Divergent Views of Mining in Appalachia

📖 The Scoop

Residents in the Appalachian coalfields share a love of the natural beauty that surrounds them, recognition of a shared heritage and connections to the mountains, and pride in their own resilience. These same residents are also deeply divided over the practice of mountaintop mining for coal. The conflict over mountaintop mining is emblematic of many environmental conflicts whose intensity derives from economic and environmental stakes and from competing claims to individual and community identity.

The authors focus attention on the concept of stakeholder itself and to key theories that explain relationships among stakeholders. Why do stakeholders have such divergent views about the issues? How do they argue for their competing visions? What is the impact of their efforts to use protest, lawsuits, and conflict resolution to influence this highly politicized conflict? What does it take for their voices to be heard? How are some stakeholders looking beyond the conflict to a new economic future?

Conflicts such as those in the Appalachian coalfields matter a lot to those stakeholders who view themselves as directly involved but also apply to more people than is often realized. This book asks: What role do you, the reader, have to play in the conflict over mountaintop mining? More than this, the book asks the essential question: what does it mean to live in a democracy and what are the obligations of every citizen to sustaining democratic values?

Genre: Business & Economics / Real Estate / General (fancy, right?)