Energy Citizenship

Coal and Democracy in the American Century

Trish Kahle (Autor)

Buch | Softcover

448 Seiten

2024
Columbia University Press (Verlag)
978-0-231-21545-9 (ISBN)

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The history of the modern United States is the history of coal—and of coal miners. Trish Kahle reveals miners as forgers of a coal-fired social contract that was contested throughout the twentieth century as Americans sought to define the meaning of citizenship in an energy-intensive democracy.

Energy Citizenship traces the uncertain relationship between coal and democracy from the Progressive Era to the election of Ronald Reagan, examining how miners’ democratic aspirations confronted the deadly record of the country’s coal mines. Miners and their communities bore the burdens of energy production while reaping far fewer of the benefits of energy consumption. But they insisted that death in the mines, far from being inevitable, was a political choice. Kahle demonstrates that coal miners’ struggles to democratize the workplace, secure civil and social rights, and obtain restitution for the human toll of progress reshaped U.S. laws, regulatory administrations, and political imaginaries. Energy policy in the twentieth century was about not only managing fuels but also negotiating the relationship between coal miners and the rest of the country, which depended on the electric power and steel produced with the coal they mined.

Placing coal miners at the center of a sweeping new history of the United States, this book unmasks the violence of energy systems and shows how energy governance cuts to the heart of persistent questions about democracy, justice, and equality.

Trish Kahle is a historian of energy, work, and politics at Georgetown University Qatar and coleads the Energy Humanities Research Initiative at the Center for International and Regional Studies.

Note on Graphic Content
Introduction. The Paradox of Coal-Fired Democracy
Part I: Forging (1880–1950)
1. Civil War in the Coalfield State
2. National Problem, National Obligation
3. War and Peace
Part II: Stasis (1950–1969)
First Interlude: Between Deep Time and the Future
4. Atomic Menace
5. An Inherent Danger of Explosion
Part III: Renegotiation (1969–1972)
Second Interlude: This Total-Energy Dream
6. Walk Out—Before They Carry You Out
7. If Letcher County Was a Pie . . .
8. Jobs, Lives, and Land
Part IV: Bounding (1973–1981)
Third Interlude: East and West
9. Rights and Obligations
10. A Revolution of Declining Expectations
Conclusion. Energy Citizenship in Transition
Acknowledgments
List of Abbreviations
Notes
Index

Erscheinungsdatum	10.08.2024
Zusatzinfo	30 b&w Illustrations
Verlagsort	New York
Sprache	englisch
Maße	152 x 229 mm
Themenwelt	Geisteswissenschaften ► Geschichte ► Regional- / Ländergeschichte
	Geschichte ► Teilgebiete der Geschichte ► Kulturgeschichte
	Sozialwissenschaften ► Politik / Verwaltung ► Staat / Verwaltung
	Sozialwissenschaften ► Soziologie ► Makrosoziologie
ISBN-10	0-231-21545-2 / 0231215452
ISBN-13	978-0-231-21545-9 / 9780231215459
Zustand	Neuware