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AbstractThis article highlights the efforts of two rural communities located in Central Appalachia to address the conflicts and economic and social challenges that have arisen in each as a result of the decline of coal mining. Documenting and analyzing the processes and narratives gleaned from the authors' long-term interaction with stakeholders in the two communities through field tours, community meetings, individual conversations, and group workshops revealed specific social and economic forces, including neoliberal ideology and the realities of its assumptions and public policies, as key forces shaping current community challenges. This article assesses the effectiveness of cross-sectoral partnerships constructed in both case communities aimed at addressing resource dependence, social legitimation, exchange needs, and strategic collaboration imperatives. We used Meadows' systems thinking construct to identify the system elements that informed this analysis and to assess the efficacy of cross-sector partnership building in questioning dominant imaginaries and creating novel ways of being within communities undergoing transition from what have otherwise been economically and socially oppressive conditions. We found that stakeholders within the two communities have often struggled to maintain the cross-sectoral partnerships they have sought to create, let alone understand fully the outcomes of any intervention they might launch, despite their best intentions and plans. A lack of continuing communication among relevant stakeholders, limitations to encouraging citizens' agential activities, and adopting strategies within the assumptions of the dominant neoliberal paradigm were among the main hindrances to realizing effective partnerships in the communities we analyzed.

This review article analyzes three major recent books (written by Robert Wuthnow, Arlie R. Hochschild, and James and Deborah Fallows, respectively) concerning ongoing political, economic and social change in United States' rural communities to probe differing frames and claims among them. We contend these works together point to vital social and political forces that must receive increased attention if the communities they treat are to address the challenges confronting them successfully. Thereafter, we briefly and illustratively underscore the significance of these authors' arguments using our own ongoing work in two small communities confronting catastrophic economic decline and social fissuring in Central Appalachia. Overall, we argue that an analytical approach that combines elements of Wuthnow's sensitivity to demographic and scalar polarization and divides, coupled with Hochschild's emphasis on opportunities to instill and call on empathetic imagination in development efforts, could assist these rural communities' residents to understand more fully the dynamics at play within them and to craft strategies aimed at addressing those challenges. In particular, we contend that the Fallowses' call for pragmatic interventions and partnership building must be accompanied by long-term efforts to overcome the fear engendered by the view that rural community life constitutes a consumerist zero-sum game, and the accompanying widespread belief in those jurisdictions that scapegoating and explicit or implicit racialized hierarchies represent reasonable responses to such anxieties.

This review article analyzes three major recent books (written by Robert Wuthnow, Arlie R. Hochschild, and James and Deborah Fallows, respectively) concerning ongoing political, economic and social change in United States rural communities to probe differing frames and claims among them. We contend these works together point to vital social and political forces that must receive increased attention if the communities they treat are to address the challenges confronting them successfully. Thereafter, we briefly and illustratively underscore the significance of these authors arguments using our own ongoing work in two small communities confronting catastrophic economic decline and social fissuring in Central Appalachia. Overall, we argue that an analytical approach that combines elements of Wuthnows sensitivity to demographic and scalar polarization and divides, coupled with Hochschilds emphasis on opportunities to instill and call on empathetic imagination in development efforts, could assist these rural communities residents to understand more fully the dynamics at play within them and to craft strategies aimed at addressing those challenges. In particular, we contend that the Fallowses call for pragmatic interventions and partnership building must be accompanied by long-term efforts to overcome the fear engendered by the view that rural community life constitutes a consumerist zero-sum game, and the accompanying widespread belief in those jurisdictions that scapegoating and explicit or implicit racialized hierarchies represent reasonable responses to such anxieties. ; Published version