After Mining: contrived dereliction, dualistic time and the moment of rupture in the presentation of mining heritage.

• Published in: The Extractive Industries and Society
• Main Author: Oakley, Peter
• Format: Article in Journal/Newspaper
• Language: English
• Published: Elsevier 2018
• Subjects: L610 Social and Cultural Anthropology; Cornwall; Skagway; Alaska
• Online Access: https://researchonline.rca.ac.uk/3224/; https://researchonline.rca.ac.uk/3224/1/OAKLEY%20After%20Mining%20Accepted%202018.pdf; https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S2214790X17301727; https://doi.org/10.1016/j.exis.2018.03.005

Since the early twentieth century, attempts have been made to promote sites relating to mining as industrial heritage. Since the rise of the heritage industry in the 1980s, the number and size of the mining sites being managed and promoted as heritage destinations has dramatically increased across the West. This paper will examine how the strategies for interpreting such sites rely on different temporal constructions. As well as outlining the ‘technological development’ approach and its association with linear time, the paper will unpack the key features of the less understood strategy of ‘contrived dereliction’ and the dualistic temporal framework that it relies on. This argument will reference a range of mining heritage sites visited and researched by the author: Kennecott, Skagway and Dyea in Alaska, Bodie in California and Geevor in Cornwall. The paper will also identify how curators have used the moment of rupture that can feature in dualistic temporal constructions to promote a specific political viewpoint and consider the social consequences of accepting the dualistic temporal construction that underpins contrived dereliction.