Paper short abstract:

This paper discusses uses of heritage narratives in two post-industrial towns in Norway. A scheme has been put in place ensuring children and youths growing up developing ownership and knowledge about their local heritage, though with a rather rigid understanding of local history and heritage.

Paper long abstract:

The backdrop for this presentation is the post-industrial twin towns of Rjukan and Notodden; once prestigious sites of infrastructural development and employment that came about due to the establishment of Hydro in 1905, now a postindustrial community inscribed on the UNESCO World Heritage list. An inscription fueled by economic vulnerability, depopulation and loss of self-esteem. Here, I compare two cases or narratives; The first is an educational program aimed at children in year 6 that narrates the industrial development of Rjukan and Notodden in terms of an industrial fairy tale. The second is an interview with a retired employee who describes his working career in Hydro as a road to closing down the industry in Rjukan and Notodden.

The panel abstract asks: Which temporalities underlie individual and collective place- and future-making? In the case of the Rjukan-Notodden industrial heritage tale, emphasis is on the early formative years. Whereas for many, in the older generations, still today, the narrative freshest in mind, is the tale of how the industry was closed down and outsourced to countries with low-costs production, not how Sam Eyde and Hydro saved the world from famine, as history is told to children and youths today. These two temporalities, operate with different place-narratives, though because of the recent (2015) inscription onto the UNESCO World Heritage list, the focus is on the formative years of Notodden and Rjukan as the value of the ‘industrial ruins’ are linked to hope for future economic growth, tourism and revitalisation of local place.

Paper short abstract:

This paper explores attempts to transform Rjukan - an industrial heritage site in Norway - into a more attractive place to live and work. I argue that heritage and climate policies conflate as local authorities try to reinvigorate Rjukan's industrial landscape and society.

Paper long abstract:

Rjukan was initially designed and built from scratch by a fertilizer company (Norsk Hydro) in the early 1900s. The mountainous geography and water reserves made it a suitable place to develop an industry reliant on hydroelectric power. After a longer recession period and emigration, the last fertilizer shipment was transported from Rjukan in 1991. Rjukan was inscribed into UNESCO World Heritage List in 2015 with an aim to create new economic alternatives. Recently, new green industries have begun to consider establishing at Rjukan because the municipality can offer renewable hydroelectric power. The possibilities of green industries make the local municipality see the need to further boost its appeal to attract a new workforce, although the prospects of new industries are, to some degree, speculative and uncertain.

This paper explores what creating attractivity means in a context where there are possibilities for new industries to develop and political guidelines to preserve industrial material heritage. More specifically, I focus on how local bureaucrats seek to change the industrial landscape but maintain the industrial aesthetics, while at the same time drawing on policies to decarbonize society. The concept "attractivity" emerges as a central term in my ethnography as efforts to find alternatives to past industries depend on creating a pull factor and on branding the municipality. I focus in particular on one specific project that aim to merge apartments and semi-detached houses in the UNESCO area into bigger units to meet current living standards for families and thus increase attractivity.

Paper short abstract:

Aiming to scrutinise entanglements and (re)evaluations of infrastructure change, heritage and (re)industrialisation, a study of an industrial town in South Wales, UK explores situated experiences of industrial dependence and decline and how residents made sense of visions for the town’s future.

Paper long abstract:

As the UK and other late-capitalist economies embark on decarbonisation, industrial towns and regions are coming into view as objects of academic study and policy discourse. Particularly noteworthy (if not yet very common) are ethnographically inspired, psychosocial studies drawing on forms of understanding and modalities of engagement elucidating how former industrial and mining communities have experienced significant socio-cultural transformations. While planning and policy processes prioritise economic development, this research establishes how industrial development and retrenchment are transformative not only economically but also in terms of affective, cultural and emotional relationships to place. Taking account of more generic investigations into public perceptions of the “greening” of industrial and energy system decarbonisation in place, our presentation reports on a set of biographical interviews and deliberative workshops conducted in Port Talbot, South Wales exploring how situated experiences of industrial dependence and decline shaped how Port Talbot residents made sense of visions for the town’s future. In the face of industrial decline, alternative aspects of place emerged as locus points of emotional and cultural identification, ‘public things’ (Honig, 2017) in which alternative hopes for the future are invested. As emergent policies for clean growth (including eco-tourism) become enacted in concrete projects, we argue for keeping a clearer focus on experiences of and relationships embedded in industrial places as an antidote to abstract, polarising discussions of environmental crises, industrial ruination, and future’s indeterminacy. Our research trajectory involves further scrutinising entanglements and (re)evaluations of infrastructure change, heritage and (re)industrialisation by addressing frictions created by contrasting temporalities.

Paper short abstract:

The paper focuses on a recently built housing estate, a radical socio-material transformation of a former post-industrial landscape of Prague. It traces the conflicting narratives of the place’s heritage and imagined future(s) and examines its divergent understandings and multilayered meanings.

Paper long abstract:

An unkempt, ugly, and dangerous brownfield in need of renewal or a calm inspirational landscape of nostalgia for the disappearing past? The value and heritage of Prague’s former industrial docks site are contested. The divergent understandings of the place’s past shape how various actors view the development of a new prestigious gated-community housing estate and the future possibilities of (un)commonness it represents.

It is all too clear the new development has marked a radical socio-economic metamorphosis of the place. But has the transformation created a new bright future for a formerly wasted landscape, or has it ruthlessly tried to erase the place’s postindustrial history? For some, the new development materializes hope for a better, safer, and richer future. For others, its fences and well-kept parks produce anger, anxiety, and fear of displacement. What are the points of departure of these conflicting moral claims? Should the postindustrial heritage be preserved or done away with? Who decides and what informs their decision?

This case study attempts to trace how conflicting understandings and practices surrounding the recent transformation come into being and are negotiated and to map out their broader social, economic, political, and historical contexts. The aim is to develop a complex, layered understanding of the place’s current meaning(s), its projected past(s), and its imagined future(s), as well as to better understand the structural context behind its (re)production.

Paper short abstract:

This paper proposes to approach landfills as multimodal heritage that may preserve not only darkness of wastefulness and decay but also social life inscribed in garbage itself, multispecies thriving, and uncanny histories of these places.

Paper long abstract:

What kind of material or semiotic clues should remain once an era of landfilling disappears? After thousands of years of waste dumping, this practice is supposed to disappear in Europe to pave way for the supposedly more sustainable futures. Landfills, nonetheless, are places with their own histories that can be tied to previous military training or industrial activities such as mining. These associations make the questions about potential preservation even more challenging.

There are already suggestions what to do with former landfills. They may become places for rest and recreation or burial of the dead to encourage the visitors of these unusual places of remembrance to reflect on visitors’ unfortunate separation from material flows. I propose to approach landfilling as multimodal heritage that carries a rich spectrum of potentialities for experience and memory. Landfills represent not only dark or toxic heritage in a sense of carrying disturbing feelings or harmful effects. They are literally museums of the future capturing ways of life as well as spatiotemporal relations inscribed in materiality of garbage itself. At the same time, landfills represent ‘loci of salvage’ or even joy where value does not disappear because of activities of human pickers rescuing bits and bobs, plants taking advantage of rich nutrients to grow, and birds picking food waste while creating new ecologies spreading way beyond landfills. At last, landfills offer an opportunity to capture ‘magnetic relations’ among various kinds of strangeness creating uncanny histories in sites of contemporary landfilling.