Power and Just Transitions
Struggles for a Post-Coal Future in an Appalachian Valley
Struggles over power and justice in the Clear Fork Valley
Cloth – $110
978-0-252-04693-3
eBook – $14.95
978-0-252-04855-5
Publication Date
Cloth: 01/06/2026
About the Book
Published in 1982, John Gaventa’s award-winning Power and Powerlessness examined the dominance of the absentee coal industry in Central Appalachia. Gaventa and Gabe Schwartzman update the story through coal’s decline and into the present while focusing on how power relations and community mobilizing have changed and evolved during this era of transition. Their analysis tracks the impact on a place where a fossil fuel–based economy shaped political and social structures for over a century. As they show, new forms of power emerged while old ones remained, and both affected the popular struggle for a future that’s both just and more inclusive.Original and timely, Power and Just Transitions merges historical perspective with interviews and engagement to look at how coal’s decline impacted power and resistance in an Appalachian community.
About the Author
John Gaventa is a professor and research fellow at the Institute of Development Studies at the University of Sussex. He is the author of Power and Powerlessness: Quiescence and Rebellion in an Appalachian Valley. Gabe Schwartzman is an assistant professor of geography and sustainability at the University of Tennessee and has been deeply engaged in community mobilization efforts in the Clear Fork Valley.Reviews
“More than forty years after his pathbreaking book Power and Powerlessness was published, John Gaventa and his coauthor Gabe Schwartzman return to the Appalachian Valley to explore the question of what a post-coal future looks like in a world in transition. The result, Power and Just Transitions, is a hugely impressive, rich but accessible, engaged and rigorous study of the struggles over a just transition away from fossil fuels that will be of interest to a growing community of scholars and activists keen to ensure that collective responses to climate change do not further marginalize those who have already suffered so much in the name of ‘development.’ I wholeheartedly recommend this critically important book.”—Peter Newell, author of Power Shift: The Global Political Economy of Energy Transitions
“A tour de force! Essential analysis for all concerned about economic development, community organizing, and environmental policies that move us toward truly just, post-coal futures in Appalachia and beyond.”
—Barbara Ellen Smith, author of Digging Our Own Graves: Coal Miners and the Struggle over Black Lung Disease
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