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In the coal-mining region of Central Appalachia, mountaintop-removal
mining and coal-industry-related flooding, water contamination, and illness have led
to the emergence of a grassroots, women-driven environmental justice movement. But
the number of local activists is small relative to the affected population, and
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In the coal-mining region of Central Appalachia, mountaintop-removal
mining and coal-industry-related flooding, water contamination, and illness have led
to the emergence of a grassroots, women-driven environmental justice movement. But
the number of local activists is small relative to the affected population, and
recruiting movement participants from within the region is an ongoing challenge.

In Fighting King Coal, Shannon Elizabeth Bell
examines an understudied puzzle within social movement theory: why so few of the
many people who suffer from industry-produced environmental hazards and pollution
rise up to participate in social movements aimed at bringing about social justice
and industry accountability. Using the coal-mining region of Central Appalachia as a
case study, Bell investigates the challenges of micromobilization through in-depth
interviews, participant observation, content analysis, geospatial viewshed analysis,
and an eight-month "Photovoice" project -- an innovative means of
studying, in real time, the social dynamics affecting activist involvement in the
region. Although the Photovoice participants took striking photographs and wrote
movingly about the environmental destruction caused by coal production, only a few
became activists. Bell reveals the importance of local identities to the success or
failure of local recruitment efforts in social movement struggles, ultimately
arguing that, if the local identities of environmental justice movements are lost,
the movements may also lose their power.