From “Infant Hercules” to “Ghost Town”: Industrial Collapse and Social Harm in Teesside

Abstract

This article explicates the harms associated with deindustrialization in Teesside in the North East of England in the context of neoliberalism. Drawing on in-depth qualitative interviews (n=25), the article explores how ongoing industrial collapse, typified by Sahaviriya Steel Industries' (SSI) closure in 2015 has generated various harms. First, the article examines industrialism's socioeconomic security and stability. It then explores the negative impact of SSI's closure in 2015, including a sense of loss and unemployment. Next, it demonstrates how the absence of economic stability produces harmful outcomes, namely insecurity, mental health problems and bleak visions of the future. The article concludes by casting industrial ruination as an impediment to human flourishing; the normal functioning of capitalism represents a "negative motivation to harm" that prevents the stability and security necessary for individual and collective flourishing.

Post‐industrial masculinities and gym culture: Graft, craft, and fraternity

“…The process of de‐industrialization is central to the lived experiences of residents of Potsford and Claymoor. Beginning in the late 1970s, this describes the globalized outsourcing and privatization of traditional industries, upon which entire towns and cities proudly hung their collective identities (Telford & Lloyd, 2020; Walkerdine, 2006). Though some areas have made the successful transition into being spaces of ‘buzz’ and hedonistic experience‐building through large‐scale investment in the night‐time economy (see Raymen, 2019), the locales under study have seen the decimation of community life and an accompanying sense of malaise following the loss of their traditional industry (Mah, 2013; Strangleman et al, 2013).…”

“…However, following the collapse of Britain's heavy industry and the subsequent transition into post‐industrialism, the availability of these predominantly working‐class, physically‐skilled ‘jobs for life’ (Telford & Lloyd, 2020) has drastically reduced, leaving scores of men bereft of a gender‐affirming source of labor (Nayak, 2003; Nixon, 2009; Winlow & Hall, 2006). In their place, these ‘displaced’ masculinities (Nayak, 2006) have increasingly been put to work in the service sector, with its stereotypically feminine reliance upon emotional labor and customer service (McDowell, 2003; Nixon, 2017).…”

“…The wholesale dismantling of stable working‐class employment, particularly within the former heartlands of British production, profoundly impacted workers, their families, and the wider community (Mah, 2013; Strangleman et al, 2013) and inflicted deep social scars that show no sign of healing. In short, Britain's deindustrialization fractured the foundation upon which many aspects of working‐class masculine culture had derived much of their meaning, cutting adrift scores of men from their principal means of gendered identity construction (Telford & Lloyd, 2020).…”

Targets and overwork: Neoliberalism and the maximisation of profitability from the workplace

“…Subsequently, many states in the global north such as in England played an active role in mitigating the market's tendency to generate inequalities through welfare provision, full employment and widespread nationalisation of public utilities (Hobsbawm 1994;Judt 2010;Marquand 1988). Although decaying housing, poverty and slum-like conditions existed in some of England's most deprived communities (see Coates & Silburn, 1973), employment opportunities for industrial workers, in particular, often contained sizable gains in incomes and economic security (Telford & Lloyd 2020;Winlow & Hall 2013). As capital's attempts to erode industrial employees' working conditions -such as wages -were often halted by collective resistance and demands for better pay, economic inequality dwindled for the first time in history (Streeck, 2016;Winlow & Hall 2013).…”

Damaged hardmen: Organized crime and the half‐life of deindustrialization

“…Following a pattern long identified by criminologists and sociologists (Currie, 2016; Wilson, 1987), many arrests took place in areas associated with industrial decline. Long associated with entrenched community marginalization, deindustrialization has become a frequent reference‐point in sociological accounts of crime and deviance (Hobbs, 2013; MacDonald & Marsh, 2005; Nayak, 2003; Telford & Lloyd, 2020). Surprisingly, however, it has to date formed a rather spectral presence in the sociology of organized crime—operating as an inert backdrop rather than an active component of the present.…”