Contribution short abstract:

Winning is a former colliery community in England. Its extensive remediation process resulted in a new taskscape. I explore how some villagers came to view rites and futures forged as part of the process as threatened by new forms of extractivism associated with decarbonisation and green energy.

Contribution long abstract:

How do residents of a remediated, post-coalonial colliery village react when their recently created rites and novel ideas about future possibilities are threatened by new, previously unimagined, forms of extractivism? I explore this question by drawing on 18 months of fieldwork carried out in just such a community between 2022 and 2023.

Winning is a medium-sized village in rural North East England. For much of its existence the settlement’s taskscape and temporalities were informed by extractivism. Specifically, a workforce largely composed of male villagers won vast amounts of coal from the town’s mine. However, owing to Thatcherism this mine was shuttered at the 20th century’s end. In place of this extractivist endeavour which had led to a blighted landscape there developed a remediated woodland, new forms of light industry, and commerce. Some effort was also made to preserve accounts of the past and generate forms of community orientated to the future. Not only did old villagers begin to think of their environment differently but the composition of the village’s population changed bringing migrants from the south.

Yet, during my fieldwork, it was felt this new future was at risk. Specifically, the remediated landscape, which villagers had come to regard as common property, was now threatened anew by the prospect of renewable energy generation. Efforts were underway to extract wind and solar resources from the village. I detail in my presentation why these proposed developments created a panic among some residents.