Removing Mountains: Extracting Nature and Identity in the Appalachian Coalfields (Paperback) (ISBN-13: 9780816666003)

A coal mining technique practiced in southern West Virginia known as mountaintop removal is drastically altering the terrain of the Appalachian Mountains. Peaks are flattened and valleys are filled as the coal industry levels thousands of acres of forest to access the coal, in the process turning the forest into scrubby shrublands and poisoning the water. This is dangerous and environmentally devastating work, but as Rebecca R. Scott shows in Removing Mountains, the issues at play are vastly complicated.
In this rich ethnography of life in Appalachia, Scott examines mountaintop removal in light of controversy and protests from environmental groups calling for its abolishment. But Removing Mountains takes the conversation in a new direction, telling the stories of the businesspeople, miners, and families who believe they depend on the industry to survive. Scott reveals these southern Appalachian coalfields as a meaningful landscape where everyday practices and representations help shape a community's relationship to the environment.
Removing Mountains demonstrates that the paradox that faces this community-forced to destroy their land to make a wage-raises important questions related not only to the environment but also to American national identity, place, and white working-class masculinity.

Author: Rebecca R. Scott
ISBN-10: 0816666008
ISBN-13: 9780816666003
Publisher: University of Minnesota Press
Language: English
Published: 08/04/2010
Pages: 296
Format: Paperback
Weight: 0.75lbs
Size: 8.30h x 5.40w x 0.80d

Review Citation(s):
Choice 05/01/2011
Reference and Research Bk News 11/01/2010 pg. 124