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Re-Imagining River Restoration

Temporalities, Landscapes and Values of the Emscher Set in a Post-Mining Environment

Authors

  • Stefan Laser Ruhr-Universität Bochum
  • Estrid Sørensen Kulturpsychologie und Wissensanthropologie, Ruhr-Universität Bochum

Keywords:

Underground, Ontologies, Ruins, Ruhr District, Valuation

Abstract

The restoration of the Emscher began in the 1990s. It brings us to a former centre of industrialization – the Ruhr Valley in North Rhine Westphalia, Germany – and reveals challenges of post-mining, such as pollution and subsidence. Three concepts are central to understanding the restoration of the river: landscape, temporality and value. Through three stories we investigate these notions in different constellations and ask how they can help to reimagine the river: through (1) a proud, modern, reassuring story of liberation from a dirty past into a clean and flourishing present; (2) a story celebrating maintenance, and the efforts, work and resources of the enormous underground water infrastructure that supports the health and well-being at the surface; and (3) a ruin story reimagining the eternity burden imposed by the legacy of mining, and appreciating the arts of noticing how to live carefully in this area with this history. Thinking through the three stories helps appreciate different kinds of actors, knowledges and realities attached to the Emscher’s restoration. By developing the notions of landscape, temporality and value, we propose a multi-faceted approach to distinguish between ways of enacting a post-mining’s site ontology.

Author Biographies

Stefan Laser, Ruhr-Universität Bochum

Stefan Laser is a postdoctoral researcher in the Faculty of Social Sciences at the Ruhr University Bochum and coordinates a research lab (the ‘RUSTlab’) that focuses on the advancement of approaches in STS. He received his doctorate in sociology at the University of Kassel. The foundation for the PhD was a multi-sited ethnography, which is dedicated to the global containment of electronic waste. He has published extensively on STS methodologies, innovation, valuation studies and waste studies.

Estrid Sørensen, Kulturpsychologie und Wissensanthropologie, Ruhr-Universität Bochum

Estrid Sørensen is professor of cultural psychology and anthropology of knowledge at the Ruhr University Bochum. She has published within a wide area of Science & Technology Studies, including a text book, and studies on digitalisation and knowledge production in educational contexts, on evaluation studies, on knowledge production of and through computer games, on knowledge production in psychology and on scientific data practices. Of core interest in her work are questions concerning materiality of and in knowledge production as well as the re-thinking of ethnographic methods through digital data.

Titelbild Ecological Ontologies

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Published

2021-06-21

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How to Cite

Laser, S., & Sørensen, E. (2021). Re-Imagining River Restoration: Temporalities, Landscapes and Values of the Emscher Set in a Post-Mining Environment. Berliner Blätter, 84, 21–34. Retrieved from https://berliner-blaetter.de/index.php/blaetter/article/view/1106

Issue

Vol. 84 (2021): Ecological Ontologies - Approaching Human-Environmental Engagements

Section

Artikel

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Copyright (c) 2021 Berliner Blätter

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