After Coal: Affective-Temporal Processes of Belonging and Alienation in the Deindustrializing Nottinghamshire Coalfield, UK

Abstract

This article advances conceptualizations of belonging and alienation among deindustrializing people toward (i) pluralistic temporal and (ii) affective processes. The focus is on belonging and alienation among a deindustrialized generation in the Nottinghamshire coalfield, UK, exploring how various affective-temporal processes mediate capacities, claims, and senses of belonging and alienation. Extant studies suggest that multiple temporal processes constitute deindustrialized places, particularly intergenerational transmissions, declarative memory, and place-histories. Recent work has explored the affective, emotional, and embodied dynamics of these temporal processes. While these literatures are insightful in locating affective and temporal processes of belonging, studies do not have much to say on the relational dynamics of affective-temporal processes in everyday becoming lives and experiences of deindustrializing places. The significance of foregrounding multiple affective-temporal processes of belonging and alienation is because of their relational nature. Advancing understandings of belonging is critical as a coherent sense of belonging is fundamental for individual and social well-being, and the loss of belonging, namely, alienation, informs how former industrial places are lived. Based on autoethnographic, interview and Observant Participation research with participants born between 1984 and 1994, I use ethnographic vignettes to delineate multiple relating affective-temporal processes of belonging and alienation of a generation that came after coal. The first vignette concerns the embodied and affective relationalities of intergenerational transmission and becoming in a deindustrialized world through the lens of masculinity, place and belonging. The second vignette examines nostalgic and traumatic shared declarative memories contingent of living through and with deindustrialization. The third vignette looks at intersections of place histories, silenced memory and local pride and shame, drawing out the significance of space and place to class-based experiences. Weaved through the stories are thematic threads of class, place, alienation, belonging, and temporality. Bringing these threads together, the paper then discusses the relationalities between issues covered, emphasizing the mutual contingencies between affective-temporal processes of belonging and alienation. I end by calling for shared affective-temporal processes of belonging and alienation to form the basis of a renewed solidarity, attenuation of alienation and a means to belong.

Fear and loathing in north London: Experiencing estate regeneration as psychosocial degeneration

“…The literature on feelings and class has highlighted how deindustrialisation has resulted in deep sociological and psychosocial working-class unmooring, for example in relation to the felt loss of community prompting strong strains of nostalgia, melancholia, bitterness and alienation (Emery, 2020; Walkerdine & Jimenez, 2012). For example, Charlesworth (2001) employs a Bourdieusian phenomenological scalpel to pare back working-class social suffering in deindustrialised Rotherham.…”

“…The literature on feelings and the working class has tended to focus on deindustrialised areas where heavy industries, such as coal and steel, have closed down resulting in multiple social and psychosocial losses (Charlesworth, 2001; Emery, 2020; Walkerdine & Jimenez, 2012). Hence the experiences of a ‘traditional’ industrial or now-deindustrialised working class have been emphasised.…”

Territorial stigmatisation beyond the city: Habitus, affordances and landscapes of industrial ruination

“…Finally, habitus , as interpreted by Bourdieu, mediates between the ‘internalisation of the externality and the externalisation of the internality’ (Wacquant, 2016: 66), where the social and symbolic structures of society are taken on by individuals through their bodily dispositions, sentiments and orientations in ways that condition action and expression (Wacquant, 2019: 38 − 39). Here institutions and social conventions become naturalised in the habitus (Weik, 2010: 494) where the credibility of actions and decisions gain acceptance, even if these may lead to harm (e.g.…”

“…Focusing on the changing social interdependencies of the Welsh Valleys over time allows for the acknowledgement of the dynamic relations of individuals, groups and places that have become tied to a reconfigured imaginary of industrial ruination invoking loss and decline (see Emery, 2020a). This perception of ruination and decline – while critically considered in urban contexts elsewhere (e.g.…”

“…This allows for the integration of intergenerational shifts in habitus, which represent a sociological break in generations (Abrams, 1982). The concept of lagged habitus therefore provides a valuable contribution to recent research on UK coalfields, which has concentrated on affect, loss and trauma in describing the emotional implications of industrial ruination for subsequent generations (Bright, 2016;Mah, 2012;Emery, 2019Emery, , 2020aEmery, , 2020b. The notion of a lagged habitus foregrounds collective histories, the possibility of entanglements in affinities of the past, and the potential for dislocation between psychic and social processes tied to symbolic denigration and collective trauma.…”