Ramp Hollow
The Ordeal of Appalachia
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- $12.99
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- $12.99
Publisher Description
How the United States underdeveloped Appalachia
Appalachia—among the most storied and yet least understood regions in America—has long been associated with poverty and backwardness. But how did this image arise and what exactly does it mean? In Ramp Hollow, Steven Stoll launches an original investigation into the history of Appalachia and its place in U.S. history, with a special emphasis on how generations of its inhabitants lived, worked, survived, and depended on natural resources held in common.
Ramp Hollow traces the rise of the Appalachian homestead and how its self-sufficiency resisted dependence on money and the industrial society arising elsewhere in the United States—until, beginning in the nineteenth century, extractive industries kicked off a “scramble for Appalachia” that left struggling homesteaders dispossessed of their land. As the men disappeared into coal mines and timber camps, and their families moved into shantytowns or deeper into the mountains, the commons of Appalachia were, in effect, enclosed, and the fate of the region was sealed.
Ramp Hollow takes a provocative look at Appalachia, and the workings of dispossession around the world, by upending our notions about progress and development. Stoll ranges widely from literature to history to economics in order to expose a devastating process whose repercussions we still feel today.
Customer Reviews
Profoudly Important
An explanation of how West Virginia became what it is today. But it’s really a study of economic stratification throughout the ages. A plea for understanding people and communities before trying to “help” by changing their way of life. A plea to recognize the value of each person and family. An explanation of how capitalism is not in the interest of those who already have a satisfactory way of life. Shows why things are the way they are. A creative new way of thinking about economics
Read this to gain a new profound understanding of your world.