Appalachian studies scholars, Appalachian activists and advocates, and
government agencies like the Appalachian Regional Commission have sought a solution to the "Appalachian problem," which is typically portrayed as a matrix of poverty, low educational attainment, poor health, environmental destruction, and cultural deficiencies,
as long as this problem has been perceived to exist in the late nineteenth century.
Through a rhetorical analysis of ethnographic and archival research on three different
types of Appalachian activist campaigns and advocacy organizations, the Kentucky
Moonlight Schools of the early twentieth century, The Urban Appalachian Council and
Appalachian Community Development Fund of the late twentieth century, and Create
West Virginia of the early twenty-first century, I determine how each engages with three
common topoi on solving the "Appalachian problem." The first topoi, assimilation,
requires Appalachia be assimilated into modern, urban cultural, economic, and
technological systems; the second, preservation, acknowledges the distinctiveness and
difference of the culture and recommends it be preserved it as an isolated, monolithic,
homogeneous entity; and the third, abandonment, proposes allowing nature to take over
the region as the people are relocated to urban and suburban areas.
By exploring specific instances in which these three topoi are rhetorical deployed,
complicated, or opposed by the Kentucky Moonlight Schools, the Urban Appalachian
Council and the Appalachian Community Development Association, and Create West
Virginia, I have determined what detrimental assumptions these claims rely on, how they
position Appalachian culture and identity, and how they limit or facilitate successful
resolutions to the "Appalachian problem."
I then develop a new regional rhetoric to guide the policies of a variety of groups,
including but no limited to nonprofit organizations, government agencies, and
educational institutions that seek to empower Appalachian identity and improve the
Appalachian region. This rhetoric is informed by rhetorical theory, literacy studies,
Appalachian history and cultural studies, memory and nostalgia studies, critical
regionalism and geography, economic theory, and environmental studies. I argue that
what both Appalachian activists must realize about their efforts is that to affect long-term,systemic change, they cannot not just address the aforementioned symptoms of the
"Appalachian problem," but get at its very root through major rhetorical interventions in
public discourse about Appalachia. To do this, I argue, advocates have to meet public
discourse where it is -- entrenched in the three most common solutions to the
"Appalachian problem": assimilation, preservation, and abandonment.
Ultimately, I find the "Appalachian problem"; is actually uneven development,
extractivist ideologies, and regional discrimination. Thus, I claim it will take a global
shift in discourse on Appalachian identity, as well as a drastic environmental and
economic change to end the"Appalachian problem." Finally, I demonstrate why it is
moments of environmental melodrama like the West Virginia Water Crisis that a regional rhetoric for activism in Appalachia is poised to harness for the creation of a just, livable, sustainable Appalachia.