Undermined In Coal Country

A study of lives and landscapes in Pennsylvania’s Lackawanna Valley and “what the region’s history of mining reveals about human folly and endeavor” (The Chronicle of Higher Education). Deep mining ended decades ago in Pennsylvania’s Lackawanna Valley. The barons who made their fortunes have moved on. Low wages and high unemployment haunt the area, and the people left behind wonder whether to stay or seek their fortunes elsewhere. Bill Conlogue explores how two overlapping coal country landscapes—Scranton, Pennsylvania, and Marywood University—have coped with the devastating aftermath of mining. Examining the far-reaching environmental effects of mining, this beautifully written book asks bigger questions about what it means to influence a landscape to this extent—and then to live in it. In prose rivaling that of Annie Dillard and John McPhee, Conlogue argues that, if we are serious about solving environmental problems, if we are serious about knowing where we are and what happens there, we need to attend closely to all places—that is, to attend to the world in a cold, dark, and disorienting universe. Unearthing new ways of thinking about place, pedagogy, and the environment, this meditative text reveals that place is inherently unstable.

"Unearthing new ways of thinking about place, pedagogy, and the environment, "On the Measures" argues that place is unstable. To study dimensions of place, the book explores two working landscapes: 1) Scranton, Pennsylvania, an undermined, former coal-mining city, and 2) Marywood University, a Scranton institution that confronts the aftermath of mining. Scranton and Marywood have endured the narrative of extraction that the Anthracite Region once celebrated. Recounting removal of parts of this place to feed other places, the story defines loss here as gain there: the city and college have suffered but the United States has grown stronger. The tale ends badly, however, because the narrative arcs toward exhaustion; the storyline offers little about renewal. Growing up with this narrative, Scrantonians have been fleeing the city for decades; the dominant trend among young people has long been to learn here to move elsewhere. Too few environmental humanists have sufficiently examined the primary place where many work: the university. When they do, they often do not link the university to its local, regional, and national environmental contexts. In exploring where Conlogue teaches, he shows how bound up places of learning are with unsettling sites of resource extraction. Defending the study of literature and history, "On the Measures" shows university students that the disciplines they study are parts of an interdisciplinary web of meaning that includes the contexts of the places where they learn"--

An illustrated chronicle of the growing protest movement against mountaintop removal mining (MTR) of coal in Appalachia, including essays, commentary, and oral histories.

The Routledge Handbook of Environmental Justice presents an extensive and cutting-edge introduction to the diverse, rapidly growing body of research on pressing issues of environmental justice and injustice. With wide-ranging discussion of current debates, controversies, and questions in the history, theory, and methods of environmental justice research, contributed by over 90 leading social scientists, natural scientists, humanists, and scholars from professional disciplines from six continents, it is an essential resource both for newcomers to this research and for experienced scholars and practitioners. The chapters of this volume examine the roots of environmental justice activism, lay out and assess key theories and approaches, and consider the many different substantive issues that have been the subject of activism, empirical research, and policy development throughout the world. The Handbook features critical reviews of quantitative, qualitative, and mixed methodological approaches and explicitly addresses interdisciplinarity, transdisciplinarity, and engaged research. Instead of adopting a narrow regional focus, it tackles substantive issues and presents perspectives from political and cultural systems across the world, as well as addressing activism for environmental justice at the global scale. Its chapters do not simply review the state of the art, but also propose new conceptual frameworks and directions for research, policy, and practice. Providing detailed but accessible overviews of the complex, varied dimensions of environmental justice and injustice, the Handbook is an essential guide and reference not only for researchers engaged with environmental justice, but also for undergraduate and graduate teaching and for policymakers and activists.