Big Rural: Rural Industrial Places, Democracy, and What Next (Studies in Urban–Rural Dynamics)

In Big Rural: Rural Industrial Places, Democracy, and What Next, Crystal Cook Marshall unveils the rural not as wild and unknowable but as measured and intervened-in as big cities. Drawing international comparisons with a case study centering on the Pocahontas Coalfield, Cook Marshall documents that rural places are often systems among systems that scientists and engineers heavily shape both in landscape and culture. Often single sector economies with consolidated power and automation away of jobs, these rural industrial places compound the problems of their inhabitants, even threatening their capacity to practice democracy. Cook Marshall interacts with rural interveners from industry to Rural Studies and Science and Technology scholars to policy advocates, also detailing the gaps in related scholarship. Building from analysis, she proposes a range of antidotes to the extraction and destruction of “Big Rural” both in material life and in knowledge, such as potential National Rural and Sustainable Agricultural strategies. Through these, in interviews with rural change agents, through research, and through local and federal paths, Cook Marshall asserts a way forward for the rural that is more equitable and just. Cover Half Title Series Page Title Page Copyright Page Foreword Editors, Studies in Urban-Rural Dynamics Book Series Preface Overview Personal Reflection Pocahontas Coalfield as Subject of Theory and Analysis Notes Acknowledgments Introduction The Importance of Field Observations: Academic and Stakeholder Conversations That Need to Happen Spokes In and Out of the Pocahontas Coalfield An Aside into the “Rural” An Aside into Appalachia Constructing an Industrial Space Notes Chapter 1: Technology and the State of the State in the Pocahontas Coalfield Overview Poverty’s Persistence Has Roots and Reasons Agrarian Technological Shifts and Remaining Timber and Extraction Issues Boom and Bust of Coal Demand and Employment Democracy Deficit, Corruption, and Decline of Social Capital The Limits of Utility for the Concept of the Resource Curse Problems Now, Yet Lack of Leaders Ranks First Words and Thoughts of Grasstops in the Pocahontas Coalfield Conclusion Notes Jason Tartt, Sr. Note Chapter 2: Scientific Promises and Prosperity: Constructing the Rural Industrial Space Overview Promoting Science and Data to Sell Nature and a Patriotic Plan for “Improvement” A Fight for “Development” Rational Rural and Patriotic Science Rationalizes the Land, Measuring, Quantifying, Making Nature Understandable, and Thereby, Malleable Flattening the Pocahontas Coalfield Black-Boxing the Pocahontas Coalfield Reflecting Again on Big Rural Scientists Taking Responsibility in the Rural Industrial Space Corporate Science and Technology and Democracy Deficit in Lindytown, West Virginia Lindytown as Read through Achille Mbembe’s “Necropolitics” Lindytown by Barry, Biggers, and Letson Extensions: Necropolitics and Lindytown Extension 1: Sovereignty Extension 2: State of Exception Extension 3: Politics as the Work of Death Extension 4: The Enslavement Extension 5: Science as Knowledge Creation Conclusion Notes Atlas Charles Notes Chapter 3: Democratic Possibilities and Policies in Big Rural Overview Policies Decentralize LTS and Support Metis-Friendly Institutions Support Science and Engineering That Truly Add More Knowledge Rather than Flatten Metis: Promote Science and Technology That Supports and Stewards the Rural Build on Regional Groups and Their Emerging Coordination Look to the Present and the Future, But Don’t Muddle or Deify the Past What Good Old Days? Whose Good Old Days? Redefine Region, Redefine Power, Connect Across the Rural Redefine Regional Success Search for Other Assets Science and Technology for Other Assets: Reorient All State Institutions of Community and Higher Education to Solving Regional Issues Recognize the Fallacy of Economic Diversification of the Rural in the United States as a Rescue Tactic Stop Educating the Rural to Leave the Rural Create a Real National Rural Strategy/Policy beyond the Farm Bill Notes Chapter 4: So, What of a National Rural Strategy? Ode to Enchanted Light National Rural Strategy Conclusion Notes Amelia Bandy Note Chapter 5: Toward a National Sustainable Agricultural Strategy Reintroducing Local/Regional Agricultural Metis Big Rural LTS Agriculture as State of Exception—the Whole World as Lindytown, WV National Sustainable Agriculture Strategy National Sustainable Agricultural Strategy Sustainable Agriculture Infrastructure = The Milestone to Sector Development Notes A White Paper as a Community Act The White Paper Excerpts: October 2022 Farming Is Much More than Flat Acreage and Massive Tractors What Are the Other Major Current Issues? Producing Food Again Where We Are: Food Resilience, Community Resilience, Connection to Heritage, Reskilling, Serving Local and Export Markets, Ending Our Addictions Mountain Farming and Our Renewed Rural Identity Investment in Data, Research, Pilots, Infrastructure for Mountain Farming Getting Ready for the Twenty-Second Century Conclusion Notes Epilogue Note Appendices Appendix A Appendix B Appendix C Appendix D Appendix E Notes Glossary A B C D E F G H I L M O P R S T U V W Bibliography Index About the Author