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Paper short abstract:

This paper focuses on the transformations of industrial landscapes identified visually, and within the materiality of built environment. It raises the question of how, and what the industrial landscapes speak about social challenges in economy, and livelihood in contemporary Lithuania.

Paper long abstract:

Soviet industrial areas in Lithuania, which visually and functionally were homogenous and enduring, have experienced abrupt transformations with regards to post-Soviet deindustrialization after the restoration of Lithuania's Independence in 1990. Today people see the industrial landscapes as neglected places, in which industrial activity has declined, factories have closed, and people have lost their jobs. They say “it is an empty place” although new objects or parts of objects are emerging in the industrial areas. Walking and seeing approach is an ethnographic way to get to know the place, the materiality of built environment, which embodies activities and practices of people, and the story of postindustrial transformations. Material elements of the past weave into the present and continue as traces of people’s lived experiences (Ingold 1993; Tilley, Cameron-Daum 2017). The paper takes into account the capacity of visual forms to narrate not only the specificity of the place, but also its dynamics and social change. The paper discusses how industrial landscapes, which encompass the old structures, as well as new elements, speak about the process of post-Soviet deindustrialization; what kind of aspects of making certainty of living during social challenges they represent; how emerging new means of livelihood are remaking and reconceptualizing industrial landscapes today. The paper is based on the fieldwork in two Lithuanian cities Alytus and Marijampole, which experienced intensive industrialization during the Soviet era.