Appalachia

The Study of Community Life in Appalachia

Few reputable regionwide studies of community life in Appalachia exist. Even the earliest of these studies caution against generalizations concerning residents of the region. The majority of community studies focus on a single community or county, usually in central Appalachia—the poorest and most rural section of the region—or in the more rural areas of southern Appalachia. Until the mid-1970s, with a few notable exceptions, these studies shared the assumption that the far-reaching social and economic problems prevalent in Appalachia were the result of forces unique to the Appalachian region. In particular, these studies often linked low educational achievement, dysfunctional families, violence, poverty, welfare dependency, and a host of other community problems to the existence of an Appalachian folk culture that had failed to prepare its people for the cooperative, interrelated, technical society in which they now lived. During this same period, family and community historians of Appalachia were offering a romanticized notion of a preindustrial Appalachia that closely exemplified Thomas Jefferson's democratic vision of self-sufficient communities characterized by widespread land ownership, a relatively equal distribution of resources, few class distinctions, and egalitarian cooperation.

Beginning in the late 1970s, a new generation of Appalachian scholars began to examine the devastating impact of modernization and concentrated corporate ownership and power on communities in Appalachia. Community studies now explored how the social and economic hardships faced by local residents were not a result of a defective folk culture peculiar to the region but rather were a direct consequence of corporate and government policies and actions that left people dependent upon a national and global economy. Relatedly, by locating the preindustrial history of Appalachia in the context of global capitalism, scholars are discovering the ways in which persistent poverty in Appalachian communities has been linked to the historical interaction of capitalist markets and state policies. A study by Dwight Billings and Kathleen Blee (2000) is particularly notable in this regard. This study makes clear that Appalachian communities are very much a part and product of the American mainstream and [Page 53]demonstrates the varied ways they survive and change in the face of economic crisis.

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