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2 books match the query 'Struggles for'

cover of Power and Just Transitions: Struggles for a Post-Coal Future in an Appalachian Valley

Power and Just Transitions

Struggles for a Post-Coal Future in an Appalachian Valley

John Gaventa and Gabe Schwartzman

University of Illinois Press, 2026

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.
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cover of Struggles for the Human: Violent Legality and the Politics of Rights

Struggles for the Human

Violent Legality and the Politics of Rights

Lara Montesinos Coleman

Duke University Press, 2024

In Struggles for the Human, Lara Montesinos Coleman blends ethnography, political philosophy, and critical theory to reorient debates on human rights through attention to understandings of legality, ethics, and humanity in anticapitalist and decolonial struggle. Drawing on her extensive involvement with grassroots social movements in Colombia, Coleman observes that mainstream expressions of human rights have become counterparts to capitalist violence, even as this discourse disavows capitalism’s deadly implications. She rejects claims that human rights are inherently tied to capitalism, liberalism, or colonialism, instead showing how human rights can be used to combat these forces. Coleman demonstrates that social justice struggles that are rooted in marginalized communities’ lived experiences can reframe human rights in order to challenge oppressive power structures and offer a blueprint for constructing alternative political economies. By examining the practice of redefining human rights away from abstract universals and contextualizing them within concrete struggles for justice, Coleman reveals the transformative potential of human rights and invites readers to question and reshape dominant legal and ethical narratives.
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