Paper Short Abstract:

This presentation looks at the undoing of an industrial community in Norway and explores how deindustrialisation has re-created coping strategies in the local community. Faced with a deindustrialised future, ways of looking at the (industrial) past can be discerned in children's learning.

Paper Abstract:

In 2015 Rjukan–Notodden industrial heritage was inscribed as a UNESCO World Heritage Site. Shortly thereafter a political move was made to develop a learning resource about Rjukan–Notodden industrial heritage. Through ethnographic fieldwork, I have looked into how and why children in Notodden learn about the town’s industrial past and industrial heritage.

My findings suggest that in becoming industrial heritage and in becoming a World Heritage Site, a dominant storyline has been established which offers a narrative about an industrial golden age: a utopia or a heterotopia following Foucault (1991) perhaps? According to Foucault, heterotopias are upset representations of the world – the mirror image – both real and not real at the same time. As a World Heritage Site, Rjukan–Notodden can be viewed as such.

Looking at children’s learning, revealed how children were told and retold variations over a narrative which, in turn, pushed me towards the works of Greenwood (2003) and Somerville (2010) who argue for a pedagogy of the place. In learning from place children are faced with paradoxical and alternative stories; a contact zone of contestation that makes way for deep learning and critical thinking. Two skills or competencies that are very much needed in today’s world.

Thus, in the presentation, I aim to show how the anthropology of learning and the pedagogy of place offer valuable perspectives on the interplay between regional and global transformations – which can provide children with alternatives to dominant storylines and promote sustainable alternatives to the consumer/neoliberal economy.