Austin, Kelly, and Brett Clark.

"Tearing Down Mountains: Using Spatial and Metabolic

Analysis to Investigate the Socio-Ecological Contradictions of Coal Extraction in
Appalachia." ​Critical Sociology ​38, no. 3 (2012): 437-57. doi:10.1177/0896920511409260.

Published Abstract​:
Mountaintop removal is the most profitable and efficient way to extract the low-sulfur,
bituminous coal found in Appalachia. This form of mining involves the blasting and leveling of
entire mountain ranges, which dismantles integrated ecosystems and communities. We employ a
political-economy perspective in order to assess the uneven capitalist development and
socio-ecological contradictions of mountaintop removal. In particular, we use theorization on
spatial inequalities to employ and extend a metabolic analysis to coal extraction. This approach
reveals how metabolic rifts are created in the nutrient, carbon, and water cycles, producing a
myriad of social and ecological problems in the Appalachian region. Mountaintop removal
embodies the unsustainable characteristics of an economic system predicated on the constant
accumulation of capital.

Their Keywords:
political economy, mountaintop removal, spatial analysis, metabolic rift analysis, economic
development, climate change, environment, sustainability

Our Notes:
Clark and Kelly uses the Marxist theory of metabolic analysis to draw a direct correlation
between large commercial coal extraction in the region (specifically through the means of
mountaintop removal) and poverty. Patterns of absentee land ownership and the transfer of
natural resources to distant sites of production contribute to the uneven development of
capitalism, as capital is depleted from the region. The authors discuss the region as an
“environmental sacrifice zone” in that the resources taken from the region are used to primarily
benefit consumers outside the region in spite of the environmental consequences and effects on
the region, such as nutrients being washed away from soil. “Profits and electricity flow out of the
region while poverty and ecological destruction are concentrated in the extracted area.” (452)
This is one of the strongest articles in correlating the environmental issues of the region with a
direct effect on poverty. The article however makes no mention of conservation efforts and only
focuses on the commercial effects on the environment and poverty.

Our Keywords:
environmental sacrifice zone, call to action, environmental justice, Absentee Land Ownership

Scott, Shaunna. "The Appalachian Land Ownership Study Revisited." ​Appalachian

Journal​ 35, no. 3 (2008): 236-252.

No published abstract.

Their Keywords:
Our Notes:
Scott prov​ides a “retrospective” on The Appalachian Land Ownership Study, a study that
uncovered the extent of absentee and corporate land ownership and its consequences due to taxes
that were not fairly paid. Consequences that include inadequate housing, poor school systems,
and limited infrastructure. The study made a series of recommendations based on its findings
such as shifting the tax burden, protecting land owner’s rights, and regulation of land use and
environmental impacts. This article investigates how those recommendations were implemented
and the primary conclusion is that they mostly were not implemented and that not much has
changed since the report was originally made 25 years prior to this article. There are exceptions
such as a new tax on unmined minerals, and the study inspired a new crop of grassroots
organizations to confront the issues their communities are facing.

Our Keywords:
Absentee Land Ownership, Tenancy, Distribution of Benefits, Taxation, Mineral Rights

Wunderlich, Gene. "Land Ownership in Appalachia: The Limits of Public Interest

Research." Appalachian Journal 11, no. 4 (1984): 432-436.

No published abstract

Our Notes:
This article is listed as a research article but often reads like a book review of “Who Owns
Appalachia: land ownership and its impact” it offers some interesting critiques like suggesting
that the study fails to distinguish between concentration and absenteeism. It also provides some
interesting insights regarding the taxation of the land as being a major issue, pointing out that the
low taxation of the land causes more issues like poorly funded schools and other resources. He
makes a very brief point but one worth noting that has not been addressed by other articles
discussing the study stating black landowners were particularly vulnerable to corporations
buying up land in the region.

Our Keywords:
Absentee Land Ownership, Taxation, Displacement,

Rasmussen, Barbara. Absentee Landowning and Exploitation in West Virginia, 1760-1920.

University Press of Kentucky, 2015.
Published Abstract:
Absentee landowning has long been tied to economic distress in Appalachia. In this important
revisionist study, Barbara Rasmussen examines the nature of landownership in five counties of
West Virginia and its effects upon the counties' economic and social development. Rasmussen
untangles a web of outside domination of the region that commenced before the American
Revolution, creating a legacy of hardship that continues to plague Appalachia today. The owners
and exploiters of the region have included Lord Fairfax, George Washington, and, most recently,
the U.S. Forest Service. The overarching concern of these absentee landowners has been to
control the land, the politics, the government, and the resources of the fabulously rich
Appalachian Mountains. Their early and relentless domination of politics assured a land tax
system that still favors absentee landholders and simultaneously impoverishes the state. Class
differences, a capitalistic outlook, and an ethic of growth and development pervaded western
Virginia from earliest settlement. Residents, however, were quickly outspent by wealthier, more
powerful outsiders. Insecurity in landownership, Rasmussen demonstrates, is the most significant
difference between early mountain farmers and early American farmers everywhere.

Their Keywords:
Our Notes:
Our Keywords:
Taxation, Absentee Land Ownership

Force, Appalachian Land Ownership Task. ​Who owns Appalachia?: Landownership and its
impact​. University Press of Kentucky, 2015.

Published Abstract:
Long viewed as a problem in other countries, the ownership of land and resources is becoming
an issue of mounting concern in the United States. Nowhere has it surfaced more dramatically
than in the southern Appalachians where the exploitation of timber and mineral resources has
been recently aggravated by the ravages of strip-mining and flash floods. This landmark study of
the mountain ​region​ documents for the first time the full scale and extent of the ownership and
control of the ​region​'s land and resources and shows in a compelling, yet non-polemical fashion
the relationship between this control and conditions affecting the lives of the ​region​'s
people.Begun in 1978 and extending through 1980, this survey of land ownership is notable for
the magnitude of ​its​ coverage. It embraces six states of the southern ​Appalachian​ ​region​ --
Virginia, West Virginia, Kentucky, Tennessee, North Carolina, and Alabama. From these states
the research team selected 80 counties, and within those counties field workers documented the
ownership of over 55,000 parcels of property, totaling over 20 million acres of land and mineral
rights.The survey is equally significant for ​its​ systematic investigation of the relations between
ownership and conditions within ​Appalachian​ communities. Researchers compiled data on 100
socioeconomic indicators and correlated these with the ownership of land and mineral rights. The
findings of the survey form a generally dark picture of the ​region​ -- local governments
struggling to provide needed services on tax revenues that are at once inadequate and
inequitable; economic development and diversification stifled; increasing loss of farmland, a
traditional source of subsistence in the ​region​. Most evident perhaps is the adverse effect upon
housing resulting from corporate ownership and land speculation. Nor is the trend toward greater
conglomerate ownership of energy resources, the expansion of absentee ownership into new
areas, and the search for new mineral and energy sources encouraging. ​Who Owns​ ​Appalachia​?
will be an enduring resource for all those interested in this ​region​ and ​its​ problems. It is,
moreover, both a model and a document for social and economic concerns likely to be of critical
importance for the entire nation.

Their Keywords:
Local finance, Real property tax, Mineral industries--Taxation, Land tenure, Land use, Rural

Our Notes:

Our Keywords:
Absentee Land Ownership

Newfont, Kathryn. Blue Ridge Commons : environmental activism and forest history in
western North Carolina. n.p.: Athens : University of Georgia Press, c2012., 2012.

Published Abstract:
In the late twentieth century, residents of the Blue Ridge mountains in western North Carolina
fiercely resisted certain environmental efforts, even while launching aggressive initiatives of
their own. Kathryn Newfont examines the environmental history of this region over the course of
three hundred years, identifying what she calls commons environmentalism—a cultural strain of
conservation in American history that has gone largely unexplored.
Efforts in the 1970s to expand federal wilderness areas in the Pisgah and Nantahala national
forests generated strong opposition. For many mountain residents the idea of unspoiled
wilderness seemed economically unsound, historically dishonest, and elitist. Newfont shows that
local people’s sense of commons environmentalism required access to the forests that they
viewed as semipublic places for hunting, fishing, and working. Policies that removed large tracts
from use were perceived as “enclosure” and resisted.
These battles often pitted industrialists against environmentalists. Newfont argues that the side
that most effectively hitched its cause to local residents’ commons culture usually won. A few
perceptive activists realized that the same cultural ground that yielded wilderness opposition
could also produce ambitious protection efforts, such as Blue Ridge residents’ opposition to
petroleum exploration and clearcut timber harvesting.
Incorporating deep archival work and years of interviews and conversations with Appalachian
residents, ​Blue Ridge Commons​ reveals a tradition of people building robust forest protection
movements on their own terms.

Their Keywords:

Our Notes:

Our Keywords:
Absentee Land Ownership, Commons