Local Resources, Global Wealth: The Role of Appalachian Practitioner Organizations in Disentangling Local Economies

Stories of economic recovery have spread across the United States painting pictures of booming markets and open jobs. What is less clear, however, is the depth and quality of recovery. This study sets out to contextualize contemporary Appalachian economies as they break down across space, asking the questions: what has been the ‘texture’ of economic recovery for Appalachia? And what can practitioner organizations tell us about the generation of local wealth for local people? Drawing from interviews and data sourced by the U.S. Census and Bureau of Labor Statistics, two case studies of Central Appalachian practitioner organizations are used to illustrate models for the type and form of economic recovery needed by the region. This is not meant to tell a holistic story of Appalachia, but rather to prop up the insight of practitioners, speaking directly to the demand for ‘new’ economic solutions in a region long dominated by extractive flows of capital. In Letcher County, Kentucky, this advocacy for ‘new’ economies is encompassed in Culture Hub’s slogan “We Own What We Make”. It is this spirit that the study attempts to capture, generating answers that are partly programmatic, partly theoretical. I theorize what is ‘new’ in the call for ‘new’ Appalachian economies, and look towards the actually existing practices that organizations are using to disentangle latent funds of community value from global, extractive flows of financial capital