Coal power: Class, fetishism, memory, and disjuncture in Romania’s Jiu Valley and Appalachian West Virginia
10.7340/anuac2239-625X-3291
L’articolo esamina le rotture sociali causate dal declino dell’industria del carbone nella valle del Jiu (Romania) e nella Virginia occidentale (USA). In entrambe le regioni il carbone è oggetto di culto feticistico, catalizzattore di fede e creatore di senso. Quando i feticci perdono potere, ne consegue una crisi sociale. Si pensa spesso che il declino del carbone abbia effetti comuni a tutte le regioni carbonifere. L’articolo individua quattro fattori responsabili delle variazioni regionali: 1) l’economia politica di classe e del controllo industriale; 2) il potere dello stato sulle miniere; 3) l’entità e la diversità delle organizzazioni non governative legate al sistema di controllo industriale; 4) l’attivismo di genere, così come emerge dall'economia politica. Rispetto a questi fattori sono prese in esame condizioni sociali, memoria e nostalgia. Nella valle del Jiu, si riscontrano indebolimento organizzativo e nostalgia del carbone, così come declino dei conflitti legati al carbone, ora appannaggio delle élite regionali. In Virginia, uno stato debole, un dinamico contesto associativo e l'attivismo femminile generano conflitto tra sostenitori e oppositori del carbone. Tali circostanze influenzano anche il futuro delle regioni. La popolazione della valle del Jiu è sostenuta dallo Stato, che tuttavia ne indebolisce identità di classe e tentativi di cambiamento. In Virginia la conflittualità dell’ambiente associativo è invece generatrice di energia tesa verso il futuro.
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Coal power: Class, fetishism, memory, and disjuncture in Romania’s Jiu Valley and Appalachian West Virginia
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Coal power: Class, fetishism, memory, and disjuncture in Romania’s Jiu Valley and Appalachian West Virginia
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                                                      2018 | ANUAC. VOL. 7, N° 1, GIUGNO 2018: 67-88




Coal power
Class, fetishism, memory, and disjuncture in Romania’s Jiu Valley
and Appalachian West Virginia
David A. KIDECKEL
Central Connecticut State University




ABSTRACT: This essay compares the social disjuncture of coal’s decline in Romaniaʼs Jiu
Valley and southern West Virginia/Appalachia. In both regions coal is fetishized, con-
centrating belief and creating a paradigm of meaning. But when fetishes lose power, so-
cial dislocation results. Coalʼs decline is often thought to produce common conditions
in former coal regions. However, we suggest four factors shape regional variation: 1)
political economy of class and industrial control; 2) state power over mining; 3) extent
and diversity of non-governmental organizations related to the industrial control sys-
tem; and 4) gender activism, emerging from political economy. We examine social con-
ditions, coal memory, and nostalgia related to the above. In the Jiu Valley, there is a
weakening of organization, coal nostalgia, as well as decline in coal-related disjuncture
with existing conflict now largely a province of regional elites. In West Virginia, how-
ever, a weak state, active organizational environment, and womenʼs activism produce
conflict between coal supporters and detractors. These circumstances also influence the
regions’ futures. Jiu Valley people are protected by state intervention, but this weakens
class identity and the intensity of change efforts. In Appalachia the tensioned organiza-
tional environment perpetuates conflict but creates an intensity toward the future.

KEYWORDS: DEINDUSTRIALIZATION, DECLINE OF COAL, CLASS AND MEMORY, ROMANIA, APPALACHIA.




This work is licensed under the Creative Commons © David A. Kideckel
Coal power: Class, fetishism, memory, and disjuncture in Romania’s Jiu Valley and Appalachian West Virginia
2018 | ANUAC. VOL. 7, N° 1, GIUGNO 2018: 67-88.
ISSN: 2239-625X - DOI: 10.7340/anuac2239-625X-3291
68                                                                        DAVID A. KIDECKEL



Coal’s decline: Generalities and particulars
   Global energy transformation is gathering speed, fostering major altera-
tions in local, regional, national, and international energy beliefs and prac-
tices1. Not least are declines of coal mining and consumption due to coal’s
disappearing market (Martin 2015; Parker, Ho 2013; Paterson 2016), envir-
onmental costs (Blunden, Arndt 2015; Johansen 2015), and health implica-
tions (Epstein et al. 2011; Lockwood 2012). Steadily, coal is replaced by nat-
ural gas, solar, wind, and hydropower. Yet, coal’s decline is uneven. Estim-
ates suggest significant coal consumption for minimally the next four dec-
ades (Johansen 2015: 81; World Coal Association 2017). People in some coal-
dominated locations are confident of their economic mainstay. Others as-
sume the end of coal. But in all instances debate is joined over coal’s decline
and its influence on regional conditions.
   Coal’s decline is analogous to deindustrialization, though foundational
and further reaching. Deindustrialization is also fraught with erosion of
worker identities, wreaks havoc on entire regions, contributes to social
pathology, and generates political struggle over its meaning and remediation
(Walley 2015). But coal and its mining are the ur features of industrializa-
tion, historically preliminary, and enabling the factory system itself. Thus
coal’s decline is transformative not only to regional industrial structures, but
to industrialism’s philosophical underpinnings and its core energy system.
The reach of the coal industry into every niche of the industrial system also
ramifies coal’s decline beyond deindustrialization. Each sector of the coal
coalition of mining, power, rail transport, equipment manufacture, and
banks and other financial institutions, is implicated by coal’s decline, though
insulated from loss in deindustrialization’s shift in manufacturing from high
to low wage zones. Furthermore, coal today is condemned in a more general-
ized way than other aspects of industrialism2, even considered responsible
for destruction of the planet3. Coal’s historically determinative quality and
unity with industrialism have produced elaborate mythological and folkloric
traditions with intensely contrastive views of the element, its history, and
present-day conditions. Miners were thus either heroes or villains in indus-


1. Thanks to Theresa Burriss and two Anuac reviewers for comments on an earlier draft.
2. See, for example, the Sierra Club’s campaign, Beyond Coal (Sierra Club 2018), challenging
every aspect of the coal industry. Coal executives, trade organization representatives, and
most active miners I interviewed for this paper mentioned the Sierra Club campaign as re -
sponsible for today’s prejudiced treatment of coal.
3. Even nuclear power escapes the generalized condemnation of coal.


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COAL POWER                                                                             69


trial imaginaries about tales of strikes and labor violence in mining history
(McKay 1987). However, the meaning of coal-related violence such as West
Virginia’s Mine Wars of the 1920s or the Welsh coal strikes of the late nine-
teenth century, is differentially interpreted, suggesting either the heroism of
labor struggle and the birth of labor syndicalism (Corbin 2015), or the death-
throes of an anachronistic system and its sub-human miners4.
   By virtue of coal’s decline, the class interests supporting coal are espe-
cially threatened, producing urgent and hyperbolic rhetoric that links coal’s
decline with vast and unvarying social problems (Coal Industry Advisory
Board 2003); unemployment, poverty, malnutrition, and drug abuse. But this
essay challenges this. In fact, coal-related dislocation seems more about
coal’s integration within specific regional systems than its changing fortunes
per se. I argue four factors influence the connection between coal and social
dislocation: 1) the political economy of industrial control and the class rela-
tions emerging from that; 2) the nature of state power over the operation
and transformation of mining; 3) the extent and diversity of non-govern-
mental organizations supporting or challenging the industrial control sys-
tem; and 4) the space and practice of gender activism, itself emerging from
political economy. Hypothetically, private mining and complicit states allow
markets to dictate change in mining while collectively owned systems and
interventionist states neutralize dislocation by managing decline. Active or-
ganizational environments challenge systems of political economic control
and enable alternatives to withering economies. Women activist practices
might parry decline at community and household levels. Through such inter-
ventions, dislocation might be rendered positive, forcing people into eco-
nomically more viable futures.
   Romania’s Jiu Valley in the Western Carpathians and Appalachian south-
ern West Virginia were mono-industrial zones whose experience in coal’s
fall is broadly similar. As coal employment declined, hardship followed. In
the Jiu Valley, the mining industry (minerit) that employed slightly over
50,000 people in 1990, today employs about 4,000. Meanwhile in Appalachia,
the U.S. Energy Information Administration (2016) suggests the number (of
active Appalachian coal miners) fell from 171,000 in 1970 to 27,749 by 2015,
trends exacerbated by industry automation, global economic crisis in 2008,
low cost natural gas, and expanded renewable energy. Social pathologies
also stalk both regions. Suicide, domestic abuse, and family abandonment

4. A Franco-Romanian production of the film, Prea târziu (Too Late) by Romanian director,
Lucian Pintilie, based on a novel by Răzvan Popescu (1996) is especially representative of
this genre, with miners depicted as murderous, naked, near-savages as their industry im-
plodes around them.

                                            2018 | ANUAC. VOL. 7, N° 1, GIUGNO 2018: 67-88
70                                                                       DAVID A. KIDECKEL


became common Jiu Valley experiences (Grecu 2014), while in West Virginia
opioid addiction, inter-personal violence, broken families and petty crimin-
ality abound5.
   Nonetheless, significant differences define the zones, not least over class
ferment and the differential abilities to continue to “earn a living”, i.e. ac-
cess or dispossession from wages, which Carbonella and Kasmir (2015: 45)
consider a key diagnostic of difference in capitalist economies. The Jiu Val-
ley has shoots of entrepreneurialism and some large lumbering and wood
processing enterprises. The European state provides degrees of safety-net
protections for disappearing miners, conflict is minimal, but so is energetic
high-spiritedness. The state managed decline limits precarity, but other eco-
nomic options are few, and initiative illusive. In West Virginia, pathologies
appear bottomless. Vacant homes and empty towns are common. Poverty,
homelessness, and declining life expectancy mark the precariousness of re-
gional life. Conflict over coal, sometimes violent, is everywhere, especially
marked by loss of substantial miner wages, with only peasant-like subsist-
ence an option for many (Stoll 2017). But underneath this troubled surface,
one sees intense and bubbling change, and widespread challenge to both the
status quo ante and the region’s coal dependency. These variations thus beg
explanation.

Coal fetishism, class, and regional mythologies
       The profound and generalized significance of coal in the Jiu Valley
and southern West Virginia produces a valuation that operates much like a
religious, class-inflected fetish. Fetishes are contradictory, provoking devo-
tional joy or abject fear. Devotees believe fetish powers effect assistance,
protection, or malevolent intervention. Venerating fetishes link worshippers
and objects of their worship (Pool 1990: 116). Originating in ethnological ob-
servations of African religions, Western fetishism is generalized to food,
shoes, the future, the nation, flags, political parties, and sports heroes. But
the object of devotion obscures the modeling of key relationships, which are
often based on structures of domination. For example, June Nash (1979)
shows how the “Tio (uncle)” fetish in Bolivian tin mines aids miners’ safety,
but only if offered tobacco and liquor. Elsewise Tio threatens and destroys,
thus essentially fetishizing the relationship of miners with the foreign in-
terests, at that time controlling the mines and labor.
5. Appalachian and West Virginian degradation is hotly debated. The overwhelming popular
narrative celebrates the work of J.D. Vance (2016) and his jaundiced view of regional life.
Elizabeth Catte (2018) offers a more nuanced approach that sees Vance’s portrayal of Ap-
palachian struggles as essentialized and ignoring great regional difference.


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COAL POWER                                                                                71


   The efficacy of fetishes articulates disparate elements; weather, wealth,
affection, illness, thus creating a «paradigm of thought […] incorporate(ing)
humanity, social relations, and the world at large» (Taussig 1980: 26). Pietz
(1985: 8) suggests:
     […] Components appropriated into an identity by a fetish are not only material
     […]; desires and beliefs and narrative structures […] are also fixed […] by the
     fetish, whose power is […] to repeat its originating act of forging an identity of
     […] relations between […] otherwise heterogeneous things.

   But when fetishes decline, this provokes fear, uncertainty, and economic,
social, political, and emotional conflicts (Böhme 2014: 29). World and world-
view crumble as the fetish’s paradigm disaggregates, producing dissonance
in key relationships; family, community, social organization, natural phe-
nomena. Most critically, failure of the fetish especially lays bare the class re-
lations on which the fetish was predicated.
   Marx’s insight (1887: 43-5) saw how commodities act as fetishes, masking
essential relationships of ownership of productive wealth and labor control.
Thus class relationships are first and foremost embodied within the com-
modity that, through its veneration, obscures those same qualities of owner-
ship and control. Coal as fetish thus frames critical relationships between
those owning the land, minerals, and technologies of extraction and the leg-
al principles which vest ownership in them, with human labor power that ac-
tually wrests coal from the earth and the social groups, like family and com-
munity, that provide the material and emotional sustenance of those who
labor. In the Jiu Valley coal especially illustrates the state, that institution
enabling the industry and its formative role in Valley culture, and now via
policies of the European Union, the industry and the region’s dismantling. In
Appalachia, meanwhile, the coal fetish is defined by a political economic
system supporting private operators, railroads, and power companies, whose
practices create oppositional communities and institutions.
   Coal fetishism thus celebrates and/or denigrates the material element to-
gether with the class institutions, i.e. state or company, that operationalize
labor to extract that element and set in motion regional history and settle-
ment (Caudill 1962, Baron 1998) and social unity and fracture (Bell, York
2010; Crăciun, Grecu, Stan 2002). Coal was deemed to create wealth and
wellbeing (Bădau 2014; Freese 2003), but now in decline, loss and violence
(Galuszka 2012; Kideckel 2008). Coal determines environmental health or
lack (Ahern et al. 2011; Barbat et al. 2012), potentially bringing suffering and
death (Erikson 1972; Moraru, Băbuț 2012). Ubiquitous symbols create
memory and belief that coal shapes destiny. Coal images are found on build-
ings and sculpture in Petroșani, Vulcan, and Uricani. Miner graves are
marked with pickaxes and mine lamps, but also hammers and sickles in testi-

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72                                                             DAVID A. KIDECKEL


mony to the socialist state behind the minerit. Icons of Saint Barbara, the
miners’ patron saint, are found at both mine sites and civic spaces. In West
Virginia, bumper stickers and flags flaunt Friends of Coal identity. Com-
munity toponymy is often coal-based; Coal River, Coalton, Coal City,
Coalfields, Montcoal, Stone Coal, names often based on the company oper-
ating the local mine. Towns advertise “Coal Days”. Monuments to dead
miners celebrate community, obliquely condemning company. Thus, such
signifiers delineate the importance of state or community, the degree and
significance of non-governmental organizations, and women’s activism, and
in so doing recapitulate and affirm regional histories and class relations.
   Jiu Valley: The state, national ownership and control, and a benign pater-
nalism were essential to the minerit since its mid-nineteenth century begin-
nings. Austrian entrepreneurs, chartered by the Habsburg state, founded the
industry, towns, railways, and other institutions to extend imperial control
at the Empire’s margins (Baron 1998). Thus, Valley mines from the first
dovetailed with national development, a unity furthered after the First
World War, when the region was incorporated into “Greater Romania” and
and some mines nationalized. Both Austro-Hungarian and Romanian states
provided the wherewithal for meaningful community life for the mining
population, originally from across the Hasbsburg Empire, and encouraged
identity formation of miners, if not workers as a class. The region was re-
plete with voluntary associations based on region of origin and religion, in-
cluding a lively labor union movement. Brass bands and theatre and dance
troupes were popular. Women played significant roles in many local institu-
tions.
   Socialism marked the heyday of state control, stultification of regional
voluntarism, and women’s marginalization. Post-Second World War the Val-
ley became dominated by SOVROMs, joint Soviet-Romanian companies
transferring war reparations to victorious Soviets. The Coal Sovrom was
founded in 1949 and operated until 1964 when a Romanian nationalist gov-
ernment took over the industry (Montias 1967: 19-20). The minerit under the
Romanian state, achieved its greatest growth from the mid-1960s until the
late 1980s. Coal mining became even more tied to national development, as
mine production, miner well being, and working class pride were used as
symbols to justify Party control (Jowitt 1971). By the mid-1980s fourteen
mines employed roughly 50,000 workers. Coal power provided electricity,
heat, and hot water for Valley towns. State institutions serviced the industry,
including the Workshop for the Repair of Mining Equipment (URUMP), the
National Institute for Research and Development in Mine Safety and Protec-
tion from Explosions (Insemex), and the Salvamin mine safety institute.


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COAL POWER                                                                                73


   Thus, throughout the Jiu Valley the minerit and the state became linked as
main sources of wellbeing and identity. Mines assured workers’ housing. The
unitary and powerful syndicate organized outings and vacations. Mine clin-
ics cared for miners and families. The minerit organized professional schools
and athletic teams. State ownership provided a modicum of resources in eco-
nomic slowdowns. But by encapsulating all people into official institutions,
controlling all organizational structures, and developing a powerful surveil-
lance apparatus, the Party assured destruction of most voluntary associ-
ations, sowing seeds of distrust between individuals. Furthermore, the in-
dustry became heavily masculinized as women were shunted to domestic
spheres6.
   Political change intensified miner class transformation. After increasing
labor demands pushed miners to strike in 1977, the state replaced many of
these workers, often from old mining families, with rural migrants and milit-
ary and prison populations. Large salaries compromised the new miners, for-
cing women further into the home, where high birth rates ensured they re-
mained. When socialism fell the miners reacted against reform, and in sup-
port of socialist paternalism. Fearing loss of status, they marched on
Bucharest three times in 1990 and 1991, called there by the new Romanian
president, Ion Iliescu, successor to Communist dictator, Nicolae Ceaușescu.
These so-called “mineriade” committed violence against persons and prop-
erty, thus defaming the miners, and hastening reform (Perjovschi 1999) 7.
Mass layoffs began in 1997 (Government of Romania 1997). By 1999 three
mines had closed. Ancillary industries were privatized and scrapped. Mineri-
ade repercussions furthered distrust, shaping angry miner interpretations of
the past (Rus 2007; Kideckel 2008, 2011).
   The minerit is now a shadow of its past. A state-owned joint stock com-
pany, the Hunedoara Energy Complex (CEH), now operates the industry. Ro-
mania joined the EU in 2007, so the minerit depends on EU energy policy. A
recent decision (European Commission 2010) required closing inefficient
mines, essentially marking the entire minerit for extinction. To manage that
process, the Romanian government formed the National Society for the
Closure of Jiu Valley Mines (SNIMVJ), with a goal of shuttering all Valley
mines by 2020. Currently only four mines and the regional power plant, on
reduced schedule, remain open. Four successor organizations remain from
the once-powerful League of Syndicates of the Jiu Valley Mines (LSMVJ).
Though Salvamin and Insemex remain, most of the Gerom plant, successor

6. Exceptions, like the Viscoze textile plant in Lupeni, employed many women workers.
7. Most Romanians reviled the miners for their actions, though some supported them. Chil-
dren played «minerii și scuterii» (miners and motor-scooterists), the former heroes, the lat-
ter villains.

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74                                                                       DAVID A. KIDECKEL


to URUMP, has been scrapped and sold, often illegally by so-called “mag-
nets”, criminal elements attracted to the metal (Kideckel 2018). Though uni-
on action has thus far delayed final judgment for two mines, coal mining in
the Jiu Valley is on its way to extinction.
   Appalachia: The West Virginia coal industry, though also supported by
state policy and regulation and born out of national needs during the US
Civil War, is essentially a creature of private industry. West Virginia’s coal
story is extreme, dividing locals into opposing camps. Industry leaders pro-
claim how private companies assure the population’s livelihood. They claim
coal is the region’s near-sole source of value and modernity (Hamilton
2015). Others say the companies viciously exploited and manipulated re-
gional labor through oppressive policies that destroyed miner health and
safety, and even enabled the sexual abuse of coal camp women in exchange
for food (Kline et al. 2017). Absentee owners largely control the West Virgin-
ia land, further assuring depletion of resources and capital (Boettner et al
2013). Domination of coal subjects Appalachia to booms and busts typical in
raw material-dependent nations. West Virginia coal is especially dependent
on externalities; war increases demand, recessions produce disaster. Mean-
while, despite company attempts to foster division in its multicultural popu-
lation, the region’s coal industry produced intense labor activism. Miner re-
bellions in the so-called 1920’s Mine Wars (Corbin 2015), and region-wide
strikes in 1977 and 1984 further divided supporters and critics, as did expan-
sion of destructive surface mining from the 1950s to today.
   Appalachia is thus fertile ground to both support and challenge coal’s
economic and environmental practices. The union movement, specifically
the United Mine Workers of America, is exemplary. Most union locals
staunchly oppose company practices, but coincidental to coal’s decline, the
unions have fragmented into company supporters and critics, and the num-
ber of non-union mine employees has grown in the last years (Brown 2017),
as companies shut down union mines, reopening them as non-union shops.
Aside from the unions, other groups supporting regional economic develop-
ment arose following creation of the Appalachian Regional Commission,
dating to the Kennedy years (Eller 2008: 104). Those challenging coalmining
practices expanded after passage of the federal Surface Mining Control and
Regulation Act (SMCRA) in 1977. SMCRA «grants…citizens the broadest
rights to participate in administrative and judicial proceedings in a federal
environmental statute» (Squillace, Dotter 2011: 37). Citizens can challenge
surface mining practices, mine permitting, coal transport, site reclamation,
and deposition of overburden in valley fills8.

8. “Overburden” is rock, soil, and vegetation covering surface coal deposits. Once removed,
overburden is generally dumped often near stream headwaters, creating “valley fills”, them-
selves contentious between activists, coal company representatives, and state regulators.


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COAL POWER                                                                            75


   Emboldened by SMCRA, dozens of environmental groups operate in Ap-
palachia today. Coal people call them «tree huggers»9. Many were founded
and are staffed by women, whose activism grew from participating in mine
labor struggles through the 1920s and 1930s, and in welfare activism in the
1960s and 1970s (Reichert 2001; Wilkerson 2018) 10. Some were created by
motivated individuals, like Judy Bond at Coal River Mountain Watch
(CRMW), whose activism grew from health concerns, or Larry Gibson at
Keepers of the Mountains, who fought coal to preserve a family settlement.
Other groups, like the Ohio Valley Environmental Coalition (OVEC) or the
Kanawha Forest Coalition (KFC) focus on water quality or outdoor accessibil-
ity, while groups like Radical Action for Mountains and People’s Survival
(RAMPS)11 broadly critique capitalist economy.
   Big coal counters these challenges. West Virginia coal’s main support is
the West Virginia Coal Association that in 2002 formed the Friends of Coal 12.
Other groups created by the industry include United Citizens for Coal (UCC),
the Coalition for Mountaintop Mining (CMM), or the American Coalition for
Clean Coal Electricity (ACCCE). Individuals tied to the industry, like the re-
tired miner who founded UCC, typically organize these male-centered
groups. The board of CMM is a “who’s who” of West Virginia mining with
representatives from the «coal coalition of operators, power and transport
companies, and equipment manufacturers» (Vietor 1980: 17). Citing Haber-
mas, Bell and York (2010: 117-118) maintain that these organizations facilit-
ate ideological construction and cultural manipulation to neutralize a crisis
of legitimation in the industry at this time of coal’s waning significance.
   These specifics shape regional responses to the crumbling coal fetish.
Thus, in the Jiu Valley the generalized diminishment of working class iden-
tity and organization, state domination, the thin organizational environ-
ment, and women’s invisibility help limit coal’s power except among elites.
State intervention encourages small hopes for initiatives to preserve region-
al life, but little action. Meanwhile, the private economy and rich organiza-
tional life of central Appalachia produce and reproduce a contentious social
environment where coal and non-coal forces persistently face off. This bi-

9. Tree hugging derives from the “Bishnois” branch of Hinduism. In 1730 some 350 Bishnois
men and women died protecting trees also inspiring the 1970s Chipko (“to cling”) move-
ment, when peasant women threw their arms around threatened trees.
10. Mary Harris (“Mother”) Jones (1837-1930), co-founded the Industrial Workers of the
World (i.e. Wobblies), challenged coal company rapaciousness, and goaded miner union or-
ganizing.
11. RAMPS name comes from the wild leek (Allium tricoccum), a heritage food growing
throughout central Appalachia.
12. “Friends of Coal” was founded to challenge a campaign to regulate coal truck tonnage.

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76                                                                       DAVID A. KIDECKEL


furcation is evident everywhere in West Virginia, from the mine working
classes, down to individual households and relations between neighbors
along the “hollers”, narrow inter-mountain valleys where streambeds drain
toward major rivers. Pro-and anti-coal action is constant, and coal is a per-
sistent focus in regional life even while receding in the market.

Disempowered coal in regional social life: Memory and practice
    Coal’s decline colors visions of the past and of uncertain futures. In the
Jiu Valley, the EU works to empty coal of meaning. Pensioners still hold
strong memories of coal’s heyday, but coal conflict today is mainly waged
between governmental, company, and union elites over EU demands. Elite
conflict is masculinized, with women involved mainly over industrial herit-
age. In Appalachia, private companies retain power and wealth, producing
large environmental consequences, despite the choppy market. Challenging
or supporting organizations make coal contentious at every social level, and
prominent gendered activism contrasts the masculinized industry, articulat-
ing the battle over coal with family, household, and community.
   The strength, and now decline, of coal fetishism encourages nostalgia in
both regions13. But people differ about the meaning of the past, reasons for
coal’s decline, and how or even whether to respond. Nostalgia is often
bimodal, like the nostalgic and nostophobic (i.e. repugnant) views of Welsh
coal miners (Dicks 2008: 441). Daphne Berdahl saw nostalgia in post-unifica-
tion East Germany as hegemonic or oppositional; accepting domination of
the current system, or rejecting the same with «feelings of longing, mourn-
ing, resentment, anger» (Berdahl 1999: 203).
   Jiu Valley: Here nostalgia expressed by pensioners and some miners is
mainly oppositional. People blame minerit destruction on corruption enabled
by the postsocialist democratic state. One pensioner, formerly employed in
the Petrila mine suggested:
      (The minerit) worked well in Communism but everything was broken when
      “democracy” came. In communism, in the gallery you would find one engineer,
      a few miners, one party secretary. By ’97, when I pensioned, there would be 8
      engineers, 20 foremen, 17 secretaries, and two workers in the gallery. That was
      the situation in democracy…the engineers with their large salaries left whenev-
      er they wanted. They would take a wagon of coal for themselves, but certainly
      wouldn’t pay us well.

   The current coal company, the CEH, is a hotbed of corruption and mis-
management (Matei 2015), but diffuses blame by parrying EU demands to
disassemble the minerit. Meanwhile, throughout the Valley, no matter one’s

13. Some West Virginians also experience intense solastalgia, fear from a threatened envir-
onment (Albrecht et al. 2007).


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COAL POWER                                                                                77


background or tangent with the minerit, people disparage the National Soci-
ety for the Closing of the Jiu Valley Mines (SNIMVJ). Miners and pensioners
see SNIMVJ actions as precipitous. Pensioners claim Valley coal could last
100 years, and question why production can’t be maintained. The SNIMVJ is
also attacked for disrespecting the past. People complain that closing Valley
mines destroys regional patrimony without regard to cultural or monetary
value. Oppositional nostalgia is enhanced by widespread rejection of pejor-
ative views of the mineriade. These events transpired more than a quarter
century ago, but are still debated in Romania 14. Romanians, referencing the
mineriade, define Valley miners as violent and backward (Dâncu 2016). These
views’ duration and pervasiveness reinforces miner anger at the democratic
state and defense of their past actions.
   State domination and interpersonal mistrust limit Jiu Valley organiza-
tions, especially those concerned about coal, environment 15, and related is-
sues. Remaining organizations include rump labor unions, a pensioner or-
ganization, and a group concerned with industrial heritage. The minerit’s de-
gradation is underlined by conflict between union leaders, contrasting the
integrated union’s halcyon days. Tiberiu Vintan (2006) calls this a «duel
between the unions», where leaders accuse each other of betraying miners
and of corrupt dealings with the CEH. The leaders of the Noroc Bun16 union
at Livezeni mine, and of the Sindicatul Muntele (Mountains Union), publicly
battled throughout 2016 over the miners’ labor contract 17. Conflicts have
grown over the decade as unions compete for members, and for financial
gain from resources freed up by mine closures.
   State neutralization of coal memories is evident at the few sites dedicated
to memorializing the industry, such as the Muzeul Mineritului (Museum of
the Mining Industry) in Petroșani, the main Valley city. The museum, was
founded in 1961 and expanded in 1984, and is now overseen by city govern-
ment and the Romanian Ministry of Culture. Exhibits near-exclusively em-
phasize technology, but steadfastly ignore difficulties confronting the in-
dustry, the mineriade, post-1997 unemployment, and miner social circum-
stances. According to the Museum’s sole employee 18, insufficient resources
make change impossible. One visitor called the museum «a sad place, and

14. Two popular journals recently published collections about the mineriade Dâncu 2016
and Martin 2015.
15. Since coal’s decline, often-illegal timbering, supported by foreign firms, became an eco-
nomic mainstay. However, a Greenpeace website to report these activities produced great
response. A new Romanian law also limits these practices.
16. Miners greet each other with «noroc bun» (good luck) as they change shifts.
17. The conflict ended when the Noroc Bun leader was convicted and imprisoned in a 2017
anti-corruption initiative.

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78                                                                      DAVID A. KIDECKEL


not helpful to understand the Valley». Meanwhile, other important minerit
architectural remains are turned into private clubs and restaurants and holi-
days celebrating miners and minerit are pale, poorly attended exercises (Ki-
deckel 2018).
   Women’s absence in Valley organizational life compounds institutional
tensions. Some few women are active politically, councilors at regional town
halls, in political party women’s organizations, or as entrepreneurs. How-
ever, minerit masculinism (Kideckel 2004; Rus 2003) marginalizes women in
the unions, in pensioner organizations, and in the CEH 19. Women’s invisibil-
ity is pernicious. The male register of public life perpetuates division of the
world into “us and them,” “our and yours,” clumping people into cliques
(sing. gașcă), characterized by trust, friendship, and commensality. However,
beyond clique and family, trust and affect dissipate. Though questionable
whether female participation would nullify this, women’s participation
might provide different voices to reconfigure meanings about coal’s past,
present, and future. Still the likelihood of this is absurd; economic decline
force women’s constant efforts for their families, further removing them
from the public square. Small attempts to preserve minerit heritage is one
area of female visibility. Women activists from Bucharest, together with a
local artist, spearheaded an attempt to save the Petrila mine (Constantines-
cu, Dascălu, Sucală 2017). However, their efforts came to nought (Kideckel
2018), as town and SNIMVJ leaders dismissed the group, partially due to its
gendered activism (Ilinca Constantinescu, personal communication).
   Appalachia: Unlike unified oppositional Jiu Valley nostalgia, coal
memories are contentious in West Virginia. Absent a strong state, regional
forces contest civic space, generating both oppositional and hegemonic coal
nostalgia. Communities split over coal’s uncertain future, especially repro-
ducing a class divide growing within miner ranks. Many cling to coal as to a
life preserver. Others run from the discredited fetish, with renewed commit-
ment to overturn its hold. Memories of coal’s heyday are strong, and the
companies encourage hegemonic longing for those days (Bell, York 2010)
and the necessity of coal for regional identity and living standards. Against
all evidence of market or automation, they blame decline on Obama’s “war
on coal” and over-active environmentalism. But environmentalists loudly
demand redress of coal’s damages, support alternative regional develop-
ment, and view coal as impeding new economic practice. Contending narrat-
ives cloud people’s minds. Some long for coal’s return:
18. The last Director died four years ago. One remaining employee now serves all necessary
museum functions, e.g. director, custodian, ticket taker.
19. One women’s NGO concerned with domestic abuse was active in the mid-2010s but has
ceased operation.


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COAL POWER                                                                                79

      Many elderly informants experienced a sense of hopelessness with increasingly
      deteriorating conditions in the coal economy, and a sense of nostalgia for the
      “better days” is often present in their narratives (Reichart 2001: 12).

  Others express opposite views. Among others, positive and negative
memories of sociability and class anger and wage and environment contend,
such as the disabled miner who said:
      I spent twenty years in the mines, and loved darn near every minute, especially
      getting up early and bullshitting. I had great relations with everyone. People we
      worked with are like family. Everyone around here is connected. I was on the
      safety committee. The mine wanted to keep me on their good side. They didn’t
      fire you if you did your job. But now if you blink your eye wrong they fire you.
      When I went on disability I was making almost $100,000 a year. Not bad for a
      guy without a high school education. We need the mines and coal jobs, but the
      mines are killing us now and coal is messing up the world. I am for coal 100%.
      There has got to be a way to clean coal. But I don’t think coal should be burned,
      if it is going to destroy the earth. But there has got to be technology out there
      so coal can be burned. I am for people having good-paying jobs. But I’m against
      people destroying the earth.

   The battle over coal is waged on multiple fronts; in political debates, pub-
lic education, at memorials, and in newspapers and journals. Public educa-
tion especially supports the extractive economy, often relying on curriculum
materials provided by the Coal Education Development and Resource of
Southern West Virginia, Inc, (CEDAR), a Friends of Coal-sponsored organiz-
ation (Bell, York 2010: 135). Meanwhile activists in Mingo County, led by a
female former teacher, are developing a labor and environmental-oriented
curriculum. Their optimism is infectious, though given the labor-friendly
lessons, questions abound whether the educational establishment will ac-
cept this curriculum. Still, voices against coal in education are muted as
coal’s decline means population loss, school consolidation, longer student
commutes, and falling severance taxes for educational budgets 20.
   Unlike the anodyne Jiu Valley Mining Museum, West Virginia museums
contest coal’s memories. The Beckley Exhibition Coal Mine Museum is or-
ganized by Friends of Coal and operated by its ladies auxiliary. The Museum
and model coal town offer antiseptic views with orderly houses and accom-
panying text suggesting a benign relationship between company, miners and
families. Retired miners, sympathetic to coal operators 21, lead tours of the
model mine. Some mining dangers are mentioned, but challenges for better
working conditions or unionization are left unstated. Countering Beckley’s


20. The Spring, 2018 West Virginia teachers strike, led by women activists, reversed declin-
ing labor activism and fostered ties between their union and the United Mine Workers.

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80                                                                      DAVID A. KIDECKEL


hegemonic evocation, the West Virginia Mine Wars Museum in Matewan
celebrates opposition. The “mine wars”, lasted for about a decade until the
early 1920’s, and were the largest US twentieth century labor insurrection,
mobilizing thousands of miners seeking union rights, resulting in dozens of
fatalities (Corbin 2015). Activist labor, private donations, grants from public
institutions, and some monies from the United Mine Workers of America
created the Matewan Museum, strongly contrasting Beckley’s corporate
provenance. Exhibits detail miner hardship and struggle, but also the ulti-
mately successful unionization fight.
   Contention and ambiguity over coal’s meaning is thus mapped onto the
region’s social and organizational field, and given over-lapping social rela-
tions, people’s responses are unpredictable. In the rural hollers of West Vir-
ginia people depend on each other, often requiring modulated sentiment in
dealing with neighbors and others. But the class contentions of declining
coal are always present like “white noise” in the background of Appalachian
life. Thus, at some sites where mine permits are challenged, or during events
sponsored by environmental groups, defenders and detractors of coal are in-
tensely confrontational. At other times, at funerals and cemetery clean ups
for example, shared Appalachian values, common sentiments of ill-treat-
ment at outsiders’ hands, and commitments to overcoming current health
and economic crises, bring people together in gatherings where they accept,
even celebrate, each other22. Thus, family stories abound where some from
the same household worked for coal operators while others were staunch
union members, each warning the other about anti-union or anti-company
actions. Yet, at other times, family relationships can founder when individu-
als with environmental and pro-coal sentiments meet. Some informants
claim they’ve been given the «silent treatment» for years by relatives «since I
became a tree hugger».
   To an extent, the intensity of the “tree huggers” vs “working
people”/Friends of Coal conflict is ontological. “Hugging” implies love and
merger with the natural world. But “working people” are defined by labor in
a coal-dependent relationship. Stacy Alaimo (2016: 29) calls tree hugging a
«utopian mode of inhabiting», defining a moral economy of reciprocity and
integration within natural law. But the “tree sit” is antithetical to and sub-

21. Two retired miners who acted as guides fondly mentioned Don Blankenship, convicted
of a misdemeanor for his role in the Upper Big Branch mine disaster, killing 29 miners. As
Massey Energy CEO Blankenship deemphasized safety for production (Haight 2017, Murphy
2015). The men, who had worked at Massey mines, said «Don was a great leader and made
us a lot of money».
22. These responses were noted during 2016 field observations.


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COAL POWER                                                                                  81


verts “working peoples’” labor. Tree huggers enter work sites illegally, halt-
ing activities at the cost of a working person’s income. An environmental
activist said:
      If you are sitting in a tree they can’t mess with you. So if you position your tree
     sit where they are about to blast, they have to move their equipment to another
     portion of the site and it costs them a lot of money.

   Like the working person’s labor, coal’s “friendship” is capitalist-based and
class-infused. To befriend coal means to not just accept its dominance, but
to sell your self for the means to live. Further, the position of Friends of Coal
in West Virginia’s political scene emphasizes its patronage in West Virginia
communities reinforced by strategic altruism. Though friendship depends on
affect, relationships with Friends of Coal are solidly instrumental. A coal
trade official responding to my statement that «I’m not a friend of coal, but
of coal miners», starkly illustrated the contrast.
     Why can’t you be a friend of coal? Notice all the high school football fields sup-
     ported by mine companies, or talk to railroaders who work for CSX, who suffer
     because we are not moving the same volume of coal. We are part of this com-
     munity as well.

   Women’s organizational visibility contributes to both effective activism as
well as mediation of difference. Though women worked in West Virginia
mines more often and in more capacities than the occasional female Jiu Val-
ley topographer or engineer, Appalachian coal mining is still thought a mas-
culine endeavor. However, the situation is often reversed in activist organiz-
ations, where women lead and men serve supporting roles. The women’s
presence in local environmental organizations and in miner strikes made
these actions more effective by virtue of «informal leadership that bridged
the concerns of coalfield communities» (Anglin 2002: 568). But alongside
their activism women help define the importance of place in Appalachia
(Smith, Fisher 2012), spurring people on to defend their beloved mountains.

Going forward
  Thus, in West Virginia and the Jiu Valley, regional transformations show a
few important parallels, but some key differences. Commonalities include
demographic decline, persisting social pathology, and continued disparage-
ment in national imaginaries. But the key characteristics and variations in
the two regions discussed above-the particularities of class domination, the
nature and degree of state involvement, local organizational life, and
gendered activism-point very different ways forward. Though the circum-


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82                                                                         DAVID A. KIDECKEL


stances of class that shaped key regional differences continue to operate,
contemporary global energy politics and market and environmental threats
to coal profits have greatly transformed that which Gavin Smith (2015:73-
74) calls the conditionality of «class potential» for the deflated working class
of the Jiu Valley and the conflicted communities of central Appalachian
West Virginia.
   In the main, the Jiu Valley’s coal fetish was deposed as the minerit was
deemed inefficient and irrelevant in global production (Friedman 2003) and
largely removed from the same by the imperious actions of Romania’s new
European masters,. Simultaneously manifestations of class-consciousness
melt away, lost in the practice of dependency and massive corruption in re-
maining minerit institutions. The European safety net and capital infusions
provide a modicum of resources to forestall social unrest and help the zone
to muddle along. Consequently, the final verdict of mine closure is delayed,
if not postponed indefinitely, for two mines and the regional power plant.
While this is greeted as good news, the net effect contributes to regional in-
ertia. New outlooks and practices are foreclosed as coal nostalgia and anti-
pathy to state institutions is affirmed by miners and pensioners. Though
some give lip service to the need for alternative practices, and despite occa-
sional state initiatives, the region feels moribund economically and frus-
trated facing the future. Regional human capital drifts away while heritage
resources of coal and environment remain minimally valorized. Many have
left who might have challenged prevailing ideologies, most as labor migrants
elsewhere in Europe. The Valley is now a place of pensioners, a double-
edged sword for the future. State pensions and minimal healthcare maintain
economic viability. Petroșani’s lively terraces and restaurants can be traced
directly to mine pensions. However, domination by the elderly implies the
absence of the energy needed to shape a different future. Neither coal‘s past
or an alternative future seems viable. The past is past and the future neither
beckons nor inspires. A local journalist summed up the problem:
      People here are not people with vision, but people with interests. Their envi-
      ousness makes their main problem how to steal amongst themselves. History
      no longer means anything to them. Look at this former mine. Everything…its
      galleries and shafts, and tools and meaning, all intentionally exploded into
      nothing. Once the minerit will be closed, the Valley will lose all meaning and
      potential. All that will be left will be old people and the others…with their in-
      terests (Marian Boboc, personal communication).

  West Virginia’s story is more conflicted. Regional degradation due to
coal’s decline is very real, as is coal’s continued symbolic and political
power. With recent regulatory change the coal economy may be picking up,


2018 | ANUAC. VOL. 7, N° 1, GIUGNO 2018: 67-88
COAL POWER                                                                       83


though seemingly more for company profits than miner employment (Cohan
2017). Many admit coal is not likely to return to prominence, but others pin
their hopes on a resurgent industry as few other resources offer the number
and remuneration of coal jobs. Industry groups like Friends of Coal espe-
cially enable ambiguity about coal’s future. Their actions and campaigns fur-
ther help confound class relations by driving a wedge between those who
fear loss of wage and status with declining coal and those seeking to break
free of those ties and reclaim a life constituted around new values and re-
sources. This wedge is also gendered, aggressively supporting the masculin-
ity of mining against community and environment inclusivity (Smith 2014).
Consequently, as much as the region’s conflicted geographical and social
terrain, the meaning of memory is also contested. To those struggling to
overcome the ambiguous inheritance of coal and position the region for
tourism, new energy, or other development, «the past is the future». Coal is
but one of many heritage resources whose history is useful for regional de-
velopment, for museums and tourism, and for a negative imaginary to gal-
vanize abundant wind and solar power resources. To others working to
maintain coal as a major resource and hoping for industrial resurgence,
aided by Donald Trump’s love of fossil fuels, «the future is the past». They
hope coal’s return will power the region to regain its lost status and predict-
able work places. In both views of the future, coal is still essential, with
people attracted or repelled by its power. The coal fetish is still alive in
southern West Virginia. However, though the region’s problems are legion,
there is vision aplenty, for now pulling in different directions, but with po-
tential for vast transformation beyond the decline of coal.




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84                                                                       DAVID A. KIDECKEL



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                                             2018 | ANUAC. VOL. 7, N° 1, GIUGNO 2018: 67-88
                                                     2018 | ANUAC. VOL. 7, N° 1, GIUGNO 2018: 67-88




 David A. KIDECKEL is Professor Emeritus of Cultural Anthropology at Central Con-
 necticut State University, USA. He was founding chair of the Anthropology De-
 partment and originator/occasional director of International and Area Studies. His
 last book, Getting By in Post-Socialist Romania: Labor, the Body, and Working Class
 Culture (Indiana University Press, 2008) with a companion video, Days of the Min-
 ers: Life and Death of a Working Class Culture, concerned changing conditions and
 physical perceptions among workers after socialism. His recent work concerns re-
 gional responses to the decline of coal and energy transformation, comparing the
 Jiu Valley, Romania and southern West Virginia.
 dakideckel@gmail.com




This work is licensed under the Creative Commons © David A. Kideckel
Coal power: Class, fetishism, memory, and disjuncture in Romania’s Jiu Valley and Appalachian West Virginia
2018 | ANUAC. VOL. 7, N° 1, GIUGNO 2018: 67-88.
ISSN: 2239-625X - DOI: 10.7340/anuac2239-625X-3291
