The Road to Poverty: The Making of Wealth and Hardship in Appalachia ed. by Dwight B. Billings, Kathleen M. Blee (review)

tainly succeeds in presenting the words and images of African American residents in Frankfort. But scholars and teachers interested in a thorough historical treatment of a black community in Kentucky, should look forward to the forthcoming work by one of this volume's editors, Doug Boyd, entitled Reconstructing Craw,that includes a discussion not found in Community Memories of the relationship between oral history,public memory,and nostalgia in a vanished neighborhood. Tracy E. K'Meyer University of Louisville enslaved,has to be considered among their book's most important contributions. Using several firsthand accounts,the authors explore the occupations, household structures, migration patterns, and experiences of black people, as well as considerable diversity within this group. Before they begin their story, however, Billings and Blee consider two theoretical explanations previously used to explore the meaning of Appalachian povertythe cultureof poverty model and the internal colony model. On the one hand, according to the authors, the cultureof poverty model has a serious methodological flaw in its reliance on ethnography to define the limits and possibilities of a researcher' s questions,in addition to its rampant stereotyping of Appalachian residents, of course, and its tendency to blame victims of poverty for their (») wn plight. In short ethnography focuses exclusively on the present and pays little attention to the past which the authors consider crucial to a thorough understanding of the current economic situation in Appalachia. ( 10,14) On the other hand, the internal colony model,although it emphasizes the importance of history, TEE HOAU TO in the late nineteenth century,and it has become fixed on industrialization I 3OVER Y completely ignores the complex economic developments that occurred TheMakingofWeakhand much earlier in the century. ( 14) This Ha„ iship in Aplizhhia model also tends to view subsistence ,_» »' 4*** »„ 9] 5'* St* @»] Sti industry offers three important new in Appalachia. Billings and Blee > 5'-*» '» ) J* * 44J, i arguments about early Appalachian argue, " Without understanding the 21, development that overturn several historical dynamics that create poor V » 60 E- 4 widelyheld misconceptions. First, places and poor people, it is impos- , the salt Industry actually wiped sible to develop effective policies to ' out many trees before the timber alleviate contemporary regional pov- .»== »« industry gained a foothold in Aperty ." ( 51) In this way,the authors palachia. Second, 1ndebtedness to combine a radical politics that looks company stores may have begun to the roots of social and economic f'..+.... with wagelaborers in the antebelproblems , seeking to change what ! I '_ ,« iot*»,„ » „„ . k . ' , lum salt industry,not later after the they consider an oppressive political f')' ' ', 5 't»»»»» = , tjtt« »» , timber industry began to employ system,with a postmodern perspecmen for wages. ( 86) And third, the tive that re]ects dichotomies, analyzes multiple salt industry in Clay County depended heavily on discourses, and explores intersecting elements of slaves, debunking the myth of Appalachian racial identity. Like Wilma Dunaway, Billings and Blee homogeneity and the absence of slaves from the argue that market capitalism came to Appalachia region. ( 94) well before the onslaught of the coal and timber In their chapter on " State Making," Billings and industry, during the antebellum period in Clay Blee explore local political control in Clay County, County,in fact. Relying on Immanuel Wallerstein' s and they document the coercive power of those explanation for the rise of a world capitalist system, elites who held office, something the authors call they view Appalachian Kentucky as the periphery " clientelism." Specifically,the authors argue that of a periphery,that iS to say Appalachia may be local political elites traded influence in the courts considered peripheral to the Blue Grass region of for economic advantage and votes,especially later in Kentucky which is itself peripheral to world capital- the midst of local feuds. ( 131) They also document ism. ( 3031 , 48) intense factionalism among elites that hindered Clay In their search for the roots of poverty in Clay County' s social development by disrupting civic 86 OHIO VALLEY HISTORY and reinforcing poverty through factionalism and clientelism,and make appropriate changes to reduce both proble Ills. 327) Finally,Billings and Blee argue that only a long term study of communities,as opposed to presentist snapshots of community life that sociologists...