![]() ![]() ![]() Coal Hollow is meant to draw attention to the plight of poor people in the coalfields of Appalachia, but because of the way it repeats historical tropes of Appalachian difference, the book does not challenge the common-sense notion that this poverty is a result of cultural dysfunction, not industrial exploitation. The paper analyzes the representation of coalfield poverty in Coal Hollow, a book of photographs and oral histories by Ken and Melanie Light, published by the University of California Press in 2006. This social distance suggests that the conditions of environmental degradation and economic exploitation depicted have nothing to do with "average" Americans, but only affect less worthy Others. Such representations create social distance between the object and the consumer of these images. In this paper, I argue that stereotypical representations of white Appalachian poverty reflect a widespread logic of othering that helps construct a sense of safety for members of the middle class in the face of various forms of uncertainty. ![]()
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