Heritage Work: Re-Representing the Work Ethic in the Coalfields

Abstract

This paper aims to discover how, with the decline and ending of the deep coal mining industry in many parts of the UK its legacy is being re-evaluated by those involved in various aspects of economic and social regeneration. It opens by exploring the way coal mine workers and their communities have been seen within popular and academic accounts, and in particular the way this group has been subject to ideal typification and stereo-typing. The main body of the paper examines the way this legacy is still subject to such interpretation, and that further, the specificity of the coal industry is commodified in a variety of ways. We point out the contradictory nature of this process and argue that it is inevitably damaging to a complex analysis of the deep problems facing former coalfield areas.

Dimensions of collectivism: occupation, community and the increasing role of memory and personal dynamics in the debate

“…Workers connect through different understandings of their position in the labour market, in the perceived class structure and the changes they face. Building on the work of a range of debates on occupational identity such as Strangleman et al (1999), Savage et al (2001) and Turnbull (1992), MacKenzie et al (2006) have located questions of collectivism in terms of the dynamics of change and occupational reference points. Through a study of redundant steel workers in Wales, they have argued that the occupational and shared experience of change forges a collective occupational identity, which is not solely one of decline and individualization (as per Beck and Beck-Gernsheim, 2002) but one which has a more proactive dynamic.…”

The Nostalgia for Permanence at Work? The End of Work and its Commentators

“…During my own research on railway employment I came across many instances of a sense of decline and loss within the industry (See Strangleman, 1999, 2002, 2004). The railway workers that I interviewed in the mid to late 1990s talked in striking terms of a great sense of loss.…”

“…Likewise in research on the de‐industrialised coal mining communities of the UK (Strangleman, 2001; Strangleman et al ., 1999), the loss of the coal industry, whilst catastrophic in its multiple effects, does not create a completely barren wasteland either physically or socially. Rather there emerges a view of a myriad of different ways in which former colliers, their families and communities re‐engage with the labour market, or creatively negotiate the benefits system.…”

Competing Visions of Community: Empowerment and Abandonment in the Governance of Coalfield Regeneration

“…This phenomenon has been identified in relation to coalfield communities before (e.g. Strangleman et al ., , Strangleman, ). This, however, is not a coalfield specific issue.…”