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Palgrave Macmillan

Post-Industrial Landscape Scars

  • Book
  • © 2014

Overview

Authors:
  1. Anna Storm
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  • Industrial heritage is a relatively new are of inquiry within history and memory studies, and this has the potential to be a major work within it
  • This book will resonate with the recent surge of interest in the politics, meaning, and aesthetics of postindustrial urban buildings (a.k.a. "ruins porn")
  • Storm does not merely theorize on the subject, but delves deep into fascinating examples ranging from urban renewal projects to mining pits to nuclear power plants

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Table of contents (7 chapters)

  1. Front Matter

    Pages i-xvii
    Download chapter PDF

  2. Introduction

    • Anna Storm
    Pages 1-19

  3. Unstable Mountain

    • Anna Storm
    Pages 21-45

  4. Distance of Fear

    • Anna Storm
    Pages 47-73

  5. Lost Utopia

    • Anna Storm
    Pages 75-99

  6. Industrial Nature

    • Anna Storm
    Pages 101-126

  7. Enduring Spirit

    • Anna Storm
    Pages 127-151

  8. Prospective Scars Unfolding

    • Anna Storm
    Pages 153-158

  9. Back Matter

    Pages 159-227
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Keywords

About this book

Post-industrial landscape scars are traces of 20th century utopian visions of society; they relate to fear and resistance expressed by popular movements and to relations between industrial workers and those in power. The metaphor of the scar pinpoints the inherent ambiguity of memory work by signifying both positive and negative experiences, as well as the contemporary challenges of living with these physical and mental marks. In this book, Anna Storm explores post-industrial landscape scars caused by nuclear power production, mining, and iron and steel industry in Malmberget, Kiruna, Barsebäck and Avesta in Sweden; Ignalina and Visaginas/Snie?kus in Lithuania/former Soviet Union; and Duisburg in the Ruhr district of Germany. The scars are shaped by time and geographical scale; they carry the vestiges of life and work, of community spirit and hope, of betrayed dreams and repressive hierarchical structures. What is critical, Storm concludes, is the search for a legitimate politics of memory. The meanings of the scars must be acknowledged. Past and present experiences must be shared in order shape new understandings of old places.

Reviews

"This valuable study of northern European industrial sites shows in detail how patriarchal capitalism both scarred and shaped community, and it explains how the transition to a post-industrial society has entailed the often ingenious reinvention of this heritage." - David E. Nye, Professor, Center for American Studies, University of Southern Denmark

"They are all around us – mines and smelters, nuclear reactors, company towns, brownfields, and other industrial landscapes. Storm asks us to consider the communities that are integral parts of their past, present, and future. She takes us on an original and probing journey to consider the rise and fall of industrial sites, the scars they have created, and the contentious memories they engender as places of work and home, nostalgia, decay, and even rebirth as parks." - Paul Josephson, Professor of Russian and Soviet history, Colby College, USA

'Industrial ruins have traditionally been characterized as a blight, or a scar, on the landscape, and thus dismissed. The significance of industrial sites to social history, and to the experiences of class and labor, are often neglected. Storm addresses this lacuna and presents six richly textured case studies to identify the many differing, and often conflicting, layers of meaning that such sites may have. Storm draws attention to how industrial heritage can offer ways of acknowledging and reflecting on past injustices. In using the metaphor of scar as a processof healing, the book explores the ways in which industrial heritage offers a place from which societies can enter into discussion about the meaning of the past for the present' – Laurajane Smith, Professor, Centre for Heritage and Museum Studies, The Australian National University

About the author

Anna Storm is a researcher in the History of Technology and Critical Heritage Studies at the Department of Human Geography, Stockholm University, Sweden. She has been awarded the Joan Cahalin Robinson Prize (2006), the ICOHTEC Publication Prize for Young Scholars (2009) and the Marie Nisser Scholarship (2012).

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