Making space for hybridity

Industrial heritage naturecultures at West Carclaze Garden Village, Cornwall

Bibliographic Data

ID8944186
AuthorsNadia Bartolini (0000-0002-0375-9413, University of Exeter, corresponding author), Caitlin Desilvey (0000-0003-1629-8414, University of Exeter)
Year2020
Volume113
Pages39-49
Publication date2020-05-18
Peer ReviewedYes
Open AccessYes
TypeARTICLE
VenueGeoforum (JOURNAL)
Journal identifiersISSN: 0016-7185 • E-ISSN: 1872-9398
PublisherElsevier BV (PUBLISHER)
DOI10.1016/j.geoforum.2020.04.010
OpenAlexW3028420450
LanguageEN
Citations received12
References cited34

The paper explores the diverse forms of renaturing and reinscription which arise from the materiality of industrial decline and the desire to make space for nature in new peri-urban developments. As productive use is sought for post-operational spaces, remnant industrial objects and ecologies are either removed or incorporated into new landscape narratives and forms. When they are retained, the status of such remnants often remains unstable, as their identities are (re)inscribed through diverse and sometimes competing value frameworks. Instability and ambivalence are particularly pronounced in relation to features that straddle categories of nature and society: nature-culture assemblages produced through both industrial and ecological processes. In this paper, we examine two such assemblages at West Carclaze, Cornwall, in the SW of the UK, a site shaped by the process of china clay extraction and now undergoing redevelopment as a ‘garden village’. The paper considers an artificial hill formed of clay-processing waste and a rare bryophyte species which depends for its survival on ongoing industrial process. Both of these objects represent a category which we describe as ‘industrial heritage naturecultures’ – hybrid entities whose recognition potentially signals a new willingness to accept the blurring of nature-society distinctions in planning and heritage management contexts

Aesthetics · Ambivalence · Archaeology · Art · Civil engineering · Cultural heritage · Cultural heritage management · Environmental ethics · Hybridity · Industrial heritage · Materiality (auditing · Narrative · Redevelopment · Sociology · Space (punctuation) · Value (mathematics · Anthropology · Cultural Heritage Management and Preservation · Engineering · Geographies of human-animal interactions · History · Land Use and Ecosystem Services

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