In the Shadow of

Abstract

This dissertation examines the cultural and lived experiences of economic abandonment in deindustrialized zones by exploring how residents of a former single-industry economy negotiate this process via communicative constructions of identity, class, and social memory. As this work examines the conflicts about economic decline, class, and memory that inform the predicament of the residents of small towns within Appalachia and beyond, it contributes to ethnographies of deindustrialization in advanced capitalist societies, in zones of mass mineral extraction, as well as to other work on the Appalachian Region. The analysis of these constructions is based on three sets of data: material gathered during two years of offline ethnographic fieldwork in the Anthracite Coal Region of Northeastern Pennsylvania, autoethnography, and the collaboration with local participants vis-à-vis a multi-modal and multi-sited "public digital humanities collaboratory" called “the Anthracite Coal Region of Northeastern Pennsylvania Digital Project” (the latter, a term I develop to expand the methodological vocabulary), to which community members contributed through communication forums about the history, culture, and media representations of the Coal Region. Three narrative chapters analyze a series of lived experiences and theoretical concerns. The first of these chapters, chapter four, analyzes how place, identity, and memory link with past and present class, labor, and industrial dynamics, as well as landscapes left to ruin to demonstrate how, in the Anthracite Region “King Coal” maintains hegemony. Although the mining industry no longer exists as a viable form of employment, inhabitants still consider themselves residents of “The Coal Region,” and dialogue with modes of identification that evolved in the Anthracite Coal Region. These identifications unite earlier diverse, pan-ethnic identities tied to Europe and are at the basis of the emergence of a new subjectivity—a "coalcracker"—one with family who worked in the mines literally “cracking the coal.” As the landscapes are left to ruin, I develop the term "environmental classism" to conceptualize the impact of the fallout from King Coal. Chapter five examines dominant mediated imaginaries of Centralia, Pennsylvania, which have become cultural tropes for a modern ghost town. In these dominant narratives, the obliteration of Centralia, subject to an underground mine fire for 57 years, has been largely produced for the consumption, commodification, commercialization, and the aesthetic experience of either tourists or horror genre fans. I term this production "cultural extractivism" or the expropriation of cultural resources, memory artifacts, images, narratives, or stories extracted from a marginalized or forgotten community or culture for use by a dominant community or culture. The chapter shows local residents challenging such "cultural extractivisms." Chapter six examines the demolition of the Saint Nicholas Coal Breaker, the last anthracite coal breaker and the largest one in the world, a topic that surfaced on the "public digital humanities collaboratory" and compelled considerable discussion. Research on this discussion demonstrates that this structure served as a coping mechanism for community members. Local residents constructed labor-related identities tied to social memory around it. These analyses of how Coal Region residents used their agency to create artifacts suggest that media can be a site of resistance. In addition to the artifacts presented on the "public digital humanities collaboratory," community members submitted and curated their own (unsolicited) artifacts. Theoretical flashpoints emerged, often resulting in local residents issuing challenges to dominant narratives and politics about the Coal Region. This ethnographic research involves offline immersive contact with informants extending to online interactions that resulted in methodological and theoretical expansions which provide the basis for communication scholars and ethnographers 1. to rethink ideas about how they conceive online and offline spaces previously thought of in binary terms; and, 2. likewise to reconsider ethnographic research on economic abandonment in marginalized communities beyond urban and rural binaries.