'We don't even know who owns it': the infrastructural imaginary of Spruce Pine, NC. Issue 4 (3rd September 2021)

• Record Type: Journal Article
• Authors: Scott, D. Travers
• Is Part Of: Cultural studies. Volume 35:Issue 4/5(2021)
• Page Start: 900
• Page End: 919
• Publication Date: 2021-09-03
• Subjects: Mining -- identity -- quartz -- silicon -- ethnography -- computing; Culture -- Periodicals; Popular culture -- Periodicals; 306
• DOI: 10.1080/09502386.2021.1895255
• Languages: English
• ISSNs: 0950-2386

Abstract

ABSTRACT: This project explores in/visibility, publicity, and politics in the infrastructural imaginary of Spruce Pine, a mining town in the US state of North Carolina. Through participant observation and other direct experiences, and as an interdisciplinary exercise in studying from below, I examine how the town's supplying of high-quality quartz (HQQ) to high-tech industries is entangled with their promoted identity as a gem-mining location. From the perspective of ideological- and material-discursive practices, I examine processes of open secreting, disarticulation from a 'high tech' identity and its connotations, and a nostalgic emphasis on the town's gem-mining identity. The political ramifications of these entanglements are presented in the example of the town's pro-Trump Fourth of July parade. I conclude by reflecting on how the complex entanglements of seemingly contradictory ideological practices work in part due to their alignment with regional culture and history.