“Do We Really Want to Go Down That Path?”: Abandoning Appalachia and the Elk River Chemical Spill

The level of social exclusion in Appalachia continues to go unnoticed in the criminological literature. The West Virginia Elk River Chemical Spill symbolizes the extent of the broad, institutionalized classist and intra-racist structures existing in the region. Appalachia continues to face similar e...

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Bibliographic Details
Main Author: Young, Stephen (Author)
Format: Electronic Article
Language:English
Published: 2018
In: Social justice
Year: 2018, Volume: 45, Issue: 2/3, Pages: 93-117
Online Access: Volltext (Publisher)
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Keywords:
Criminologists
Chemical spills
Social Isolation
Criminology
Description
Summary:The level of social exclusion in Appalachia continues to go unnoticed in the criminological literature. The West Virginia Elk River Chemical Spill symbolizes the extent of the broad, institutionalized classist and intra-racist structures existing in the region. Appalachia continues to face similar events as well as the continued use of the “white trash” label to ensure access to a cheap, exploitable labor force. This article contends that criminologists should think in terms of the historical conditions and class structures of the internal colonialist model to understand how the continued discarding of this population perpetuates its exploitation and abandonment.
ISSN:2327-641X