Factions and Corporate Political Strategies in Harlan County, Kentucky: Implications for Community Sustainability

Author: Amy Winston

Dissertation School: Purdue University

Abstract:
The purpose of this dissertation is to illustrate the effect that corporate political strategies have on a community's shift from extractive industry (coal mining) to a more sustainable economic base. My hypothesis is that the strategies that extractive labor communities evolve for coping with the decline of extractive industry and its consequences parallel the closed corporate community features elaborated by Eric Wolf (1956, 1957, 1986), including features such as shared power, economic egalitarianism, and a pronounced social integration of the community. To test this, I went to Benham and adjacent towns in the mountains of Harlan County, in southeastern Kentucky, where a coal mining operation has recently ceased production. There, I found that economic development efforts involve a revitalization movement that stresses community autonomy and grassroots leadership.

Group-oriented behaviors in this community are reinforced by a cadre of women, who initially came to activism through their involvement in civic duties fostered by their participation in the local garden club. Their community pride, determination, and subsequent accomplishments eventually propelled them into positions on the city council and a mayoral seat. Their group-oriented political strategies de-emphasize individual achievement to celebrate community, grassroots empowerment, and environmentally sound development. The garden club's approach to community-building balances quality of life, environmental concerns, and equity issues. Their leadership pattern is more inclusive than the previous administration and that of adjacent communities. In contrast, a faction of moneyed interests with political backing from the coal industry exploits community fractures to centralize three adjacent owns, including Benham, and promote modernizations that will bring highway construction and attract industry and tourists to the region. While both factions conceptualize economic success, my research aims to understand the origins of mechanisms facilitating communal regulation of courses of power in the women's homegrown strategy.

Mobilizing resources and recruiting political volunteers depends on convincing community members to invest in community and work for group goals. Given a long history of patron-client relationships that have structured community life, competition within and among communities in this region is best understood in terms of a pervasive factionalism built around influential political actors. Factions drawn along community, class, and sex lines compete for power over community resources. Political clout derives from the ability to control resources, operate public services, build and maintain infrastructure, and govern over community festivals, political celebrations, and ceremonial occasions. Groups battle for the cultural heritage of the community in disputes over where the line is drawn between celebrating and strengthening local values and exploiting and stereotyping mountain culture. Town histories are recounted in nostalgic past, smoothing over class- and race-based differences, as well as history-making labor conflicts.

Can the closed corporate community, an established anthropological concept, be applied fruitfully to the problem of Appalachian economic development? I suggest it will improve the ability of policymakers to understand how a local cultural subtradition evolves under conditions of deindustrialization. For one, this approach should contribute to a debate among Appalachian scholars centering on the tensions between communal values and commercial competition (see Pudup, Billings, and Waller 1995; Salstrom 1994). I contextualize my analysis of closed corporate community development by viewing it as a pattern of cycles of closure (Skinner 1971) To do this, I studied community documents to identify changes in a how resources are distributed in the community. Are interactions with the world beyond the mountains voluntary or necessary? What has been the role of industry and state/federal government? What cultural traits have been eroded or adapted due to migration patterns?

Of particular interest to my analysis is the role of power-broker, who established social ties like political connections or business contacts with the outside to vertically link the community to a web of group relations that spans from locality to nation (Wolf 1969). How do communities respond to the strategies of such power brokers? The literature on closed-corporate communities addresses the issue of the development of closed community boundaries in a way that should throw light on the political dynamics of Benham (Wolf 1956, 1957, 1969, 1986), Skinner (1971), Harris (1956), Cancian (1989, 1992), Schneider (1995), Roseberry (1989), Rambo (1979). They are formulated by Wolf (1955) and described in Wolf (1956, 1986), Harris (1969), Cancian (1965, 1989, 1992), Skinner (1971), and Rambo (1974) as factors that contribute to community closure patterns.

Research Design and Methodology
To ensure the validity and reliability of my results, I developed an empirical research design. Quantitative data were compiled using a random sample community survey and several primary sources, including city and county records and private coal company documents. Qualitative data were collected from community blueprints, land maps, photographs, participant-observation, and interviews. By triangulating the two types of data, I am able to begin to understand how factions form, assess the ways and extent that religions and ideological factors inform political relations, and study how economic interests and initiative are used to obtain political power or to bring about change in the political arena (cf. McGlynn and Tuden 1991:21).

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