"In a company town, when you need help, where do you turn?": The effects of ideological colonization on democratic life in an industry-polluted community in Appalachia
Abstract
The social, economic, political, and environmental history of an industrially-polluted town was investigated, revealing 100 years of education embedded in a master narrative of ideological colonization and power asymmetries shaped by industry. "Learning to comply" with the dominant discourse resulted in community consent, dependency, and – with the struggle over who would control the meaning of contamination – radical boosterism of the hegemonic discourse. A recently emerged grassroots group chose to control the meanng by appropriating official knowledge, not by constructing local knowledge, as is commonly reported for emergent groups. It is insufficient to say that mainstream knowledge always transports specified (dominant) politics and power arrangements. Rather, these are contingent upon the social and ideological relations in which the official knowledge is inscribed.
Creative Commons License
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial 4.0 License
Recommended Citation
Hill, R. J.
(1996).
"In a company town, when you need help, where do you turn?": The effects of ideological colonization on democratic life in an industry-polluted community in Appalachia.
Adult Education Research Conference.
"In a company town, when you need help, where do you turn?": The effects of ideological colonization on democratic life in an industry-polluted community in Appalachia
The social, economic, political, and environmental history of an industrially-polluted town was investigated, revealing 100 years of education embedded in a master narrative of ideological colonization and power asymmetries shaped by industry. "Learning to comply" with the dominant discourse resulted in community consent, dependency, and – with the struggle over who would control the meaning of contamination – radical boosterism of the hegemonic discourse. A recently emerged grassroots group chose to control the meanng by appropriating official knowledge, not by constructing local knowledge, as is commonly reported for emergent groups. It is insufficient to say that mainstream knowledge always transports specified (dominant) politics and power arrangements. Rather, these are contingent upon the social and ideological relations in which the official knowledge is inscribed.
