Digging Up Trouble examines questions central to social science debates through a specific empirical scenario, focusing on the controversies surrounding open-cast mining (known in North America as "strip mining") in order to examine the complex relationships between environmental planning, political economy and local culture.Contrasting the words and actions of local people, politicians, planners and industrialists in order to dramatize the different interests and perceptions which bear upon local planning decisions, this book examines the nature of knowledge, conflicts between the worlds of "common sense" and "expertise", and the manifestations of these problems in the context of political anti economic decision-making. The debates illuminate questions of risk, environmental protest and new social movements, the public and the private, and economics and politics at the local level.