This project critically evaluates liberal development plans created for Central Appalachia by the Appalachian Regional Commission (ARC) through a historical materialist lens. It demonstrates that these plans and their explicitly liberal origins are not sufficient for the working classes in the region to achieve a sustainable 'post-coal' future. Central Appalachia is one of the most impoverished regions in the United States and its political economy was shaped largely by coal mining that was overseen by absentee proprietors. This mono-economic structure has bred unique political conditions in the region. The economics of coal have historically influenced most political decisions. As the coal industry has declined, the region has been subjected to multitudes of economic development plans from the ARC. However, Central Appalachia still exists as an impoverished peripheral zone within the United States' political economy. This thesis is motivated by the decline of coal and the economic and ecological hardships this has created for the region's working-class, and the urgent need to begin envisioning a post-coal future for the region which avoids the insufficiency of liberal economic development. The thesis is not purely an attack on the ARC as an organization, but is rather a critique of the methods they use to enact economic development and shows how these methods are not only inadequate for the Appalachian working class, but all working classes subjected to the liberal economic development model. / Master of Arts / This paper evaluates the efficacy of the Appalachian Regional Commission (ARC) economic development plans. The ARC is the federal agency tasked with reducing poverty in the Appalachian region and was created in 1965. They have enacted over 28,000 development plans and spent $4.5 billion since 1965, but Appalachia is still relatively impoverished in comparison to the rest of the United States. This impoverishment is largely due to the prevalence of the coal industry in the region and the fact that most political and economic decisions were influenced by the coal industry. However, the industry has been declining for several decades now, and this has created economic hardship for many in the region, as there are very few industries that have taken its place, leading to widespread unemployment. This paper focuses specifically on the Central Appalachian region of Southeastern Kentucky, Southwest Virginia, Northeastern Tennessee, and West Virginia. These states had the highest amount of people employed in the coal industry during its heyday, so they have borne the brunt of its decline. I offer a critique of the ARC's model of development and suggest solutions for mitigating the difficult situation in Central Appalachia and explore how the region can achieve a 'post-coal' future that does not rely on the current mechanisms of the ARC's model of development. This critique is informed by historical perspectives that highlight how Central Appalachia was structured as a peripheral zone in the larger US economy that served only to enrich the metropolitan areas of the US and world at great cost to the people of Central Appalachia and their natural environment. I perform my analysis through a historical overview of the economic structure of Central Appalachia as well as a content analysis of six ARC documents that outline their frameworks and methodologies for achieving economic development. While the paper is a critique of the ARC, the emphasis is more so on the particular method that the ARC uses to achieve economic development in the region.
| Identifer | oai:union.ndltd.org:VTETD/oai:vtechworks.lib.vt.edu:10919/110883 |
| Date | 17 May 2022 |
| Creators | Gore, Caleb William |
| Contributors | Political Science, Scerri, Andrew Joseph, Bell, Shannon E., Daggett, Cara, Gill, Bikrum Singh |
| Publisher | Virginia Tech |
| Source Sets | Virginia Tech Theses and Dissertation |
| Language | English |
| Detected Language | English |
| Type | Thesis |
| Format | ETD, application/pdf |
| Rights | In Copyright, http://rightsstatements.org/vocab/InC/1.0/ |
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