A Strike Like No Other Strike: Law and Resistance During the Pittston Coal Strike of 1989-1990.

A Strike Like No Other Strike: Law and Resistance During the Pittston Coal Strike of 1989-1990. By Richard A. Brisbin Jr. (Baltimore and London: Johns Hopkins University Press, c. 2002. Pp. xvi, 350. $44.95, ISBN 0-8018-6901-3.)

In this book, Richard A. Brisbin Jr. investigates how "legalism" and a patriarchal "legal complex" shaped the 1989-1990 battle between the United Mine Workers of America (UMWA) and the Pittston Coal Group in southern Appalachia (pp. 6, 10). He first provides a historical background to the strike, charting miners' escape from the "traditional patriarchy" of mine owners in the 1930s and the evolution of the "law of contracts and collective bargaining" in the decades that followed (pp. 21-22). Brisbin then examines how this more modern terrain for class conflict was challenged during the Pittston Coal strike, focusing on the ways union leaders as well as rank-and-file members rejected legalism. He concludes with an explanation of why and how this framework was restored.

Heavily influenced by post-structuralist theory, Brisbin is primarily concerned with discourse. There is something like a standard, narrative history interwoven throughout his analysis, but he emphasizes frames of reference and underlying systems of meaning. Here class conflict is discursive conflict, an impasse during the strike is the result of a discursive breakdown, miners experienced a cognitive liberation during the battle, their civil disobedience and other tactics were performed texts, and their camouflage-clothed bodies were significations of resistance. Besides the theoretical and conceptual questions this sort of approach raises, it also introduces quite a lot of jargon. Brisbin forewarns the reader of this in his introduction, explaining that it will take little effort to learn the "specialized vocabulary" he employs. Nevertheless, much of what follows is difficult to understand (p. 6).

Among the words that Brisbin uses with some frequency is "patriarchy." On its face, according to a strict definition, the concept is not hard to comprehend. But in this book, patriarchy is protean, encompassing the way (male) mine owners exploit (male) coal miners and their families in coal towns as well as the continued control operators have over miners through a system of legalized collective bargaining. Drawing on the work of Carole Pateman, Brisbin seems to be using the term to describe any relationship in which power is hidden behind a facade of benevolence or legal equality. This understanding of power is an important part of his argument about why miners waged the type of strike they did against Pittston, but the terminology itself frequently gets in the way of communicating the point.

Although reading A Strike Like No Other Strike can be fruitful, readers who want a more traditional rendering of the UMWA's battle with Pittston will be disappointed. The book is really meant for those who have already taken the "linguistic turn."

CHAD MONTRIE

University of Massachusetts, Lowell