Food, Power, and the Political Economy of Care in the West Virginia Mine Wars, 1912-1921

Abstract

This thesis explores the West Virginia Mine Wars (1912–1921) through the lens of food, care, and social reproduction, centering the experiences of women whose labor sustained both families and resistance. Traditional historiography on the Mine Wars foregrounds male miners, labor issues, and episodic violence, and leaves details of women’s contributions on the periphery. Drawing on oral histories, archival collections, trial records, newspapers, and photographs, I analyze both the presence of women’s voices and the silences of the historical record, situating their work within frameworks of necropolitics, feminist theories of care, and Appalachian labor and environmental history. I argue that coal companies weaponized food and reproductive labor to control communities, while women simultaneously utilized these practices within kinship networks that enabled both survival and a sustained resistance. By examining care as both exploited and revolutionary labor, this project expands the understanding of the Mine Wars beyond strikes and armed confrontations to include everyday practices of care. Ultimately, it demonstrates how kitchens, gardens, and domestic work functioned as political sites, revealing the centrality of care labor to labor history in Appalachia.