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Paper short abstract

Approaching coal as remains unearths geological and historical layers underlying everyday life, labor, and environments today. In China, coal persists after extraction as dust, ash, and smoke that pollute air, degrade land, and damage bodies amid concerns of illness, care, and work.

Paper long abstract

Approaching coal as remains, rather than a sector or resource, unearths geological and historical layers that underlie everyday life, labor, and environments today. Based on ethnography in China's coal-dependent Shanxi Province, coal persists after extraction as dust, ash, and smoke that pollute air, degrade land, and damage bodies. Early historical accounts situate coal as an ordinary domestic fuel in China. Marco Polo (ca. 1298) described coal as a “black stone,” abundant and cheap, sustaining baths and homes in densely populated cities. In Shanxi, where residents revere the mother goddess of the hearth and the mines, coal continues to be embedded in routines of warmth, care, and survival. Song Yingxing (1637) provided detailed instructions on the techniques, labor, and risks involved in coal's extraction and combustion. Similar understandings of coal and pollution persist as practical, experiential knowledge in Shanxi, where residents focus on handling coal and living with polluted air rather than abstract carbon metrics. Contemporary historians reframe coal within political economy. Pomeranz (2000) emphasizes coal as enabling industrialization by relieving pressure on land and labor in China, while Mitchell (2011) links coal to political formations, labor concentration, and democratic claims that are difficult to sustain in the People’s Republic. Today Chinese coal appears less as an enabling condition than as a substance that redistributes damage unevenly across regions and generations, as Shanxi becomes reframed as a site of managed post-industrial decline and low-carbon transition. Through these processes, geological time folds into households concerned with illness, care, and work.