The New Decentralists

The late 1960s found young, middle-class, white Americans embracing localism to escape federal bureaucracies and an increasingly impersonal society. The “back-to-the-landers” took this one step further by moving to rural areas, including Appalachia, in pursuit of self-reliance, liberation, and community. They championed agrarian decentralization, a vision of reform based on self-provisioning, neighborly reciprocity, and small-scale manufacturing. And they shared an interest in preserving folkways and certain social conventions and in protecting their farming communities against the threat of surface coal mining. Although localism seemed to be the solution for democratizing these communities, a conservative political shift scaling back federal regulation instead placed power in the hands of a new local and state political elite that did not share their values, leaving these agrarian communities more vulnerable to the threat of surface mining.