Post-industrial Landscape: Space and Place in the Personal Experiences of Residents of the Former Working-class Estate of Ksawera in Będzin

A Good Life Postponed: Working in the Countryside, Retiring in the City in Contemporary China

“…The buildings were part of a past utopia, a socialist future, where the danwei provided workers with places of leisure, infrastructure, and services. They were still present, not quite as ruins, but as closed and abandoned buildings marking the history of a future oriented project of the past (Pelkmans 2013;Wodz and Gnieciak 2017). This became particularly obvious as we approached the overgrown gate of the local school, which Er Shu's daughter had attended before the school closed in 2007.…”

“…The closure of the school and the abandonment of other danwei infrastructure highlighted the decline of a socialist future. But unlike post-Soviet examples of abandoned mines and socialist infrastructure (Pelkmans 2013;Pine 2014;Wodz and Gnieciak 2017) the opportunities in the city overshadowed the abandonment and neglect of Peach Mine. Although Er Shu fondly remembered the time when his daughter was still living with him and his wife, looking back he just shrugged.…”

Politics and the environment in Eastern Europe

“…Many are nostalgic when remembering the miners' choir, and the fact that the state-mine had a football team. Moreover, during the socialist time workers in heavy industries were highly regarded, and all (post)industrial communities in eastern Europe are greatly defined by this period that they experienced and now perceive in terms of stability (Wódz and Gnieciak, 2017), clear life trajectories (Pine, 2017), and a sense of worth (Kalb, 2017;Pine, 2017;Wódz and Gnieciak, 2017).…”

“…Whereas the accounts of the pre-socialist time present difficult periods, inherently vulnerable and unpredictable cycles in the acquiring of what was necessary for oneself and for the family, this was something immanent to the certitude of an ongoing relationship with the landscape, of a life lived in a mining environment (which in socialism transformed into the stability of employment in the state mine). The fragility of their livelihood today, however, is on the one hand evidence of disrupted (social, ecological, economic and intergenerational) relationships (see also Pine, 2017;Kalb, 2017), and on the other hand, an acute experience on the micro level of the present erratic macro-economic and state-political processes (Goddard, 2017;Wódz and Gnieciak, 2017). This latter aspect determines their long-term and everyday economic decisions, as many become uninterested or afraid to invest and plan for the future in a context where they see everything as dependent on a single decision that keeps getting postponed.…”