Cultural Landscapes of Energy Constructing Histories of Power, Prosperity, and Decline in Europe

List of Figures

List of Table

List of Contributors

Acknowledgements

Introduction: Cultural Landscapes of Energy and the Conflicting Temporalities of Energy Transition - Corinne Geering

Part 1: Creating Energy Landscapes

1. The Cultural Construction of a Hydroelectric Landscape: The Project of Lake Sihl in Switzerland, 1897–1937 - Sarem Sunderland

2. Land of Fire, Temples of Extraction: Azerbaijan’s Geo-Architectural Assemblage of Oil and Nation - Leyla Sayfutdinova

3. Energy Transition as Cultural Trauma: The Making and Unmaking of the Finnish Peat Industry - Hanna Lempinen

Part 2: Living with Energy Landscapes

4. Northern Scotland’s Late Oil-Fuelled Industrialisation: Labour Mobility and Community Transformation since the 1970s - Ewan Gibbs

5. The Cultural Landscapes of Dam Building in Switzerland: Secondary Infrastructure and Its Territorial Archive at the Grande Dixence Dam, 1950–1965 - Rune Frandsen

6. Erasure as Heritage: Two Villages between Restoration and Destruction on an East German Lignite Moonscape - Andrew Demshuk

Part 3: Sharing Energy Landscapes

7. A Post-Industrial ‘Adventure Land?’: Challenges for Cultural Tourism Development in the Estonian Oil Shale Region - Saara Mildeberg

8. Curating a Future for Coal and Petrochemicals: Ruhrkohle AG’s Corporate Influence on the Zeche Zollverein Heritage Site - Marin Kuijt and Gertjan Plets

9. Representing What Has Been Destroyed: The Sunken Island of Ada Kaleh in Museums of the Iron Gates Region in Romania - Merve Neziroğlu

10. Integrating Minority Perspectives into the Heritagisation of Post-Mining Landscapes in Lusatia, Germany - Jenny Hagemann, Fabian Jacobs and Lutz Laschewski

11. Concluding Remarks: Landscapes and Energyscapes - Petra Dolata

Index

Biography

Corinne Geering holds a tenure-track position at the Department of Economic, Social, and Environmental History and the Linz Institute for Transformative Change (LIFT_C) at Johannes Kepler University Linz. Specialising in nineteenth- and twentieth-century history from a transnational and global perspective, her wider research interests include the use of the past in regional and urban development.

Torsten Meyer is Senior Scientist at the Deutsches Bergbau-Museum Bochum/Leibniz-Research Museum for Geo-resources. His main research interests include environmental history, the history of technology (eighteenth to twentieth century), and the use of industrial heritage in regional planning.

“Energy production has had a major impact on landscape transformation everywhere on the globe. This important collection of articles draws our attention to the environmental damage done, but also to the impact of energy production on work and leisure patterns. The case studies presented here are brimming with insights into changes to socio-economic structures, migration patterns and tourism as well as heritage initiatives. The book is a must-read for anyone interested in the history and transformation of energy landscapes.” - Stefan Berger, Professor of Social History, Ruhr University Bochum

“This carefully edited volume provides a rich and engaging account of lives entangled with energy infrastructures, in numerous European regions across the former East-West divide. The book convincingly shows how hydropower plants and dams, coal mine fields and oil rigs produced wider landscapes of hope and home, loss and resignation, and, in their afterlives, of ambivalent heritage and unsettled tourist attractions.” - Anna Storm, Professor of Technology and Social Change, Linköping University