Abstract
Based on 222 qualitative interviews conducted through a large ethnographic research project on transformed industrial landscapes in six countries, the main argument of the article is threefold. First, landscapes and narratives about past and present landscapes are relevant to the identity of class; second, the transformation of industrial landscapes is most emphatically expressed by nostalgia; third, the narratives are a transnationally constitutive element of class identity. The narratives of workers about the transformation and destruction of former workplaces express an identity crisis as seen in feelings of mourning and indifference. However, this does not indicate an erosion in the relevance of identity. Considering class as also having an emotional dimension, the article demonstrates that a class identity also evolves out of loss and longing. As nostalgia for a past now gone is a common narrative identity element in the research areas, it is considered as constitutive of a transnational class identity.
Introduction
Since the 1970s, a large number of European industrial landscapes have undergone intensive spatial and social transformation. The range of spatial transformations that have taken place in recent decades in former industrial structures are broad and span from industrial leftovers and ruins to new buildings of the service sector and high-tech industrial plants. These spatial changes have accompanied broader economic and social transformations and posed formidable challenges to those living and working in the affected areas.
Based on a total of 222 open interviews conducted in six European regions, this article demonstrates the relevance of nostalgic narratives as the constitutive element of the social identity of people who have worked and lived within the transformed landscapes. The concept of narrative identity, which we have adopted to analyse the interviews, resolves the tension between the individual as the ‘active narrator’ and the constituted subjectivity of the self. The narratives of the interviewees assign their life into a tellable story (Ochs and Capps, 2002) which is constructive of identity (Ricoeur, 1991). Human beings do not have fixed identities either, because they construct themselves through and in narratives (Bennett, 2015; Lawler, 2008). Moreover narratives are chronological (the events told in temporal relation to one another), meaningful (they attempt to make sense of the behaviour and experiences of the individual) and social (they are produced for a specific audience) (Elliott, 2005: 4). In addition, as our research demonstrates, narratives are also spatial. Landscapes are enduring not only in their material structure but also in memories and have an important bearing on identity. While we see landscape as an ‘ensemble of material and social practices and their symbolic representations’ (Zukin, 1991: 16), we also include in this definition ‘structures of feeling’ (Kirk, 2007; Williams, 1977) as this effect of actually living and experiencing landscape has been expressed in the narratives of the interviewees. Underlying the narrative character of identity formation, our analysis of the narratives of workers and residents of former industrial regions and the structures of feelings embedded in their experience of past and present landscapes has revealed that the loss of former industrial landscapes and the associated nostalgia constitute a narrative basis for a shared identity that tends to go beyond local, regional or national boundaries.
In classic studies, workers were treated as a paradigmatic case of a community attached to specific landscapes, such as places of residence or work (Park and Burgess, 1925; Willmott and Young, 1960). Such a concept of community is formed with an idealization of a supposedly homogeneous community that was and is never homogeneous in reality (Blokland, 2001; Mah, 2012; Meier, 2013b). The influence of globalization theories led to a tendency in the literature to note that this once tight relationship between workers and places has dissolved, detaching the community from the locality, and giving rise to individualization (Beck, 2013) and mobility (Urry, 2000).
An alternative literature, however, has emerged critically responding to both sides of the argument: that is (1) the supposed homogeneity of working class communities and the unproblematic association of workers with place; and (2) the allegedly sweeping individualization and dissociation of communities from place due to globalization. In particular, ethnographic studies have shown the relevance of transformed industrial localities for social identities and community building of the residents (High, 2013; Mah, 2012; Revilla et al., 2013; Rogaly and Taylor, 2009; Wheeler, 2014). A recent study argues that residents make community by sharing narratives of a community lost (Lewis, 2016). Seemingly paradoxically, nostalgic narratives of past communities could become productive elements for community building in the present. Conceptualizing nostalgic narratives as the take of the residents of working class regions on their situation within the existing social and spatial context (Meier, 2016, 2017), we analyse nostalgic narratives as part of the active and continuous reconstruction (Degnen, 2016) of class identity today. As we discuss below, nostalgia is not the only structure of feeling observed among the residents of deindustrialized regions; mourning and indifference also feature heavily in the accounts that show how the residents approach the past. We attribute more significance to nostalgia, however, as the role it plays in the narratives is different from the others. Indifference to spatial effects of structural transformation on the part of residents has a negative effect on a common identity formation. Mourning could have both positive and negative effects depending on the context. Shared nostalgia, however, plays a vital constitutional role in creating a common class identity in the regions we have studied.
In the present study, we consider as part of the working class those who have worked as manual labour in industrial companies. Since Marx differentiated between class-in-itself and class-for-itself (Marx, 1847), it is well known that having a common social position or occupying the same structural position in production does not automatically generate an awareness of class. Class is dynamically and constantly expressed and reproduced through common everyday practices and cultural preferences (Bourdieu, 1986), emotions and – as we shall demonstrate – common narratives. Keeping these theoretical and empirical caveats about class formation in mind, we develop our threefold argument. First, we argue that post-industrial landscapes and (former) places of work still have a central role in biographic narratives and, thus, in identity formation. Second, we stress the relevance of landscape in the narratives about the past and the striking similarity they exhibit in various countries and localities, and argue that in addition to mourning and indifference, these narratives are coloured most visibly by nostalgia. Third, building upon studies that consider class as having an affective dimension and as being lived in emotional ways (Hebson, 2009; Meier, 2013a; Reay, 2005; Sayer, 2005), we demonstrate, also noting generational differences, that this emotional formation of class also takes place at the transnational level as the narratives create a border-crossing space.
Methods and research areas
This article draws on data acquired through a large-scale ethnographic study which was carried out as part of the SPHERE project, a Seventh Framework Programme project funded by the EU from 2008 to 2011. The overall goal of the project was to analyse the evolution of social identities in industrial landscapes that have been undergoing transformation. The article uses data collected in six research areas. The first three, the Silesian Voivodship (Poland), South Yorkshire (UK) and Zonguldak (Turkey), have historically been characterized by mining and steelwork. Recently, both industries have been in decline and partially replaced by the service sector. The transformation in South Yorkshire has been more rapid and thorough. The other three cases have had more diverse industrial pasts. The Alicante region (Spain) has internal variation, too. The city of Alcoy was once dominated by the textile industry; Elda, by the shoe industry. The former industrial structure has been recently replaced in both towns by other industrial sectors and the service sector. South Nuremberg (Germany), the Corbeil-Essonnes and Evry (France) have been doing better in terms of the development of new industrial sectors. In Nuremberg, industrial manufacturing has only to a limited extent been replaced by the service sector. The French region has partly moved from an industrial culture (textiles and printing) to one of engineering and new technology, such as genetic research (Kirk et al., 2012).
The data used in this study include transcriptions of 144 recorded biographic interviews (24 interviews in each of the 6 regions under study), 18 focus group interviews (3 in each region), 60 expert interviews (10 in each region) and field notes taken during participant observation within landscapes relevant to the interviewees. As most of the interviews were carried out in the living spaces of the interviewees, the interview situation and the location enriched the field notes. The interview forms chosen ensured relative openness for the interviewees, who developed long and unstructured narratives. The interviewees for the biographic interviews were selected through different means such as recommendations following the expert interviews, announcements in newspapers, public presentations and the snowball technique. The interviews were held with adults of different age, gender and ethnic origin. Although there was some diversity in occupation, most of them had a background as manual workers in industry who were either living in the respective areas or had lived there in the past. The research project adopted the main principles of grounded theory, such as a general openness, theoretical sampling and an interpretative perspective in the data analysis (Charmaz, 2014). Data analysis was carried out in an open coding process with reference to a code structure that was commonly developed in meetings of all of the six project research groups. This included emergent themes that came out of the first step analyses of project partners and then further discussed and developed in common meetings. At the initial stage of data analysis, each of the six research teams worked on the interview transcripts and ethnographic field notes using qualitative data software. On that basis the six research groups met to develop a common code structure which was then adopted by each team for further analysis. The results were presented and discussed in project meetings with the participation of all research teams. Finally, the results of the analyses were shared in the form of country and thematic reports.
Working class identity and forms of encounter with transformed landscapes
The relevance of industrial landscapes, including the transformed, or ‘lost’ ones, for the formation of social identities has been widely demonstrated (Charlesworth, 2000; Kirk et al., 2012; Mah, 2012; Meier, 2013b, 2016; Rogaly and Taylor, 2009; Strangleman, 2001; Tovar et al., 2011; Walkerdine and Jiménez, 2012; Wheeler, 2014). In addition, there is a body of scholarship that points out that nostalgia is a usual response to deindustrialized landscapes (Cowie and Heathcott, 2003; Edensor, 2005; High and Lewis, 2007). We go further than this literature, however, by investigating the role of common emotional responses and nostalgic narratives in the creation of a transnational space. The literature on transnational spaces is dominated by studies that consider such spaces as developed by migrants who have lifeworlds that cross borders through communication, travel and network activities. These processes are accompanied by the development of new identities (Vertovec, 2001) and of new identity-related narratives (Pulitano, 2016). Narratives that play a role in the formation of transnational identities, however, are not limited to migrants. Eder has shown that narratives can constitute a border-crossing space of communication which, in turn, helps generate a collective identity (Eder, 2006).
It is well-known that narratives play a crucial role in the construction of various social identities such as national identity as imagined community (Anderson, 1983), the discursive construction of European identities (Wodak, 2007), the colonial construction of ‘the West’ and ‘the Rest’ (Hall, 1996) and ethnicity constructed through narratives (Brubaker, 2004). In a similar vein, we stress the construction of a class identity through a common narrative about the ‘good old days’ which crosses the borders of our six research areas. Narratives do travel and we have observed striking similarities in the ways in which the residents of former industrial regions have responded to change.
But the recognition of this by residents of the regions, that is, an awareness of class across borders, does not necessarily come along. In all of the research areas, landscape transformations have had a deep and largely negative impact on local inhabitants. Moreover, the transformation in question has taken place quite rapidly, making change more visible and adaptation more difficult. Residents of former industrial areas thus encounter the transformed landscapes either physically or through narratives and photographs. Doing so, they experience (1) the dissolution and contraction of the industrial landscapes, coupled with an openness to the outer world and a loss of sensual experiences, (2) traces of the former landscapes in the new ones and (3) new and emerging landscapes.
Dissolution and contraction of the industrial landscapes
In the research areas, the dominance of industry and its reduction in scale is a visible element of the landscapes. The transformation of landscape, of course, cannot be reduced to the physical shrinkage of industrial sites as it is a process that goes beyond mere physical changes. The closeness of places of work, residence and leisure was an eminent feature of all the industrial landscapes under study. This spatial proximity has been disturbed as a result of the transformation experienced in recent decades. Workplaces have changed or relocated to other areas. Places of leisure and consumption have also spread geographically. The former tight industrial landscapes are no longer fully integrated with everyday life activities that were mainly concentrated on an urban quarter or a mining town. Thus, landscapes that contained work, residence and leisure on a small scale have been dissolved, forcing people to be more mobile for work, leisure activities, or consumption. Some residents have left their former areas of residence and moved altogether to more prosperous areas.
These general comments should not lead to the conclusion that the six industrial landscapes in our study had the same characteristics before the processes of deindustrialization set in. There were even differences among the three mining areas that we studied. The mining landscapes of Upper Silesia and South Yorkshire were more tightly integrated than the Zonguldak coal basin in Turkey. In South Yorkshire, the majority of consumption items were manufactured in the region. Both there and in Silesia, shops, cooperatives, public parks, public libraries, miners’ welfare institutes, village halls, chapels, pubs and public baths, all in short geographical distance to each other, serviced those who worked and lived in the respective communities. The urban areas of Evry, Elda and Nuremberg have landscapes that are less insular and open to the outer world. Whatever differences existed in the industrial landscapes of these regions, mining or non-mining alike, however, they experienced either a dissolution of the former landscape, or a visible contraction in its extent.
Residual landscape and ‘industrial heritage’
Deindustrialization and the decline of former industrial structures does not mean that the former landscapes are totally transformed and no traces are left. This is not surprising as the relevance of heritage has been widely debated (for an overview, see Harrison, 2012) and the importance of heritage to create a regional identity has been pointed out (Borges, 2017). Indeed, in all six regions, traces of the former industrial times are still visible, although the range of visibility is broad and the forms of residual landscapes diverge. The divergence in the fate of former industrial elements of the landscapes is so large that instead of trying to reach a typology, we have chosen to present the situation in each of our cases briefly. One common point needs to be underlined, however: in all cases, the conservation of the industrial heritage and the re-use of industrial buildings constitutes an important issue for public debate and is essential to residents’ attempts to cope with the new situation.
In Evry, the old 19th-century red brick buildings and the factory chimneys have gradually disappeared from the landscape following company closures or restructurings. Many of these buildings were replaced by new housing structures. But in contrast, the landscape of South Yorkshire remains, physically, one of farms and mills, mines, chapels, co-op shops, canals, chimneys and factories. In general, however, it is only the architecture and physical presence of the buildings that create an impression of continuity. As communities have changed and work has been transformed, the original purpose of the buildings and meeting places has been lost. In general, industrial heritage continues to play a significant part in the regeneration agenda. For example, coal mining communities have been redesignated as market towns, village halls are now called Renaissance Halls, a national mining museum is located in the north of the coalfields, and public art is placed throughout the coalfields (such as old pit wheels and statues of miners). This attempt to preserve the heritage in the face of a loss of industrial activity is not universally welcomed by all in the community. A 27-year-old male, whose father worked in the mines before the closure, explained: You might see an occasional wheel around, but there’s nothing to say that there was a pit there ever. And I think that’s something that I’m quite angry about and upset about really. … And this heritage, well, it’s doing things for the village but what’s it doing for people? It’s not made jobs.
The excerpt well reflects the ambiguous attitude in the region towards industrial heritage. While the residents consider preservation of industrial heritage worthwhile, and think that not enough has been done on this matter, they are also forced to care more about their pressing problems.
In Upper Silesia, residents seem to be more concerned about the degradation or renewal of buildings that used to provide space for leisure activities than about the industrial structures themselves. The decline of the Zagłębianka sports complex or the ice rink in Ruda Śląska are seen by the interviewees as symbols of degradation and of a loss of a formerly tight social life in workers’ community. In summer, the ice rink and the swimming pool were places where people used to play, compete and rest and are now remembered with pity and nostalgia. The residents remember with great sentiment both the construction of these premises and how they used them. The restoration of old premises and the construction of new ones in the vicinity did not mean a return to the old state of things, as they are now too expensive for many residents to use. The sports premises no longer serve the community, as they are self-financing institutions.
In Zonguldak, the fate of one industrial building – the lavoir, an old coal washing unit – became the main ground for battles fought over the landscape and was an issue often brought up in the interviews. The alliance between the state and capital has been trying to eliminate most examples of industrial heritage in a city that has a chronic shortage of open space, although the shrinking yet still important mining activities make their job more difficult. An alliance of professionals, members of the middle class and left-wing activists are trying to resist but are losing ground due to general public indifference to the issue. Although the process is uneven and contradictory, and the battle of the lavoir seems to have ended in a tie, a 55-year-old male engineer’s sentiments reflect the feelings of such groups who increasingly feel that they are fighting an uphill battle: Then I realised: as I enjoy looking at the industrial heritage, doing research, writing and talking about [these buildings], some people enjoy demolishing them. As they are demolished, I have come to like them more; I have grown more attached to them. Now, perhaps I’m desperate; I mean, I can’t prevent the demolitions. There isn’t much historical left in the basin, nothing much to show. They destroy [them] one by one.
In Nuremberg, former industrial areas have been converted to serve other purposes. For example, Herkules Park, the site of a demolished former bicycle plant, now houses a gas station, a car wash, a bicycle shop and some other mid-size businesses. Only the sign with the name Herkules Park at the entrance to the new building complex hints at the industrial history of the area. However, the industrial heritage in Nuremberg can be observed more prominently in the form of the museum of industrial culture, in monuments of the industrial founders and in corresponding street names that today present the history of the city as a proud industrial past (Meier, 2016). The towns Elda and Alcoy in Alicante display some similarities and differences with respect to former industrial landscapes. In Elda, the industrial heritage is remembered more with new buildings and structures than through the preservation of old ones. In Alcoy, in contrast, references to the ‘glorious’ industrial past of the city can be found in a multitude of existing buildings.
Encountering new spaces in post-industrial landscapes
The decline of industrial structures in the former industrial regions was accompanied by the emergence of new landscapes of business centres that house service sector activities, new, more high-tech industrial buildings, shopping malls and new places of leisure. The residents of the six regions have reacted to these nascent landscapes in different ways.
In Evry, a new type of industrial architecture appeared at the margins of the urbanized area starting in the 1960s, which was linked to the development and arrival of big industrial firms such as IBM and Snecma. Two decades later, industrial parks, completely separated from living areas, were developed in non-urbanized spaces. Recently, following a wave of restructuring, these buildings have been replaced by huge logistics and sheet metal warehouses. The new buildings are demountable, symbolizing the dematerialization and nomadic nature of production.
There are new buildings in South Yorkshire that continue to serve both leisure and work purposes. Most of the employment opportunities are found in the new call centres, sports facilities, industrial units, distribution centres, transport hubs, shopping malls, gyms and heritage attractions, and such work is often temporary, casual and semi-skilled. Residents struggle to come to terms with the new landscape, which seems to be more fragmented and more diverse than it was before. In discussing the new call centres that have sprung up across the landscape, one resident (male, ex-miner, aged 68) describes how they feel alien to him and ‘his kind’. He senses that although this is visually a shared experience (he sees the building every day), it has little to do with him.
If I walk to the end of the street now, I used to look across and see pit tips, which were dirty, dusty, noisy, stand there and watch things happening. People you knew about. I knew what was going in, with knowing the industry. But now … all I see is boxes, call centres, with no windows. It looks awful. I don’t know anyone in there.
In all regions under study, in addition to new workplaces, new structures of consumption have been erected, the most visible of which are the shopping malls. There seems to be an agreement over the meaning of malls in that most residents of deindustrialized regions consider them as representing a transition to a consumer society. A resident of Upper Silesia voiced the concerns associated with the malls: We tend to notice most often hypermarkets, supermarkets and department stores being built everywhere. There weren’t many of them around. So this is kind of a global change, too, and as a result, we’ve become a consumer society. I’d even protest and argue that it is not true, but I was overcome by the figures that shocked me: twenty-five thousand clients during one night at Silesia City Centre, where a shopping night was held last year. This is terrifying.
Another reason why the new landscape feels alien to many residents of Upper Silesia is that their financial situation does not allow them to consider shopping in the malls. They think that the new malls and supermarkets are for ‘someone else’, while their traditional places of consumption have been destroyed. In addition to being a symbol of the shift from production to consumption, the malls are considered by residents as emblems and agents of a good past fading away. For interviewees in Nuremberg, the decline of the area is symbolized by the replacement of old shops with discount bakeries and discount supermarkets. In Evry, the emergence of malls as new and gigantic spaces of consumption, according to many, have destabilized traditional businesses. As the types of encounters with the new landscapes vary, there are also more positive takes on the malls. Some interviewees consider the development of the shopping malls as a symbol of a dynamic economy and as new social places for people to spend time and meet up.
Emotional expressions of the relation of landscape to identity: Mourning, indifference, nostalgia
Generally speaking, work and local landscapes are closely intertwined in people’s minds, especially in working class communities. People not only learn to work (Willis, 1977), they also learn the specific locality (Rogaly and Taylor, 2009) and may develop a sense of place (Tuan, 1977), an outcome of emotional attachments cemented with experience and memories related to places and their past. This sense of place might entail a sense of belonging to a community at a particular place but also to that place itself – to its materiality, atmosphere and daily rhythm (Leach, 2005; May, 2011). Spatial transformation, therefore, is not simply a change in how the physical environment looks. It could bring a loss of familiarity, of familiar buildings, streets, shops, sounds, time rhythms, smells and faces. Such familiarity is indeed key in the constitution of identity for an individual or a social group. We have seen in our research that residents of former industrial areas were individually emotionally attached to landscapes and landscape-related narratives. When those landscapes are challenged by intensive change or destroyed (DeSilvey and Edensor, 2013; Martin, 2014), an identity crisis ensues.
The encounters with destroyed, emerging or residual landscapes evoke a range of emotions for residents in the six research regions, which are also ways in which the residents cope with the identity crisis. In addition to the variations in the forms of past, present and future landscapes, age differences, gender and occupational status make an important difference in the way people sentimentally react to their experiences of landscape. Having witnessed a variety of sentiments, we identify three structures of feeling as the residents of deindustrialized or otherwise transformed regions respond to the erosion of older landscapes and the emergence of new ones: mourning, indifference, and, nostalgia.
Mourning
While a sense of deep loss and concomitant mourning were observed among respondents of various ages, particularly the older interviewees tended to mourn a lost landscape, which, with its destroyed and residual elements, stands for a lost past. The sense of mourning is often connected to the residents’ identity and to the place of their past work life in the construction of that identity. It could be, for example, triggered by encountering a former, now gone, derelict or transformed workplace (Meier, 2013a). De Certeau has expressed this relation between biographies and the encounters with transformed landscapes: We are struck by the fact that sites that have been lived in are filled with the presence of absences. What appears designates what is no more: ‘Look: here there was…’, but can no longer be seen. … Every site is haunted by countless ghosts that lurk there in silence, to be ‘evoked’ or not. (De Certeau, 1985: 143)
In a similar vein, a former miner (aged 76) from South Yorkshire expressed his attempts to cope with the new reality while linking the landscape with his very life: There’s nothing there at all. Wiped it off the face of the earth. Strange, things that you’ve lived with all your life no longer exist. Well, it must happen; there’s a natural progress. Like I said, every miner would accept that the colliery will at sometime be closed, would move on somewhere else. … Seeing it all change like that, though, does make you think about what you did with your life.
As De Certeau has put it, the ghosts of the interviewees’ former times are evoked in their narratives and are of emotional relevance today. This association of certain elements of the landscape with one’s self is sometimes so strong that emotions evoked by the disappearance of those elements have physical consequences. An interviewee (working in adult education, aged 43) expressed such feelings: It’s weird, isn’t it, and it’s almost a physical pull. I feel physically passionately connected with the land of the Dearne Valley now. But I think I always did. There used to be a tree on Barnborough Cragg that you could see from my bedroom when I was growing up. And this tree has been my talisman place; it has been where I have always gone all my life if I could get there when I’ve had a trauma. And I’ve needed to physically be there and physically touch it. And a couple of years ago, and it’s been treated badly, it got struck by lightning; people would set it on fire, that sort of thing. And eventually, a big storm a couple of years ago, and it blew, and it’s dead, it’s gone. And I had nearly a breakdown over that tree, very briefly, because it was so important physically to me.
A former textile worker, aged 63, from Alcoy expressed a similar feeling he had had after visiting his former workplace: I go walking along the river a lot, the River Molinar, where all the abandoned ruined factories are, and they were lovely, and I feel terrible. When I see them like that, which put food on the table, it’s as if they had kicked me in the stomach. I feel sick. I don’t know why I keep going there.
Indifference
Feelings of belonging build upon experiences that take place in both time and space. As a result, generation makes a difference in the interaction of landscape and identity (May, 2017; May and Muir, 2015). People who have lived in a particular place for a longer time remember their workplace often emotionally. Most of them have souvenirs of their past workplace, such as a photograph of the factory, in their living rooms. The sources bear witness to a deep connection with the work location, which is also a connection to the community of former colleagues. Therefore, the older residents of an area, who have lived and worked at a certain place for decades, feel deeply threatened by spatial changes, as loss of landscape often translates into loss of community. Younger people, who have not yet established a close and intimate relationship to their place of residence or work, have a different attitude since the landscape has not yet become a part of their identity. An industrial clerk, born in 1980, moved to Nuremberg in 2007 for a new job and told the following about her encounter with the workplace in the south of Nuremberg: I don’t really give much thought to it. I walk to the tram, get in, get out (laughs), go to work. Well, actually it doesn’t mean more to me. Of course, it is an advantage that I’m centrally located there and that I have a lot of opportunities there, … but otherwise I don’t think about it. It is just an ordinary route that I have to take.
In South Yorkshire, younger residents have mixed feelings about the landscape. For those who live in the new housing estates that have grown around the old pit villages, an intimate experience of place and the resulting connection and commitment are barely observed. In the words of a 18-year-old youth club member: Well, I didn’t have anything to do with mining. Neither did mom or dad. I work in a shop in Sheffield, so it doesn’t mean anything to me. I live on the new estate; we are from somewhere else. We just stop here.
An emotional distance of the young people to the former working landscapes is also found in Alcoy. A younger resident of the town (journalist, aged 29) was blunt in expressing this sentiment: I was brought up at a time when the textile industry was no longer. For me, textiles were already dead.
Nostalgia
The most frequent and conspicuous response among the interviewees regarding the changing landscapes is nostalgia, often embedded within biographical narratives. Such narratives of lost landscapes are triggered through diverse forms of encounters with landscapes. The encounters can be physical contact with landscapes or memories of the landscapes through photos and conversations with residents of a particular locality.
Nostalgia has been discussed as an emotion and cultural phenomenon since the medical research conducted by Johannes Hoffer in the 17th century. Scholars have studied nostalgia as a social emotion triggered by social interaction (Davis, 1979) or as a phenomenon specifically belonging to modernity (Boym, 2001). Nostalgia has often been regarded as a reactionary response to change (for a critical review, see Pickering and Keightley, 2006) that comes together with a sentimentalizing of industrial work and its landscapes (High, 2013; Strangleman, 2013). We consider nostalgia, however, as a contemporary cultural practice (Bonnett, 2010; Stewart, 1988) that expresses the speaker’s present social position – in particular, his/her class (Meier, 2016).
Indeed, conversations among residents who have a similar connection with the landscape are an effective medium for producing a common identity. Shared memories of past spaces and the changing appearance of the landscape contribute to the creation of a common feeling of nostalgia. In a group interview in Nuremberg, former MAN workers collectively recalled the exact limits and shape of the former industrial area. Interestingly, the younger workers also know the size and shape of the MAN plant – an element of collective memory that they acquired at the workplace. An industrial mechanic, 33, who moved to Nuremberg when he started his apprenticeship, said about the development of the MAN site: On Frankenstraße, where there are a lot of construction zones right now, when you drive along this street, you get directly to MAN. There is a gate. From there up until Diana-Platz, there used to be MAN only. And in this direction, well, out of town alright, it was not that deep. But, um, it all used to be MAN. Crane construction used to be here. We had, what are they called? Blacksmiths. Well, they produced really big cast parts and all. Referring directly to MAN, I mean. They are, these divisions, the factory halls are still there. But there are other divisions in it. That’s now; you can still see the huge machines that were needed, the cranes. But they are no longer being used. Back then, there were more than 10,000 employees. And that’s all gone now.
This example demonstrates that it would be inaccurate to argue that all of the younger residents are generally indifferent to spatial change. Although there is a difference between the information this younger worker has and the recollections of the older MAN workers, the focus group as a whole has experienced the spatial changes in the workplace, which are indeed emotional experiences (Meier, 2013a).
Nostalgic emotions could be stimulated by photographs, too. A worker shared feelings about the Crété–Hélio printing factory in Evry, which was demolished in 1988 and rebuilt in the centre of the old town of Corbeil: I’ve got some photographs. That hurts. … Well, what’s there afterwards wasn’t the same at all. Although there was a modern factory, and we should have been pleased. Yeah … I really remember that. I’ve got photos. OK, it was because they were new, modern. It was pretty good to look at. There were new materials. But it wasn’t us.
In Upper Silesia, nostalgia is generated by the sense of abandonment that many residents have. They are reminded of this abandonment on a daily basis, when they experience the poverty of transport connections with other towns in the agglomeration. The area, built on the outskirts of town next to the coal mine, used to have excellent transport connections with other towns in the past. The railway station had been an important and busy transport junction. After the coal mine was closed down, the station disappeared, and although a platform remains, trains seldom stop there. The residents of the estate feel deserted and isolated. The strong awareness of the irreversibility of transformation, however, does not weaken the sense of belonging to the place of residence, as expressed by a 52-year-old man in his highly nostalgic narrative: For me, it is my home. Not just this block, but in general – it’s my home. I was born here. I love every little place here. I know it’s attachment; it’s my little world. … Each and every shrub, even this dirt in the yard – it’s all very important to me. Of course, when you walk down this Kaufhaus, memories return. So many furnaces are gone. Like this furnace that has remained there when you walk down there. I remember there used to be a bridge, now there’s no bridge when you drive in. And when I walk with someone, I talk about the bridge we used to go over – and everybody is looking around and can’t find any. It’s gone, and they might think I’m mad! Every such place evokes memories. Here, for example, there were names everywhere. If you go up there to the ‘corner’ [a colloquialism for a grocer’s at Kaufhaus], there’s a piece of rock where we would sit and play as a child, this is where we used to go pick up girls, etc. Every piece, every stone, every little thing is something that has made me attached to this part of the world ever since I was a child – with my home, with Kaufhaus!
In Zonguldak, the nostalgia is so pervasive and strong that there is a public narrative that focuses on the cultural development of the city in the early republican period, stressing how it was once ahead of the big cities of the country in terms of intellectuals, theatres, tennis clubs, naval clubs, balls, etc. Apparent confusions and chronological errors about Turkish political history does not weaken the power of the narrative. Workers join this nostalgic narrative especially through a stress on the high wages, job security and social services once provided by the coal company.
Conclusion
The social and economic transformations that have taken place in industrialiszed regions of Europe since the 1970s have led to radical changes in landscape. As landscape has a role in the formation of social identities, spatial change observed in those regions was bound to have consequences for class identity. This article has strived to demonstrate that the residents of regions that have experienced deindustrialization are frequently exposed to transformed landscapes and have different emotional responses to the vanished, residual or emerging landscapes. Although the narratives based on mourning and indifference are also observed among residents of the six regions on which this article has focused, the most emphatic, and for identity formation, the most important, one is nostalgia. Nostalgic narratives are not simply passive and negative responses to change; nor are they mere expressions of desperation. They are part of the cultural practices that help construct a class identity today.
The debates on globalization have entailed the question whether presently there is a transnational capitalist class with a common identity (Carroll, 2010; Sklair, 2001; Struna, 2013). On the contrary, the question of common transnational identity has hardly been investigated for the working class. Our argument here is based on the assumption that social identities are configured through public narratives (Misztal, 2003; Ricoeur, 1991). It has also been demonstrated that such narratives about a shared past are of relevance in the formation of a working class identity (Steinmetz, 1992). Our research has shown that workers or former workers who inhabit the six transformed landscapes express a common memory of the past in their recollections which are coloured with nostalgia and the feelings are often shared by other residents of the areas via common narratives.
The narratives that are imbued with nostalgia are not individual but collective in two senses. First, they are based on a shared remembrance of past events. The ‘stories’ that circulate create a sense of ‘us’ among their speakers and pave the way for an identity formation. Second, a collective way of thinking about events that one has not necessarily experienced for oneself is involved (Blokland, 2001). Consequently, physical presence in a place at a certain time is not necessary for developing a sense of belonging or for expressing that sense in narratives. People can develop a sense of belonging for places they have left or even for places they never have been (Ahmed et al., 2003). This is not simply internalization of public narratives by individuals; the dissociation of memory and nostalgia from personal experience and consequently from time and place creates a space where people can ‘move’ back and forth in time and across places. Through this movement, they can cross borders and create new borders of their own.
In our cases, the striking prevalence of nostalgic narratives in the interviews of working people and their similarity lead us to conclude that the transnational identity of class is still present despite generational differences. Post-industrial landscapes and (former) places of work occupy a central place in biographic narratives of residents and, thus, in the formation of class identity. The relevance of landscape for social identity formation is emphatic and enduring in transnational narratives of longing for a golden age and industrial and community spaces now gone. The common narrative which is mostly based on nostalgia in those European regions seems to produce strong feelings of belonging among the residents of the regions, connecting by transnational narratives not only workers to non-workers in the regions, but also residents of one region to another. Moreover, experienced collectively, these nostalgic structures of feeling could produce a desire to change the course of things and become subjects again in the residents who feel that they have been objects of forces beyond their control.
To conclude, in the six European regions analysed here, nostalgia, a longing for a lost past often expressed in spatial terms, is constitutive of a transnational class identity, that is, one that crosses regional and national borders through common narratives. It remains to be seen, however, whether the workers of the Silesian Voivodship, South Yorkshire, Zonguldak, Alicante, South Nuremberg and Corbeil-Essonnes and Evry will ‘act upon’ it, constructing transnational networks of solidarity and building collective struggle.
Footnotes
Acknowledgements
The authors of this article are grateful to all the interviewees from the different research regions for providing their life stories and for allowing us to use the empirical data. Thanks go to all the researchers that have been involved in the SPHERE project. This includes John Kirk (in memoriam), Steve Jefferys, Sylvie Contrepois, Cilla Ross (London Metropolitan University), Markus Promberger (Institut für Arbeitsmarkt- und Berufsforschung, Nuremberg), Tarık Şengül, Mustafa Kemal Bayırbağ, Ali Cenap Yoloğlu (Middle East Technical University, Ankara), Juan Carlos Revilla Castro, Francisco José Tovar, Arturo Lahera-Sánchez, Maria Arnal, Carlos de Castro (Universidad Complutense de Madrid), Kazimiera Wodz, Jolanta Klimczak-Ziolek, Barbara Słania, Maciej Witkowski, Witold Mandrysz (Uniwersytet Slaski).
Funding
This article draws on data from the SPHERE project funded by the European Union (7th FP, SSH8-5.2.01).
