Countering Narratives of Loss in the New Technology Economy of Appalachia
Assigned Session: FS 3.177: From Experiences of Loss to Transformation: Reimagining Mountain Areas in Times of Crisis and Beyond
Abstract ID: 3.12523 | Not reviewed | Requested as: Talk | TBA | TBA
Lauren Hayes (1)
(1) University of Wyoming, 1000 E University Ave, 82071 Laramie, US
Abstract
Scholars have described the mountainous Appalachian region of the United States in terms of “narratives of export” regarding resources, value, and people. This narrative is exemplified by extractive industries like coal and lumber whose profits have not always returned to Appalachia, and whose practices resulted in absentee land ownership and often caused environmental destruction. The region has also experienced patterns of out-migration due to boom-and-bust conditions of coal, agricultural, and manufacturing industries. Between 1940 and 1970, for example, three million people left Appalachia in search of work in midwestern and northern cities. A continued out-migration of youth for educational and job opportunities has further stressed many small rural towns. The permanent decline of coal and job losses within the industry and adjacent businesses in Appalachia in recent years have prompted a flurry of local efforts to attract opportunities in technology from customer service work to coding and software development, to advanced manufacturing. Some of these organizations and leaders have dubbed this project “Silicon Holler”-a play on the California technology hub called, Silicon Valley, and a local word for valley in a local speech variety. Marketing discourse advertising these efforts largely centers on romanticized representations of male coal miner identity and work ethic with headlines such as, “From coal to code” and “Turning coal country into tech country” and frequently includes plots of job loss, shuttered and decaying rural coal towns, and renewed hope in tech. This paper focuses on the ways people make sense of these new development schemes to transform their economies and address economic and population decline. I show how 1) local leaders, workers, and media draw on nostalgic ideals of a coal mining history and coal miner work ethic to create a hybridized image of a future tech economy that is culturally Appalachian albeit gendered masculine, and 2) how people use symbolic strategies and complex work history narratives to resist and reshape media images of loss. I argue that these various strategies work to counter stereotypes of the region as backward or a-technological, while shaping visions of the future that reflect local cultural memory and practice.
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