Combating Mountaintop Removal: New Directions in the Fight against Big Coal

7. Gender, Solidarity, and Symbolic Capital

7. Gender, Solidarity, and Symbolic Capital The prominence of women in leadership positions is a signature characteristic of Appalachian community activism, including in the Coal River Mountain Watch (CRMW) and the larger Friends of the Mountains (FOM) networks. Women’s leadership in Appalachian activism is nothing new. Mother Jones was not a native Appalachian, though she is certainly a standard bearer for strong women in the region. Elizabeth Engelhardt (2003) traces the “tangled roots” of feminism and environmentalism in the region’s literature. From Widow Combs (who lay down in front of a bulldozer in 1977) to Florence Reece to Coal River Mountain Watch, women have long played important roles in pushing for social change in the coalfields. But why? What leads women in Appalachia to take on leadership roles so often? And why did this tendency resurface in community-oriented activism specifically in the late twentieth century? Several factors are associated with this complex social phenomenon. First, neoliberal restructuring in industry shifted the locus of organizing in the coalfields and society more broadly away from trade unionism and toward community-based organizing. Second, men and women derive symbolic capital—resources that contribute to status and identity—from different social environments in Appalachia (and elsewhere). Third, women, for historical reasons, actually go about organizing in different ways than men do. Several historical contingencies have changed the primary sites of organizing (the first of these factors). The shifting locus of conflict with industry and capital away from trade unionism and toward community organizing is an effect of neoliberal trends in economy and politics. A brief list of factors associated with this shift includes the decline in trade unionism in general, 124 CHAPTER 7 the decline in the United Mine Workers of America (UMWA) specifically, the restructuring of capital, the restructuring of the mining industry, and the changing role of the state in relation to capital. This shift is apparent around the world, but Appalachia’s coalfields provide a particularly clear example. Second, women derive symbolic capital from different sources than do men. This has two dimensions. The locus of women’s identities in Appalachia’s coalfields has historically been closer to the homeplace, which doubled as the workplace for many women. This offered women more freedom to transcend traditional constraints on labor and link together broader community issues into a single activist cause. Also, men’s symbolic capital has historically been related to their capacity as breadwinner and derived from the commercial workplace and, perhaps of greater importance in Coal River, its interlocutor, the union. The union’s declining membership numbers and its loss of prestige and power in recent decades compromised a primary source of men’s symbolic capital. Women are able to take advantage of the historical fact that they were always involved in union activism—usually in informal but meaningful ways. In the union climate that developed after 1980, it became easier for women to create a social space outside the hierarchy and patriarchy of the United Mine Workers. From this space, centered in the more traditionally female-gendered spaces of home, family, and community rather than in the traditionally masculine spaces of the coal mine or the union hall, women can address a broader range of organizing themes that transcend a conventional labor perspective. Drawing on this community-based space, women tend to emphasize different qualities in organizing than those typically associated with labor organizing . One male community activist summarized locally recognized differences in leadership styles. Women, he argued, fostered a more collaborative and cooperative approach to activism. Based on his own experience, he described an archetype of male leadership that he calls the “charismatic asshole.” Working with these broad themes of gendered activism, I highlight characteristics of CRMW and their collaborators on matters of leadership, style, and activism. * * * CRMW’s ascendance in the coalfields and in the state activist community owed much to the changing status of the union and the socioeconomic shifts in capital and politics. The union’s fading created the need for a new structure to represent local people against the power of the coal industry and the state. Even with the union in a weakened state, CRMW and the FOM coalition had nowhere near the power of the UMWA, particularly in formal power centers like state government. But the activist community filled an impor- Gender, Solidarity, and Symbolic Capital 125 tant social role locally and in the state by providing...