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Heritage is not what we see in front of us, it is what we make of it in our heads. Heritage sites have been connected to a range of identarian projects, both spatial and non-spatial. One of the most common links with heritage has been national identity. This book stresses that heritage has developed powerful links to regional and local identities. Contributors deal explicitly with regions of heavy industry in different parts of the world, exploring non-spatial forms of identity: including class, religious, ethnic, racial, gender and cultural identities.
In many heritage sites, non-spatial forms of identity are interlinked with spatial ones. Civil society action has been important in representations of regional identities and industrial-heritage campaigns. Region-branding seems to determine the ultimate success of industrial heritage, a process that is closely connected to the marketing of regions to provide a viable economic future and attract tourism to the region. Selected case-studies on coal and steel producing regions in this book provide the first global survey of how regions of heavy industry deal with their industrial heritage, and what it means for regional identity and region-branding.
This book draws a range of powerful conclusions about the path dependency of particular forms for post-industrial regional identity in former regions of heavy industry. It highlights both commonalities and differences in the strategies employed with regard to the regions' industrial heritage. This book will appeal to lecturers, students and scholars in the fields of heritage management, industrial studies and cultural geography
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List of contents
Introduction: Industrial Heritage and Regional Identities (Christian Wicke) 1.Mining Memories: Big Pit and Industrial Heritage in South Wales (Leighton James) 2. Looking Back: Representations of the Industrial Past in Asturias (Rubén Vega) 3.Regional identity and industrial heritage in the mining area of Nord-Pas-de-Calais (Marion Fontaine)
4.A Post-Industrial Mindscape? The Mainstreaming and Touristification of Industrial Heritage in the Ruhr (Stefan Berger, Jana Golombek and Christian Wicke ) 5.Contested Heritage and Regional Identity in the Borsod Industrial Area in Hungary (Györgyi Németh) 6.Identity and Mining Heritage in Romania's Jiu Valley Coal Region (David Kideckel) 7. Regional Identity in the Making? Industrial Heritage and Regional Identity in the Coal Region of Northern Kyushu in Japan (Regine Mathias) 8. 'There needs to be something there for people to remember': Industrial Heritage in Newcastle and the Hunter Valley, Australia (Erik Eklund) 9.From Mills to Malls: Industrial Heritage and Regional Identity in Metropolitan Pittsburgh (Allen Dieterich-Ward) 10. Regions of heavy industry and their heritage - between identity politics and 'touristification': where to next? (Stefan Berger and Paul Pickering)
About the author
Christian Wicke is Assistant Professor in political history at Utrecht University.
Stefan Berger is Professor of Social History at Ruhr University Bochum and director of the Institute for Social Movements.
Jana Golombek is a doctoral student and a research associate at the German Mining Museum in Bochum and is working as a researcher and curator at the LWL-Industrial Museum in Dortmund.
Summary
This book explores the way in which heritage is used to address social and economic change caused by deindustrialization and the ways in which regional identity has been renegotiated through heritage. It explores the local contexts and broader theoretical frameworks that have influenced the approaches taken to the industrial heritage in de-indus
