During the summer of 2002, as the coal truck debate was raging,board members and officers of the West Virginia Coal Association helda strategic planning meeting to discuss ways that they could improvepublic relations (Shanghai Zoom Intelligence Co., Ltd. 2006). Theoutcome of that meeting was the birth of the “Friends of Coal,” whichwas to be a “grassroots organization” that would be “dedicated to inform-ing and educating West Virginia citizens about the coal industry and its


vital role in the state’s future” (Friends of Coal 2007). As West VirginiaCoal Association President Bill Raney explained,

For many years . . . we have claimed that coal represents manymore West Virginians beyond the thousands directly employedby the industry. Friends of Coal clearly indicates that this is thecase. . . . With Friends of Coal, we are making an effort to count,organize and mobilize these people. It’s time to clearly demon-strate to public officials, to media representatives and to thegeneral public, just how many lives are touched in a positive wayby the coal industry. (Shanghai Zoom Intelligence Co., Ltd.2006)

In addition, according to Coal Leader: Coal’s National Newspaper, “One ofthe aims of the new organization ‘Friends of Coal’ is to reverse theperception that coal mining has declined in importance in West Virginiaand the country” (“Friends of Coal” 2003). While the Friends of Coalboasts that it is a “grassroots organization,” its funding comes from themember companies of the West Virginia Coal Association (Hohmann2005). Furthermore, Raney was paraphrased as stating that the cam-paign is an effort to “remove ‘impediments’ to coal mining” (WireReports 2002), clearly stating the agenda of the organization.

In January 2003, the West Virginia Coal Association contracted withthe West Virginia–based firm Charles Ryan Associates “to provide publicrelations, advertising and internet services for Friends of Coal” (Shang-hai Zoom Intelligence Co., Ltd. 2006). This step proved to be a strategicone in terms of timing, for it was just before the 2003 West Virginialegislative session, where the coal-truck issue would be reexamined. AsBill Reid, managing editor for Coal Leader, asserts, the passage of SenateBill 583, which raised the legal coal-truck weight limits, “occurred just afew short months after the introduction of the West Virginia Coal Asso-ciation campaign Friends of Coal.” He goes on to say that “[t]here is nodoubt that Friends of Coal had a significant impact on the passage of theCoal Truck Bill” (Reid 2003). This was particularly significant, for, asReid argues, increasing weight limits would “provide a much neededboost for the coal industry in southern West Virginia by removing someof the question marks regarding the future of coal trucking and givinggreater stability to both coal producers and trucking companies” (Reid2003).

The passage of the weight limit increase was only the beginning of theFriends of Coal, however. Since 2003, the organization has launched afull-scale campaign within West Virginia to reconnect the people ofthe state to an industry that can no longer truly be characterized as the


“lifeblood” of the economy. The focus of our empirical analysis is on theactivities that this organization undertakes and the messages it imparts toWest Virginians. We argue that the underlying strategy of the Friends ofCoal is to attempt to counter the coal industry’s loss of citizens’ employ-ment loyalties by constructing an ideology of dependency and identitythrough a massive public relations campaign.

Data and Methods

In order to uncover the main strategies that the Friends of Coal uses inits attempt to reconstruct a bond between the coal industry and WestVirginia communities, we use two approaches: content analysis and fieldobservations. Data for our content analysis were gathered from fourdifferent sources: (1) regional and national newspaper articles duringthe period 2002–2007 that mention the Friends of Coal, (2) articlesreferencing the Friends of Coal in Coal Leader: Coal’s National Newspaperduring the period 2003–2006, (3) the Friends of Coal website, accessedonce in 2005 and then again in 2007, and (4) the West Virginia CoalAssociation Website (the parent organization for the Friends of Coal),accessed in 2008. We located the regional and national newspaperarticles through the LexisNexis Academic database by entering thesearch terms “Friends of Coal” and searching between 2002 and 2007(2002 was the year of the organization’s inception). The data set fromthis source consists of 207 newspaper articles. We found the articles fromCoal Leader: Coal’s National Newspaper on Coal Leader’s Website. Onlyissues printed between 2003 and 2006 were available. The data set fromthis source consists of four articles about the Friends of Coal. TheFriends of Coal and West Virginia Coal Association Websites, our thirdand fourth sources, provided particularly illuminating data: four60-second television commercials and two 30-second television commer-cials promoting the Friends of Coal and the coal industry in general. Wetranscribed these commercials and coded both for visual themes andspoken words. In addition, all of the content posted on the Friends ofCoal Website was included in our analysis.

We undertook the coding process in an inductive manner, firstreading through the documents and then creating (1) a list of actionsthat the Friends of Coal has taken since its inception during the summerof 2002; and (2) a list of themes and messages that it is attempting to impartto the West Virginia public.

In addition to our content analysis, we utilized observations from thefirst author’s field research in southern West Virginia during thesummers of 2006 and 2007. These observations were gathered as a part


of a larger project examining the social impacts of the coal industry onrural communities and the resistance movement that has risen up tohold the coal industry accountable for irresponsible mining practices.Data for this larger project include 20 in-depth interviews with randomlyselected individuals living in a coal town in Boone County, West Virginia(Bell 2009); 25 interviews with activists involved in the environmentaljustice movement in Central Appalachia; and four months’ worth of fieldnotes spanning two summers, written while engaging in participantobservation as a volunteer with a grassroots environmental justice orga-nization in Boone County and while living in two different coal townsduring the summers of 2006 and 2007. While we do not explicitly utilizethe interview data here, general knowledge gained from the interviewsand the field observations inform our analysis.

Results

Through the coding process, we found that the Friends of Coal’s mainstrategy to reconstruct a bond between the coal industry and West Vir-ginia communities centers on attempting to present coal mining as thedefining feature of the state. The statement “It is likely that no state andindustry are as closely identified with one another as West Virginia andcoal,” which appeared on the Friends of Coal Website in 2005, impartsexactly the message this organization hopes West Virginians will come tobelieve, despite the coal industry’s declining contribution to employ-ment in the state. The coal industry works to create (or re-create) andmaintain its standing as the “identity” of West Virginia. Through ourcontent analysis and field observations, we found that the Friends of Coalemploys two strategies to do this: (1) by appropriating West Virginiacultural icons; and (2) by creating a visible presence in the social land-scape of West Virginia through stickers, yard signs, and sponsorships.

Strategy 1: The Appropriation of West Virginia Cultural Icons

Even before securing Charles Ryan Associates as their public relationsfirm, the Friends of Coal recruited a spokesperson. Don Nehlen,popular retired football coach of the West Virginia University Mountain-eers and recent inductee into the College Football Hall of Fame, quicklybecame the face of the Friends of Coal. Nehlen was soon joined by twoother spokespersons: retired Marshall University football coach BobbyPruett and, in 2006, professional bass fisherman Jeremy Starks. In addi-tion, retired air force general “Doc” Foglesong has appeared in at leastone television commercial speaking on behalf of the Friends of Coal.


Each of these spokespersons represents important West Virginia culturalicons, which also reflect the historic and present hegemonic masculinityof the region. We define cultural icons as those representations ofcultural or regional identity that resonate with individuals of a particulararea or community.

The winner icon. Coaches Nehlen and Pruett together represent thetwo Football Bowl Subdivision (formerly Division 1) teams in the state andthus represent the two sets of football fans that exist in West Virginia: theMountaineers fans (West Virginia University) and the Thundering Herdfans (Marshall University). In a state of only 1.8 million, these two footballteams are important cultural icons. Through securing the two coacheswith the most wins in the history of these two teams, the Friends of Coalhas attempted to appropriate football—and winning—as a part of itsidentity. To further this end, in 2006 Friends of Coal became the corpo-rate sponsor of a seven-year football series, called the “Friends of CoalBowl,” which pits the Mountaineers and the Thundering Herd againsteach other. This is particularly relevant because, until 2006, the two teamshad played only once since 1923. College football fans in West Virginiahave been waiting for many years for the two in-state rivals to play eachother. After four match-ups, the Friends of Coal Bowl is a raging success inthe state, further solidifying the Friends of Coal as an integral componentof college football in West Virginia.

The Friends of Coal further reinforces this connection between thecoal industry and football through two 30-second television commercialspromoting the Marshall University Thundering Herd and the West Vir-ginia University Mountaineers. The first commercial begins with a chorussinging, “When we go down deep through the dark today, we come upwith the light for America.” Next, the narrator announces, “Championsare born of hard work and determination, and just like the ThunderingHerd, coal miners are a championship team. During this 2008 season, theFriends of Coal honor our coal miners and our Thundering Herd—allchampions indeed.” Then, the chorus concludes the commercial bysinging, “Coal is West Virginia!”6 The second commercial is similarlyworded, praising coal miners and the West Virginia University Mountain-eers for both being “championship team[s],” making the Friends ofCoal’s message difficult to miss.

The Friends of Coal have also added NASCAR driver Derek Kiser to this“winner” icon by becoming his primary corporate sponsor. Kiser now

6 The West Virginia Coal Association Website claims that the song featured in thistelevision commercial was the coal industry’s theme music 25 years ago. Thechorus—“Coal is West Virginia”—has been made into a cell phone ringtone that is avail-able for downloading from the Website (West Virginia Coal Association 2008).


drives a race car with the “Friends of Coal” logo prominently placed acrossthe hood. Thus, through associating itself with the winning footballcoaches and the winning NASCAR driver, the Friends of Coal sends themessage that the coal industry is a winner, too.

The provider and defender icon. The provider icon and the defendericon are closely intertwined within Friends of Coal propaganda. Thisbecomes particularly apparent in two Friends of Coal televisioncommercials. In the first of these commercials, called “American Hero,”retired Air Force General “Doc” Foglesong narrates as images of (male)coal miners hard at work flash across the screen:

doc: You could say the West Virginia coal miners are modern-daypioneers. Men and women of courage, pride and adventure, whosafely go where no one’s been before and harvest the coal that powersour nation. . . . In fact, if these miners didn’t produce coal, our nationwould be in trouble. More than half of the nation’s electricity isgenerated by coal. West Virginia is the national leader in undergroundcoal-mining production, and America needs that energy—today morethan ever. So if you know a West Virginia coal miner, say “Thanks.”Not that he or she is doing it for the thanks. They’re doing it for theirfamily and for our future. I’m retired Air Force General Doc Fogle-song. Friends of Coal salute [sic] the pioneering spirit of the WestVirginia coal miner. Why not join us and do the same?

Within the text of this commercial the coal industry becomes synony-mous with the coal miner. Thus, the coal industry is presented as aprovider—both for West Virginia’s families and for the nation’s energydemands. As Doc states, “America needs that energy—today more thanever,” and it is the West Virginia coal industry that is to thank for meetingthose energy demands.

The working-class provider icon is a decidedly masculine image.While Doc calls coal miners “men and women of courage,” not a singlewoman can be seen among the 15 coal miners who appear throughoutthe short one-minute commercial. This is in line with traditional main-stream ideologies of “the provider” within the context of Americansociety and Appalachian coal communities in particular. Beckwith(2001) argues that the historically male-dominated coal mining work-force of central Appalachia has created “a context in which ‘miner’ and‘male’ become conflated, a conflation that is so deeply ingrained that itis virtually undetectable” (310). In fact, it was not until the late 1970s thatwomen were granted the right to work in the coal mines. Even this legalvictory was largely empty, however, for once women did eventuallybecome coal miners, they were the first to be pushed out when


technological changes “shrank the size of the labor force, leaving onlythose miners with seniority,” who, of course, were men (Maggard1999:186). Thus, through reinforcing the hegemonic image of theworking-class provider as male, and a particularly masculine male, theimages in this commercial lubricate the process of the coal industrybecoming synonymous with the family provider.

Underlying this commercial is also the image of the West Virginia coalindustry (as represented through the face of the coal miner) as“defender” of our country: “If these miners didn’t produce coal, ournation would be in trouble.” Furthermore, the choice of a retired mili-tary general as the narrator of this commercial is particularly telling ofthe messages that the Friends of Coal seeks to present: The coal industrydefends the “American way of life” just as the military does. Thus, coal ismore than an energy source—it is a patriotic energy source!

The “coal industry as defender” trope is also apparent in anotherFriends of Coal television commercial called “Tracking the Source.” Inthis one-minute piece, the narrator asserts:

Without West Virginia coal, our nation’s economic status as aleader would be in jeopardy. It may seem like a daunting task tosupply the nation with energy. But clean coal technology con-tinues to gain momentum, helping us reduce our dependenceon foreign oil and creating jobs for the men and women whoproudly call themselves coal miners.

Thus, according to this commercial, the coal industry is responsible fordefending the United States from economic disaster and foreign conflictover oil. Again, in this section of the commercial, it is only male coalminers who are depicted in the images relating to the mining process,reinforcing mainstream images of a working-class male provider as thetrue face of the coal industry. This image works within the historicalgender structure of Appalachia and thus makes this association more“natural.”

Through appropriating the cultural icon of the provider anddefender as being ultimately represented within the workers of the coalindustry, the Friends of Coal is able to again construct a connectionbetween the increasingly isolated coal industry and the local communi-ties. The coal industry’s approach fits with Habermas’s (1975) observa-tion that efforts at legitimation typically draw on existing culturalinstitutions, providing continuity with tradition. The coal industry, in itsdevelopment of the provider and defender icon—linking coal to themilitary, a symbol of patriotism and strength—is clearly trying to imbedcoal mining in deep cultural traditions. It connects its legitimation


efforts with those of the state, which has long worked to build theimage of the military as a noble institution on which all Americansdepend.

The outdoorsman icon. Hunting and fishing are important traditionsto many West Virginians. Many West Virginians pride themselves onbeing avid outdoorspeople, a value that often stands in contradiction tothe destructive ecological practices of the coal industry. Mountaintopremoval mining has caused the destruction of vast tracts of land onceused for hunting, digging ginseng root, morel gathering, and collectingother types of medicinal herbs such as black cohosh, bloodroot, andmayapple. Many streams in which West Virginians used to swim and thefish habitat they provided have been buried under valley fills or pollutedwith acid mine drainage and coal waste. Thus, the Friends of Coalneeded to address this contradiction to make the coal industry appear toalso value the outdoors, as a large number of West Virginians do. Thisthey attempted to accomplish by becoming the primary corporatesponsor of professional bass fisherman Jeremy Starks and by bringinghim on as an official spokesperson for the Friends of Coal in 2006.Adding even more to his credentials as an “environmentally conscious”spokesperson for the Friends of Coal is the fact that Starks serves as arepresentative on the Bass Angler Sportsman Society’s (BASS)“conservation team,” which meets with government officials to discussconservation issues.

Starks appears in two 60-second Friends of Coal televisioncommercials, the first alongside Nehlen and Pruett and the second on astream bank fishing with five children. In the first commercial, Starks,Nehlen, and Pruett are fishing from Starks’s 21-foot bass boat, which hasa panoramic photo of West Virginia mountains and the “Friends of Coal”logo emblazoned across its side. As the three of them fish in a WestVirginia stream, they discuss the West Virginia coal industry:

nehlen: Thousands of tons of coal are mined in this area.starks: And scientific tests have shownpruett: That the water is clean, clear, and a strong provider forwildlife. And the coal mining industry is proud of that.nehlen: And of their role in making sure that it stays that way.

In his second commercial, Jeremy Starks continues with this theme ofclean streams as images of him standing on a stream bank fishing withyoung children alternate with images of the coal mining process:

starks: Hi. I’m Jeremy Starks—a Friend of Coal and a pro fishermanwho’s concerned about the environment. . . . This clear stream isproof that sustaining water quality is a big part of the reclamation


process. Scientific tests have shown that this water quality is betternow than it’s ever been. And this is after 22 million tons of coal havebeen mined in nearby land. Our need for energy is greater than ever.And with responsible practices in place, we can safely mine coalwhile restoring our land for future generations.

From the mouth of self-proclaimed conservationist Jeremy Starks, weare assured that coal extraction and a clean environment can coexist.7

We are even told that the coal industry actually improves water quality! Itis through this assertion that the Friends of Coal attempts to identifyitself as the quintessential West Virginia “outdoorsman.”

Through appropriating some of the most potent cultural icons of theregion, such as football, the military, race-car driving, the accomplishedoutdoorsman, and the working-class provider, the Friends of Coal hasattempted to amplify the connection between West Virginia and coal sothat this industry appears to be more than a provider of jobs; it embodiesall of the characteristics of the archetypal West Virginian.

It is no coincidence that this “archetypal West Virginian” is clearlyconstructed to be a man. With the changing economic realities in WestVirginia, wherein coal is no longer the main source of employment orearnings, the gendered division of labor, and related gender ideology, isunder attack. With the rise in service-sector jobs and decline in miningemployment, women have increasingly entered the workforce, whilegreater and greater numbers of men have been forced to leave, threat-ening men’s status as the sole breadwinners of the family (Maggard1994; Miewald and McCann 2004). As Maggard (1994) relates, “TheAppalachian coalfield region is witnessing the disassembling of a nearlycentury old economic and domestic arrangement” (31). However, whilethe strict gendered division of labor has declined, the related genderideology “is still felt” (Miewald and McCann 2004:1054). This disconnectbetween ideology and economic reality has meant that many men are nolonger able to live up to their traditional definition of masculinity. Inmany cases, this has translated to turmoil at home, including divorce,depression, domestic violence, and even suicide (Miewald and McCann2004). Ironically, the very industry that created the hegemonic mascu-linity of the region in the first place is also responsible for preventingmost coalfield men from achieving it. Because of this ideological con-nection between the male provider and the male coal miner, it is nec-essary for the coal industry to convince residents that men are still the

7 This message is one that is being promoted through the coal industry’s “Clean Coal”campaign, which many argue is nothing more than an advertising scheme to counter coal’sreputation as a “dirty” fossil fuel.


breadwinners of the family if it is to convince them that coal is still thebackbone of the economy.

Strategy 2: Becoming Pervasively Visible within the Social Landscapeof West Virginia

The second major way in which the Friends of Coal endeavors to becomethe identity of West Virginia is through its attempts to be seen virtuallyeverywhere in the state and penetrate the lifeworld. The organizationaccomplishes this in three major ways: (1) distributing hard-hat stickers,window decals, buttons, yard signs, and ball caps at nearly every majorpublic event; (2) sponsoring events, community improvement projects,scholarships, and any other venue that provides an opportunity for theFriends of Coal logo or name to be in the public’s attention; and (3)entering the school system through the Coal Education Developmentand Resource (CEDAR) Program of southern West Virginia.

The Friends of Coal logo. Reflecting the Friends of Coal’s goal topervade the visual landscape with its presence, Warren Hylton, WestVirginia Coal Association board member (quoted in Shanghai ZoomIntelligence Co., Ltd. 2006), asserted, “This logo will be the visible proofthat there are Friends of Coal all over West Virginia. . . . The more yousee of this symbol, the more you can be sure our message is gettingacross.” The Friends of Coal has made concerted efforts to distribute itsstickers, hats, buttons, and yard signs widely throughout West Virginia,and even into other Appalachian states. Membership as a “Friend ofCoal” is free, and there are no participation requirements. Simplyputting a Friends of Coal decal on the back of one’s pick-up truck is acontribution to the organization’s goal of painting the landscape withFriends of Coal logos, providing a strong visual image of solidarity and“grassroots support” for the coal industry (see Figure 3).

Friends of Coal sponsorships. Connected to the wide distribution ofFriends of Coal logos is the extensive list of events, places, and servicesthat the Friends of Coal has sponsored in the five years since itsinception. Those we have identified through our data are presented inTable 1. Friends of Coal’s massive campaign to have its name attached toeverything from soccer fields to auto fairs to the capital city’s Fourth ofJuly celebration to volleyball games to theater performances is a clearattempt to broaden its base of support to those individuals who may notcare about football or fishing and who may not come from aworking-class background. Through appearing to sponsor everythingand anything, the Friends of Coal gives the impression that the coalindustry is still acting as the backbone of the state, regardless of whether


it provides many jobs or contributes significantly to public services. Thus,these diverse sponsorships serve to perpetuate an ideology ofdependency: Without the coal industry, West Virginians would not onlybe without jobs, they would also be without sporting events, soccer fields(see, for example, Figure 4), cultural events, and community centers.

Coal education in the schools. In his study of social cohesion in liberaldemocracies, Mann (1970) found that the most common form of“manipulative socialization” by the state does not attempt to change thevalues of the working class, but instead seeks to perpetuate the values thathinder the working class from interpreting “the reality it actuallyexperiences” (437). This insight fits with our observation that the coalindustry actively works to maintain and amplify its status as the state’seconomic identity in order to prevent the working class fromrecognizing the coal industry’s role in the economic and environmentaldegradation of coalfield communities. Furthermore, Mann (1970) citesstudies that reveal the school system’s crucial role in the manipulativesocialization of children, particularly those from working-class families.In this same way, the coal industry, with the blessing of the state,endeavors to socialize school children in the southern coalfields to an“understanding of the many benefits the coal industry provides in dailylives” through the CEDAR Program, which consists of specialcoal-education materials and curricula created by the West Virginia CoalAssociation (West Virginia Coal Association 2007).

Teachers in the counties of Boone, Logan, Wyoming, Mingo, andMcDowell (some of the top coal-producing counties in West Virginia) are

Figure 3. Example of a “Friends of Coal” car decal on a car in southern West Virginia


offered grant money to create and implement classroom study units oncoal using the CEDAR materials, and the three teachers in each gradelevel (K–12) with the best “performance” have the opportunity to win cashprizes (West Virginia Coal Association 2007). Furthermore, each schoolhas a principal-appointed “coal fair coordinator,” whose duties are toorganize a coal fair at the school so that each student has the opportunityto enter a project on coal in one of the following categories: science, math,English literature, art, music, technology-multimedia, or social studies.The winners of the local coal fair are invited to enter their projects in a

Table 1. Events, Buildings/Places, and Professionals Sponsored by theFriends of Coal

Events• The Friends of Coal Bowl—(Discussed in text) A yearly football game between the

two Football Bowl Subdivision (formerly Division 1) teams in West Virginia: WestVirginia University and Marshall University.

• Friends of Coal Day at the Legislature—A rally and day-long event that has takenplace every March since 2004. At the first Friends of Coal Day at the Legislature, thestate Senate and House of Delegates passed concurrent resolutions designating March4, 2004, as “Friends of Coal Day.”

• Friends of Coal Auto Fair—An annual three-day event with live music, carnival rides,games, food, and, of course, cars.

• Friends of Coal Blue-Green Volleyball Classic—An annual NCAA Division I volleyballevent featuring West Virginia University (blue) and Marshall University (green).

• Paint the City Green Presented by the Friends of Coal—An annual pep rally andtailgate for Marshall University alumni and fans.

• Fifth Third/Friends of Coal West Virginia–Ohio All-Star Basketball Game—An annualhigh school all-star basketball game.

• Tiskelwah Community Center Fundraiser—An event to raise money for a new heatingsystem in the community center.

• West Virginia University Band Fundraiser—An event to raise money for new banduniforms.

• Independence Day Celebration in the Capital City—Contributed $20,000 to the 4th ofJuly celebration.

• The Odd Couple Theater Performance—Sponsored a performance of The Odd Couple atthe Clay Center for Arts and Sciences in Charleston, West Virginia.

• Hall of Fame Tribute for Don Nehlen—Sponsored a tribute dinner for former WVUfootball coach (and spokesperson for the Friends of Coal) Don Nehlen when he wasinducted into the College Football Hall of Fame.

Buildings/Places• The Friends of Coal Soccer Fields—Contributed $1 million to the construction of a

six-field soccer complex in Kanawha County, West Virginia, in 2004.• Attempted to purchase naming rights for the new Class A baseball stadium in

Charleston. However, they did not win the bid.Professionals• Jeremy Starks—Professional bass fisherman and West Virginia native, whose main

corporate sponsor is the Friends of Coal.• Derek Kiser—Friends of Coal Racing is the main sponsor for this up-and-coming

NASCAR driver and West Virginia native.


regional coal fair, where 63 winners in each of the seven categories (firstthrough third place) in three different age groups receive cash prizes.Additionally, nine overall age group winners receive cash prizes (WestVirginia Coal Association 2007). Finally, the CEDAR Program offers ten$1,000 scholarships to students from the five participating coalfield coun-ties to be used at one of the Southern West Virginia Community andTechnical College campuses (West Virginia Coal Association 2007).

Through their presence in the school systems of many of the topcoal-producing counties in the state, the coal industry attempts tomanipulate the loyalties of citizens as young as five. As quoted in an articlein Coal Leader: Coal’s National Newspaper, “CEDAR is working towardsecuring coal’s future TODAY by educating our leaders of TOMOR-ROW!” (“CEDAR of Southern West Virginia” 2005). By engaging studentsand teachers in coal-education units, encouraging participation in coalfairs, and offering college scholarships, the coal industry is working toensure that the future citizenry of southern West Virginia is socialized tobelieve that coal is indispensable to the life, culture, and economic futureof their communities and state.

Conclusions

The drive for profit accumulation is a defining feature of capitalism andis central to the treadmill of production. This drive has always generateda fundamental tension, however, because activities that increase profits

Figure 4. Example of a “Friends of Coal” sponsorship: soccer fields in Charleston, WestVirginia


also frequently degrade the environment and undermine social well-being. These circumstances create legitimation problems for the ownersof the means of production. The machinations of the treadmill havebeen particularly apparent in regions that historically depended onextractive industries, such as mining and timber, as the mainstay of theireconomies. In an effort to increase profits, industries in the post–WorldWar II era accelerated the mechanization of production, leading to thedual consequences of displacing workers and increasing environmentaldegradation. In the aftermath of these transformations in productionpractices, many rural communities were left with polluted environmentsand high unemployment due to a decline in industry jobs. The socialand environmental costs of production led to the public’s growing oppo-sition to industry’s often unrestrained access to natural resources. Thisrising tide of protest, challenging the power of industry, has increasinglyled to industry backlash, where extractive industries struggle to cling totheir power, despite their declining contribution to the economy andemployment.

Our aim here has been to address a lacuna in the treadmill of pro-duction theory by incorporating theoretical concepts from the neo-Marxian tradition on the legitimation process so as to further ourunderstanding of how industry gains compliance from substantial seg-ments of the public. One of the ways that industry maintains its power isto actively construct ideology that furthers its interests—an observationmade by Marx, but developed further by a line of critical scholars,including Lukács, Gramsci, Horkheimer, Adorno, and Habermas. Here,we examined a manifestation of this in “postindustrial” America. Thechanges in coal production in West Virginia illustrate how industry worksto maintain community loyalty when it no longer serves as a major sourceof employment. When the number of jobs it provided declined due tochanging mining practices, the coal industry faced a legitimation crisisthat challenged its hold on political power. The industry response to thischallenge has been to engage in cultural manipulation, attempting toconstruct a pro-coal ideology that shapes community economic identity.Key strategies for furthering this process center on the appropriation ofWest Virginia cultural icons and the infusion of coal-industry ideologyinto a variety of social arenas. The intended effect of these efforts hasbeen to (re)construct the identity of West Virginia as both economicallydependent on coal and culturally defined by coal, the latter being part ofwhat Habermas identified as the colonization of the lifeworld. The WestVirginia case illustrates processes that likely occur elsewhere in thenation, such as in the historically timber-dependent communities in thePacific Northwest. Analyses of ideology construction by the economic


elite may, therefore, help shed light on a variety of social and economicprocesses occurring throughout the United States and around the world.

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