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SESSION “REINTERPRETING INDUSTRIAL HERITAGE FROM A GLOBAL PERSPECTIVE”
Chairs: Marion Steiner & Dag Avango
Industrialization processes have been global from their very beginning. However, their interpretation still tends to be limited to specific locations or regions, and to specific time periods. Regularly, for example, it is stated that the industrial revolution started in Europe, from where it spread to the world, supposedly bringing technological and social progress to “less developed” countries. Earlier periods of technology and knowledge transfer processes, that were already in place in the context of the global expansion of the European economic model from the Middle Ages, are only rarely taken into account. Crucially important historic transnational interconnectedness and actor networks as well as the fundamentally unfair power relations and unequal terms of trade also remain largely unconsidered up to date.
In our session we want to overcome Eurocentric interpretations of industrial heritage and industrial processes, and give voice to more perspectives and differing narratives on the topic. We invite colleagues from different disciplines and different world regions to share their views, in order to challenge and change the traditional viewpoints from a truly global perspective. We ask: Who benefits from industrialization, and who suffers its social and environmental consequences? And how does this reflect on the global and regional scales at the same time, affecting people and local environments in the global South and North alike?
We welcome conceptual contributions and case studies that deal with the implications of the traditional extraction model born in Europe and based on the exploitation of human and natural resources. Shifts within the global economy resulting in the consumption of ever-new territories, changing land and culturescapes, environmental disasters and access problems to primary sources such as minerals or water, are some of the aspects we would like to discuss. The struggle for control over territories and conflicting narratives related to that are also at the core, and we are most curious to hear about heritage construction processes that challenge the classic celebration story of progress and growth told by the traditional centres and dominant actors of industrialization.
With the ambition to decolonize industrial heritage interpretation and take on human and planetary responsibility, this session wants to explore conceptual and methodological approaches that enable us to understand that we are all part of the same global system, living and working in places that fulfil locally specific functions and roles that can change over time. Our aim is to open a debate on ideas and tools that we need when we seek to understand industrial processes as a global phenomenon of the past, present and future and make heritage construction processes more inclusive and outward-looking – thus, shaping our way into a global society, maybe also more just and more peaceful.
After the session, we resumed and discussed our main findings and future perspectives in the Roundtable debate “Sharing industrial heritage glocally”.
Presentations:
- Marion Steiner (Pontificia Universidad Católica de Valparaíso, Chile): Reinterpreting industrial heritage from a global perspective – Introduction to the session’s topic
- Dag Avango (Luleå University of Technology, Sweden): History- and heritage making in mining regions with contested pasts and futures
- Paul Mahoney (Department of Conservation, New Zealand): The World’s Wooden Wonders
- Mirhan Damir (Alexandria University, Egypt): The omitted heritage: rethinking the global requalification of historical industries in non-Western countries. The case of the cotton presses in Egypt
- Magdalena Novoa (University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, USA): Gendered nostalgia: grassroots heritage tourism and (de)industrialization in the coal region of Chile.
- Dina El Mazzahi (Shaboury & Associates, Egypt): Repurposing Kom El-Dikka’s water reservoirs
- Karen Hoecker-Pérez (Pontificia Universidad Católica de Valparaíso, Chile): Gender violence as a manifestation of extractivism and industrialization processes
- Humberto Morales (Icgde-Buap, Mexico): Technology and industrial heritage. An overview from the Latin American West.
- Stefan Berger (Ruhr University Bochum, Institute for Social Movements, Germany): Industrial heritage and the legacies of colonialism and modernity: thoughts on the interconnected study of the Global South and the Global North
- Aishwarya Tipnis (Aishwarya Tipnis Architects, India): Industrial heritage as an interpretative framework: An Indian perspective
- Jing Han (Ironbridge Centre for Heritage – University of Birmingham, UK): Does the mismatched symbolic requalification matters in the conservation of industrial heritage? (cancelled)
- Takashi Itoh (ICOMOS Japan, Japanese Industrial Archaeology Society): Geek Heritage: Proposition of a new heritage concept
- Francesco Antoniol (Studio Associato Virginia, Italy): M.A.D.E. IN VENETO. A project for a method experiment
- Catarina Karlsson (Jernkontoret, Sweden): Agenda 2030 compass for industrial heritage. How do we address environmental consequences in history and industrial heritage from a different perspective?
- Anne Dalmasso (Université Grenoble Alpes LARHRA, France): La patrimonialisation du tourisme comme industrie ? Pertinence et limite d’un élargissement de la notion de patrimoine industrie au cas des stations de ski alpines
- Chao-Shiang Li (Department of Interior Design, China University of Technology, Taiwan): Railway heritage reloaded into the Luodong forestry culturescapes
- Hagerr Barbouch Ben Fraj (École Supérieure des Sciences et Technologies du Design, Tunisia) and Houda Kohlk Allel (Ministère de l’Enseignement Supérieur Tunisien, Université de Kairouan): The Chechia of El Battan, a witness of the Tunisian industrial heritage from 1846 to 2020: Is it a social memory or is it used to preserve, enhance and innovate a unique set of the artisanal industry?
- Bosse Lagerqvist (University of Gothenburg, Sweden): The multi-layered qualities and properties – discussion on interpretation toolbox development for local and regional development
- Moulshri Joshi (SpaceMatters, India): Difficult places. How the continuing disaster in Bhopal can inform a critical view of industrial heritage (cancelled; see a similar presentation of hers at the INCUNA conference 2022 here (FB) or here (YouTube))
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ROUNDTABLE “SHARING INDUSTRIAL HERITAGE GLOCALLY“
Chairs: Marion Steiner & Dag Avango
Participants: Humberto Morales, Stefan Berger, Mirhan Damir, Moulshri Joshi
In this roundtable we resumed and discussed main ideas and findings from the session held from Monday through to Wednesday morning, after having deepened the conversations also on the congress’ floors and doorsteps with the session’s participants and other colleagues. In addition, we built on previous reflections some of us shared during a roundtable debate on a similar topic held in November 2019 at the TICCIH Latin America Congress in Guatemala. The Montréal roundtable’s aim was to identify crucial topics, and also goals, we would like to work on together in the nearer future, as individual researchers but also as a part of TICCIH’s global network and community.
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OUR SPEAKERS:
