Connecting with Ambivalent Heritage

Creative Uses of Postindustrial Spaces

Tiina Äikäs, Tuuli Matila, Tiina Äikäs, Tuuli Matila

• Publisher: Bloomsbury Academic
• Year: 2024
• ISBN:
  9781350426764
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Social Sciences
• Subtopic: Archaeology
• Index: Social Sciences

Exploring the difficult and contested sites of deindustrialized society on the brink of transformation to either heritage or wasteland, this volume looks at the creative ways that such sites are (re)used and suggests that they are not always merely abject or abandoned. As a result, our understanding of the meanings given to left over spaces is enhanced by an examination of the ways they are used. Ambivalent heritage sites are not always recognized for their potential, although artists and people from different recreational activities, such as industrial sites and parkour, use and experience these places in different ways. The contributors introduce fresh ideas on how to approach these sites and the people invested in them, employing multidisciplinary methodologies from archaeology and heritage studies to ethnography and sociology. Through the use of Northern-European case studies such as a former sanatorium, a prison and the Chornobyl Exclusion Zone, the reader gains a new perspective on these sites of contestation, which are cherished despite their problematic status. The conclusion is that due to the rapid societal change we are experiencing in the contemporary world, heritage professionals must start to acknowledge and deal with the difficulties that ambivalent heritage sites pose.

Table of contents

• Cover
• Half-Title Page
• Series Page
• Title Page
• Contents
• List of Illustrations
• List of Tables
• Contributors
• Preface
• Acknowledgements
• Introduction: Connecting with Ambivalent Heritage: Creative Uses of Postindustrial Spaces
• 1 ‘Renegade Care’: Conservation, Co-Curation and Heritage Place-Making in Liminal Spaces
• 2 Suburban Heritage as a Tourist Attraction?
• 3 Local Activism and Agency in Heritagization Processes: The Case of the Forests at the Paimio Sanatorium, Finland
• 4 Masculinity, Smokestacks and the Decline of Industry: Visualizing Industrial Heritage in Social Media
• 5 Co-Constructing Chernobyl: Investigating Visitors’ Heritage Meaning-Making through Performativity in the Chernobyl Exclusion Zone
• 6 Spiralling into a Labyrinth of Cultural Fantasies and Extractivism: Treasures, Extraordinary Undergrounds and the ‘Temple of Lemminkäinen’ (Sipoo, Finland)
• 7 Uses of the Industrial Mining Past: The Revitalization of Old Mines as New Outdoor Spaces in Sweden
• 8 What the Muggles Do Not See: Affordances of Abandoned Industrial Sites for Hobbyists
• 9 Remaining without Preservation: The Zombie Standing of Kino Rodina in Estonia
• 10 Discussion: The Discomforting Appeal of Ambivalent Heritage
• Index
• Copyright