Cultural Landscapes of Energy

Constructing Histories of Power, Prosperity, and Decline in Europe
1. Auflage 2026
ISBN: 978-1-032-75336-2
Verlag: Taylor & Francis Ltd

Buch, Englisch, 320 Seiten, Format (B × H): 156 mm x 234 mm, Gewicht: 453 g

Reihe: Critical Heritages of Europe

This volume explores the contested heritage of landscapes impacted by energy production. It offers a comparative perspective across Europe on different energy resources and reveals the hidden histories behind current efforts to revalorise the industrial heritage of energy production.

Including case studies from across the European continent, this volume adds a crucial historical perspective to current debates on energy transition and the future of Europe’s landscapes, which have been deeply impacted by energy production. Coal mining, oil drilling, peat extraction, and the construction of large-scale infrastructure, such as dams, have shaped ‘cultural landscapes of energy’ in present-day Europe. The exploitation of natural resources served economic development and established new industrial work cultures, but it also destroyed settlements through excavation and flooding. This volume brings together conflicting histories around work, habitation, and leisure in contemporary landscapes across Europe. Drawing on archival records, interviews, and fieldwork, the chapters in this volume combine perspectives on the productive and destructive sides of energy. They address the tensions emerging from heritage-making processes, which focus on the end of energy production despite ongoing and future commissioning projects.

The volume contributes new insights to the fields of energy and environmental history, heritage studies, memory studies, landscape architecture, and sustainability science. It provides rich materials on energy landscapes across Europe for researchers as well as policymakers and practitioners interested in energy transition, (post-)industrial heritage, and cultural tourism.

Zielgruppe

Academic and Postgraduate

Autoren/Hrsg.

Geering, Corinne

Meyer, Torsten

Fachgebiete

• Geowissenschaften Umweltwissenschaften Umweltwissenschaften
• Geisteswissenschaften Kunst Kunst, allgemein Kunstsammlung, Museen, Ausstellungen

Inhaltsverzeichnis

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 Neziroglu; 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.

Über Autor(innen)

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, 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 until twentieth century), and the use of industrial heritage in regional planning.