Environmental Concern in a Wyoming Coal Community: Corporate Power, Environmental Labor and “Anti-Environmentalist” Environmental Stewardship

• In Event: 2251 - Section on Environmental Sociology Roundtables (1 hour)
  In Refereed Roundtable 60min: 14. Everyday Environmentalism: Critical Perspectives

Abstract

Political polarization has constituted one reason that the U.S. has yet to be successful in addressing many growing environmental issues. One site of such polarization is the debate surrounding coal between coal mining communities and environmental groups. Developing an understanding of environmental concerns of individuals in coal mining communities may help promote collaboration between these groups. Yet few studies have assessed the environmental concerns of individuals in resource extraction communities and the influence of the local extractive industry on these concerns. I conducted in-depth interviews in a coal mining community in the Powder River Basin (PRB) in northeast Wyoming to examine environmental concern in a community dependent on resource extraction. I asked: 1) What are the environmental concerns, identities and understandings of people in this coal community? 2) How are these views influenced by coal companies and labor-environment interactions? Results indicate that in the PRB, industry activities, coupled with day-to-day actions of coal miners, contribute to the generation and maintenance of a circumscribed form of environmental concern that legitimizes certain types of environmental issues as valid while encouraging miners and other community members to dismiss others. This process takes place in a context in which coal miners and members of their community maintain a salient and influential sense of environmental stewardship, which is accompanied by corresponding practices. Environmental views in the PRB are co-constructed with certain views toward environmentalists, and in the historical context of certain possibilities for envisioning environmental futures. Through this analysis I outline a previously unidentified mechanism of polarization between environmentalists and coal community members - corporate influence in the construction of environmental concern - that contributes to the maintenance of industry power. To conclude I suggest academic and practical implications of the described mechanism of polarization.

Author

• Dawn Harfmann, University of Oregon