Deindustrialization

New Perspectives on Deindustrialization (Part 1)
2021-05-14 10:00 - 12:00 (America/Halifax)
The Deindustrialization & the Politics of Our Time (DePOT) project has organized a two-part Round-Table Series that invites recent authors of books and special issues on deindustrialization to speak to their major findings and what their overall intervention is to the field. The panelists include leading scholars across the humanities and social sciences in North America and Europe as well as museum and policy professionals. After everyone has presented, there will then be a Question & Answer period.

Chairperson: Jackie Clarke

Marion Fontaine and Xavier Vigna – special issue on “La désindustrialisation, une histoire en cours”, 20/21: Bulletin d’histoire
Stefan Moitra and Katarzyna Nogueira – special issue on “(Post-)Industrial Memories. Oral History and Structural Change,” Bios: Zeitschrift für Biographieforschung, Oral History und Lebensverlaufsanalysen
Ewan Gibbs – Coal Country. The Meaning and Memory of Deindustrialization in Postwar Scotland
Mike Waite – On Burnley Road: Class, Race and Politics in a Northern English Town
Cédric Lomba – La restructuration permanente de la condition ouvrière. De Cockerill à ArcelorMittal.
Tracy Neumann – Remaking the Rust Belt: The Postindustrial Transformation of North America
Jason Hackworth – Manufacturing Decline: How Racism and the Conservative Movement Crush the American Rust Belt
Gabriel Winant – The Next Shift: The Fall of Industry and the Rise of Health Care in Rust Belt America
Stefan Berger – Constructing Industrial Pasts: Heritage, Historical Culture and Identity in Regions Undergoing Structural Economic Transformation

Registration page (archive)
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This event will be taking place in English, with presentations in French translated to English via closed captions. If you have any additional access needs please contact the organizer.

Cover Image: Coal miners protesting at the Friedrich Heinrich/Rheinland colliery in the town of Kamp-Lintfort in March 1997. There was a wave of miners’ protests in Winter and Spring 1996/97 as the German Federal Government planned to cut subsidies which would have meant a loss of 60,000 jobs in less than ten years. The banner in front reads “We want a perspective for our future”. Photo courtesy of Betriebsrat Bergwerk West.

History and Memory in Gentrifying St-Henri
2021-04-21 12:00 - 13:30 (America/Halifax)
Saint-Henri, a working-class neighbourhood in the Southwest of Montreal, was once at the heart of industrial capitalism in Canada. Brutal processes of deindustrialization and gentrification have created multiple historical layers of displacement and resistance, the traces of which are imprinted in popular memory.
Over the course of the last few months, undergraduate History students at Concordia enrolled in the “History and Memory in Gentrifying Saint-Henri” course have been thinking through these issues. In collaboration with the À Nous la Malting Collective, a community initiative to convert the neighbourhood’s last abandoned industrial site into social housing, a working-class history museum, and local services, the students have been working on exhibit proposals, interpretative panels, and creative outputs that can help to further this project.
Come and see what they’ve been working on! Register here.

Populism / populisme/ Populismo / Populismus
2021-03-12 10:00 - 12:00 (America/New_York)
Chairperson: Stefan Berger (or Steven High)
Other Presenters: James Rhodes, Gilda Zazzara, Marion Fontaine, Stefan Moitra, Sean O’Connell, Greg Wilson.
Populism is probably the most important keyword that our research project will be chewing on over the next seven years. The panel will consider its emergence in different national contexts, its relationship to deindustrialization, what it offers us conceptually and politically, and what it does not.

Note that the recording does not include the discussion and question period at the end.

Moral Economy / économie morale / Sozialverträglichkeit
2021-02-12 10:00 - 12:00 (America/New_York)
Chairperson: Keith Gildart
Other Presenters: Tim Strangleman, Stefan Moitra, Lachlan MacKinnon, Marion Fontaine, Andy Perchard, Pascal Raggi.
Developed originally by labour historian E.P. Thompson in relation to the ways that popular feeling placed informal moral (or political) limits on the price of bread in the 17th and 18th centuries, the concept has been increasingly deployed by deindustrialization scholars in the UK. This workshop will critically examine its evolving place and consider the ways it has emerged, or not emerged, in other countries, as well as the efficacy of other related concepts such as Sozialverträglichkeit.

Note that the recording does not include the discussion and question period at the end.

Greening / Industrienatur / Ecologizzazione / verdissage
2021-01-15 10:00 - 12:00 (America/New_York)
Chairperson: Petra Dolata
Other Presenters: Alice Mah, Jana Golombek, Greg Wilson, Steven High, Lucie Morisset, Lauren Laframboise.
This workshop considers the ways that deindustrialization gets entangled with the language of environmentalism in different contexts, including how deindustrialized areas get “regenerated,” former industrial buildings “recycled,” and new-build manufacturing gets located on “greenfield sites.” The German concept of Industrienatur will also be introduced as will the Anthropocene.

Note that the recording does not include the discussion and question period at the end.

Brownfield / friche industrielle/ Industriebrache / Area dismessa
2020-12-11 10:00 - 12:00 (America/New_York)
Chairperson: Lachlan MacKinnon
Other Presenters: Jana Golombek, James Rhodes, Steven High, Keith Gildart , Sean O’Connell, Andrew Perchard.
By examining the meaning and significance of “brownfield” in different national contexts we will consider the territorial stigmatization of industrial lands but also the ways that residential areas get stigmatized by industry and its loss. Popular culture will also be considered.

Note that the recording does not include the discussion and question period at the end.

Ruination / Verfall / Rovine / ruine et perte
2020-11-13 10:00 - 12:00 (America/New_York)
Chairperson: Alice Mah
Other Presenters: Arthur McIvor, Roberta Garruccio, Fred Burrill, Rebecca Dolgoy, and Olaf Schmidt-Rutsch
Fundamentally, deindustrialization is a process of physical and social ruination as well as part of a wider political project that leaves working-class communities impoverished and demoralized. This workshop will examine the concept of ruination in different national contexts, what it offers deindustrialization studies, and other intersecting concepts that are used in its place.

Note that the recording does not include the discussion and question period at the end.

Deindustrialization / Deindustrializzazione / Désindustrialisation / Deindustrialisation / Deindustrialisierung
2020-10-16 10:00 - 12:00 (America/New_York)
Chairperson: Gilda Zazzara
Other Presenters: Tim Strangleman, Xavier Vigna, Stefan Berger, Jackie Clarke, Dimitry Anastakis, Steven High.
This workshop considers the emergence of deindustrialization as a core concept in academic scholarship and more widely in different national contexts, its evolving politics, and other adjacent or intersecting concepts such as the German idea of Strukturwandel.

Note that the recording does not include the discussion and question period at the end.
