Lauren Hayes

Preliminary abstract: This project explores the localization of global software coding technology in rural Appalachian Kentucky in an area that local leaders have recently dubbed ‘Silicon Holler’–a play on Silicon Valley, the U.S. technology hub, and a lexical term for valley in the local speech variety. Focusing on a new training-to-work phenomenon, it explores the experiences of former coal miners, both men and women, who are being specifically recruited by technology companies in Kentucky to enroll in coding and software development programs. The research investigates the discursive, embodied, and semiotic strategies through which companies and former coal miner trainees navigate new demands of individualized cognitive labor and confront dominant local ideals of a gendered work narrative. The research complexifys current global anthropological debates concerning the sustainability of coal mining and the fossil fuel industry, the lived experience and gendered implications of technological globalization, and the effects of job loss and re-training in neoliberal capitalism.