Customer Reviews

Power and Powerlessness: Quiescence & Rebellion in an Appalachian Valley

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John Gaventa has produced a very thorough analysis of the power relations within the Appalachian mining community, and the struggle of the miners against both oppressive coal companies and a corrupt union, the United Mine workers of America (UMWA). His research covers close to 100 years of coal mining in the Clear Fork Valley.

But his study isn't just a historic account. As he describes the relationship between the miners and the powers that dominate the social and political agenda in the Valley, Gaventa wants to explain why the miners didn't rise to challenge the obvious inequalities created by both corporations and union.

He claims that the ruling elites used indirect means of control to preserve the statu quo, means that fall into a "third dimension of power", according to Gaventa.
In the first dimension possible grievances are expressed but defeated on the political stage. In the second dimension the elite actually hinders the appearance of such challenges altogether, for example through threats or physical force, creating what Gaventa calls "non-issues".
In the third dimension, Gaventa claims, the elite shape the perception of issues, manipulating their subordinates' understanding of their own situation. So, as the miners' conditions became more and more desperate, or at least didn't improve despite many promises, they still supported the elite without having to be forced physically or psychologically to do so.

What Gaventa fails to include in his study is a thorough analysis of the miners' culture, their way of life and their believes, expressed in such social institutions like the church, or music. He so desperately tries to avoid the perception that the miners are in any way to blame for their situation that he sidelines them almost completely as victims of external (and later internal) oppression.
It has to be noticed, though, that Gaventa responds to the approach taken by social scientists in his time, who focused almost exclusively on culture, making the dominated force "B" practically solely responsible for the existing inequalities.

Nevertheless it is a good book on the nature of power. I advise you to watch John Sayles' 1980 movie "Matewan" to learn a little more about the struggle of the miners against the coal companies.
(http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0093509/ )
Review by: Sebastian Schoebel
sschoebe@iwu.edu

Who is John Gaventa?
(http://john-gaventa.biography.ms/ )

John Gaventa (1949 - ) is political sociologist and a fellow with the Institute of Development Studies at the University of Sussex, UK.
He received a MacArthur Award in 1981 for his work with the Highlander Research and Education Center in New Market, Tennessee.
Gaventa received his B.A. from Vanderbilt University in 1971, and was a Rhodes Scholar at Oxford. He taught at the University of Tennessee in Knoxville from until 1996. He started working at the Highlander Research and Education Center in 1976, and was director from 1993 until 1996.
His publications include
„X Power and Powerlessness: Quiescence and Rebellion in an Appalachian Valley. ISBN 0252009851
„X We make the road by walking : conversations on education and social change. ISBN 0877227756
„X Communities in Economic Crisis: Appalachia & the South ISBN 0877226504
„X Global citizen action ISBN 1555879683


Other reviews
(http://www.press.uillinois.edu/pre95/0-252-00985-1.html )

With Power and Powerlessness, a compelling work of powerful reportage and careful analysis, Gaventa joins other trusted Appalachian observers --- Tom Gish, Harry Caudill, James Branscome --- in explaining to outsiders the conflicts between the financial interests of the coal and land companies and the moral rights of the vulnerable mountaineers."
-- The Washington Post

"Gaventa reminds us that the exercise of power has as much to do with preventing decisions as with bringing them about. Force, the threat of sanctions, the invocation of precedents, norms and rules to squash incipient revolt, the introduction of new rules or barriers --- these prevent demands from becoming issues."
-- Times Literary Supplement

Winner of the W. D. Weatherford Award of the Appalachian Society, the Woodrow Wilson Foundation Award of the APSA, Lillian Smith Award of the Southern Regional Council, V.O. Key Award of the Southern PSA,and the Governor's Award from the Kentucky Historical Society

This book has some weaknesses, but it still deserves five stars for the introduction of the concept of "the third dimension of power" in which the powerless are deterred from struggling for the power they don't have. The significant aspect of this concept is that this deterrence occurs in a way that is "underground", so to speak, so that the powerless don't even realize that they are being restrained by social forces.
This is really a book for sociologists and social theorists. Read on that level, it offers a fascinating new understanding of the nature of power relations.

Gaventa's introduction of the "third level of power" can be read as a modern interpretation of Gramsci's idea of hegemony. What Gramsci called "leadership", "command", or "direction" at various times is described as "acquiescence" by Gaventa. Gramsci privileges those in power while Gaventa is more concerned with the victims of imbalanced relations of power. The tracing of the history of coal mining in the clear fork valley illustrates the value of his model for understanding the affects of power. The early years, and his inclusion of rhetoric, is particularly strong. His treatment of the more contemporary business practices leaves the reader sensing some selective interpreting of evidence but nonetheless does more good than harm.

This is an incredibly useful paradigm if you plan on analyzing anything involving the effects of power. It's also a story you don't hear about; save the occasional news story lasting about as long as a scrolling marquee in our consciences.