Reanimating Industrial Spaces: Conducting Memory Work in Post-Industrial Societies, published by Routledge. Order here
Reanimating Industrial Spaces (2015) explores the relationships between people and the places of former industry through approaches that incorporate and critique memory-work. The chapters in this volume consider four broad questions: What is the relationship between industrial heritage and memory? How is memory involved in the process of place-making in regards to industrial spaces? What are the strengths and pitfalls of conducting memory-work? What can be learnt from cross-disciplinary perspectives and methods?
The contributors have created a set of diverse case studies (including iron-smelting in Uganda, Puerto Rican sugar mills and concrete factories in Albania) which examine differing socio-economic contexts and approaches to industrial spaces both in the past and in contemporary society. A range of memory-work is also illustrated: from ethnography, oral history, digital technologies, excavation, and archival and documentary research.
Reviews:
“As applied in these essays, contemporary archaeology, an engaging postmodern area of interest, provides refreshing insights into how archaeologists can deal with the increasingly complicated archaeological landscape and is a counterpoint to more traditional ways through heritage tourism to isolate and freeze the past in monuments and museums. Diverse and multifaceted, these papers provide a good window into a developing area of academic and social interest. All are well illustrated and include up-to-date references. Clearly, this is a volume for college and universities with graduate and undergraduate programs in archaeology, anthropology, architectural preservation, and heritage tourism, but larger public libraries, and not only those in urban contexts, will find readers interested in the collection. Highly recommended.”
~ R. B. Clay, emeritus, University of Kentucky. Choice Reviews, 2015, Vol. 52 (11), p. 1889.
“Taking a global perspective, Reanimating Industrial Spaces presents important new engagements with the archaeology, anthropology and cultural geography of post industrial societies, drawing on approaches which simultaneously employ and critique both memory and postmemory work to restore and breathe new lives into the locations of former industry.”
~ Rodney Harrison, Reader in Archaeology, Heritage and Museum Studies, Institute of Archaeology, University College London.