Devastation but also Home: Place Attachment in Areas of Industrial Decline

Mah, A. (2009) Devastation but also Home: Place Attachment in Areas of Industrial Decline. Home Cultures, 6(3), pp. 287-310. (doi: 10.2752/174063109X12462745321462)

Abstract

This article analyzes the phenomenon of place attachment to “home” in two areas of industrial decline: Walker, Newcastle-upon-Tyne (UK), and Highland, Niagara Falls, New York (USA). The research contributes to theoretical and empirical literatures from sociology, anthropology, geography, environmental psychology, and material culture studies on notions of place, community, memory, and home. Despite socioeconomic deprivation and material devastation in areas of industrial decline, houses and neighborhood spaces can become invested with notions of family and community unity, nostalgia for a shared industrial past, and stability amidst socioeconomic change. Place attachment to “home” is particularly painful during times of post-industrial transition: in the case of Walker, people's homes are under threat of demolition with imminent City-Council-led regeneration of the community; and in the case of Highland, houses are located on contaminated and economically unviable land. Drawing in both cases on semi-structured interviews with a range of local people between 2005 and 2007, this article argues that narratives of place attachment—of “devastation but also home”—reveal some of the contradictions and uncertainties of living through difficult processes of social and economic change.

• Item Type: Articles
• Status: Published
• Refereed: Yes
• Glasgow Author(s) Enlighten ID: Mah, Professor Alice
• Authors: Mah, A.
• Subjects: G Geography. Anthropology. Recreation > GF Human ecology. Anthropogeography; H Social Sciences > H Social Sciences (General); H Social Sciences > HT Communities. Classes. Races
• College/School: College of Social Sciences > School of Social and Political Sciences > Urban Studies
• Journal Name: Home Cultures
• Publisher: Taylor & Francis
• ISSN: 1740-6315
• ISSN (Online): 1751-7427
• Published Online: 27 April 2015
• Copyright Holders: Copyright © 2009
• First Published: First published in Home Culture 6(3):287-310
• Publisher Policy: Reproduced in accordance with the publisher copyright policy