Geographies of deindustrialization and the working‐class: Industrial ruination, legacies, and affect

Abstract

Sections of the post‐industrial working‐class have made a notable return to media and political discourses in the context of the rise of populism across Europe and the United States. These narratives, which exclude women and BAME working‐class people, suggests the (white, male) working‐class are angry and resentful of being left behind by increasingly globalized political economies, nostalgic for the industrial ordering of work, home, and community. It seems that the political and media establishment are, selectively, understanding what has long been realized by researchers of deindustrialization. In the first, this paper surveys and critiques recent discourses on the post‐industrial working‐classes. The paper then traces the development of industrial ruination as an interdisciplinary area of academic focus, highlighting the themes of memory and temporal factors that have come to dominate the literature. The next section reviews contestations surrounding the affordances of landscapes and industrial ruins for the analysis of memory and history. Finally, the paper proposes interrelated ways to advance future study which historical–cultural geographers are well placed to carry forward. Here, I call for greater attention toward the affective and embodied dimensions of classed experience and the intersectionalities of race and gender in working‐class subjectivities. Further, I suggest there is an imperative to a deeper understanding of constitutive “affective” histories to mediate enduring social inequalities and their political and socially divisive mobilizations.

Urban trauma in the ruins of industrial culture: Miners’ Welfares of the Nottinghamshire coalfield, UK

“…The far-reaching economic and social impacts of industrial ruination have been welldocumented (Emery, 2019a;High et al, 2017;Mah, 2012;Strangleman, 2013). A focus on urban trauma enables a theorisation of the embodied and affective impacts, as well as the politics entangled with them.…”

“…An industrial ruin 'speaks to the trauma, uncertainty, and tenacity of lived experiences with painful post-industrial transformations' (Mah, 2017, p. 205), evoking, signifying and mediating senses of traumatic events, memories and endurances (Degnen, 2016;Mah, 2012;Strangleman, 2013). Much research has been done on ruins of industrial workplaces, where former workers continue to cultivate attachments in what 'can be compared to a grieving process' (Meier, 2013, p. 475;Emery, 2019a). However, a focus on workplaces dictates a narrowed emphasis on labour issues, the loss of industrial jobs and economic decline.…”

Iconic Architecture and Middle-Class Politics of Memory in a Deindustrialized City

“…Rather than viewing deindustrialization as politically neutral, Lewis and High (2007) suggest that it forms part of a larger process of marginalization and erasure of working-class identities and culture under global capitalism. Although the post-industrial working class may be increasingly difficult to define, social class as embodied, affective experience has a continued relevance to life in deindustrialized communities (Dicks, 2008; Emery, 2019). Mah (2012) introduces the term industrial ruination to capture deindustrialization as a lived, multidimensional, and ongoing process.…”

“…In contrast to the demolition of mining architecture, many of the ‘mine colonies’ – suburban neighbourhoods in the north of the city that were constructed by mining companies for their underground workers – are still intact. These neighbourhoods are today among the poorest of the city and their residents, although they may not be members of the traditional working class, occupy socially and spatially marginalized positions (Emery, 2019). Respondents living in these areas frequently described their neighbourhoods as rundown, or even as ghettos.…”

“…As residents do not form a homogeneous group, we may expect both memories of deindustrialization and responses to regeneration to be diverse, ambivalent, and contradictory (Byrne, 2002; Hubbard, 1996). Following Emery’s (2019: 2) call for a ‘greater consideration of the classed dynamics, affect, and intersectionality and the roles played by these in the constitution of the present’ in formerly industrial localities, and keeping in mind that ‘industrial culture is not now, nor was it ever, solely or even primarily a culture of the poor’ (Byrne, 2002: 281), this article investigates how middle-class politics of memory (Hodgkin and Radstone, 2003; Huyssen, 2003) inform residents’ experiences. While previous research mostly focused on working-class residents (e.g.…”