Conference: Pop History of Deindustrialization: Narratives, Economies, Identities. “The West” in Global Perspective (Cambridge, 14-16 November 24)

Dimoni Industrial/Industrial Devil. (Idranx from Badalona, SPAIN, CC BY-SA 2.0 via Wikimedia Commons).

Since the 1970s, deindustrialization – or the massive reduction in industrial production, facilities, and jobs – has fundamentally changed Western societies. This history has tended to be narrated in terms of decline and loss, usually within a local or national locus. Recently, scholars have challenged the isolated directionality of these narratives by bringing global and cross-industrial perspectives to the fore. Deindustrialization instigated an uneven set of experiences in different spaces, and forms of rupture and continuity. Those experiences have been reflected in various forms of pop culture. As examples from Germany and Great Britain demonstrate, Western deindustrialization unfolded in the midst of global, and particularly Asian, industrialization, reinforcing each other, as the example of South Korea illustrates.

Pop culture is, at the same time, itself the locus of radical structural change. Digitalization has altered production and distribution and thus the market as a whole, from physical goods to “immaterial” downloads of a “sharing economy”. The cultural industry has played a considerable role in the reshaping of post-industrial spaces in the form of neo-liberalized “creative industries” and subsidized reculturalization measures reflected on the level of local and international politics. This conference aims to explore historical perspectives in a globalizing World. With case studies from Germany and Great Britain, Europe more largely, the United States, and Asia, the papers will explore the nexus between deindustrialization and pop history, aiming for a better understanding of a structural process in which economies, politics, and culture are inseparably linked.

Programm

Thursday 14th November 2024

Martina Steber (Institute for Contemporary History, IfZ, Munich) & Chris Young (St Edmund’s College, University of Cambridge): Welcome note

Paroma Ghose & Bodo Mrozek (IfZ Munich-Berlin): Introduction to Conference

KEYNOTE LECTURE

Giacomo Bottà (University of Helsinki): From vanishing Mediator to Cultural Heritage: Music and Deindustrialization in Europe from a Global Perspective

Friday 15th November

Panel 1: PROTESTING / AFFIRMING INDUSTRIAL DECLINE
Chair: Richard Bramwell (University of Loughborough)

1. Florian Völker (Leibniz Centre for Contemporary History, Potsdam): Industrial Euphoria in the Face of De-industrialisation: The German New Wave and their Roots in 1920s Avantgarde

2. Peter McMurray (University of Cambridge): All that is solid melts into music: Free jazz and hip hop in deindustrialized New York

3. Olivia Frigo-Charles (University of Zürich): From Steel to Screen: Industrial decline in South Wales and Michael Sheen’s TV-Series The Way

Panel 2: CULTURES AND ECONOMIES OF DEINDUSTRIALIZATION
Chair: Marcus Böick (King’s College, University of Cambridge)

1. Alex Robertson (St. Edmund’s College, Cambridge): Iron and Irony: Sheffield and the City’s Music Scene in the 1980s

2. Dave Robb (Queen’s University, Belfast): Gerhard Gundermann’s Songwriting in Context of East Germany’s Decline and Forces of Globalisation in the 1990s.

3. Sungmin Rho (Geneva Graduate Institute): Labour Market Changes and Gender Polarization in Deindustrializing Societies (Focus on South Korea)

PERFORMATIVE TALK:

Johannes Salim Ismaiel-Wendt (Hildesheim University): Riddims of the Drilling Machine. The Caribbean in Lower Saxony

Saturday 16th November

Panel 3: TOWARDS POSTINDUSTRIAL IDENTITIES?
Chair: Darren O’Byrne (Wolfson College, University of Cambridge)

1. Elena Gorfinkel (King’s College, London): Mining Wanda: Barbara Loden’s Independence as Deindustrialized Mode (US, 1970)

2. Jörg Arnold (University of Nottingham): Into the Valley of Death rode the brave Hundreds. Popular Culture and the Miners’ Strike, 1984 to the Present

3. Elena Bös (Intitute for Contemporary History, Munich): Against the Grain – Discourse of Community and Rebellion within Rammstein’s Fan Base

Closing Remarks and Discussion
Matthew Worley (University of Reading)

(The conference takes place at Trinity Hall, University of Cambridge, in a closed format: attandence is for registered participants, only.)

Bodo Mrozek

I am a historian, working on cultural and contemporary history. In my last book Jugend - Pop - Kultur. Eine transnationale Geschichte (Histoire de la pop. Quand la culture jeune dépasse les frontières), I analyze both the criminalization and the establishment of an international youth and pop culture during the second half of the 20th century. Currently, I am a researcher at the Berlin Center for Cold War Studies of the Institute for Contemporary History Munich-Berlin, working on sensory and hybrid warfare and the olfactory history of the Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries.

More Posts - Website


OpenEdition suggests that you cite this post as follows:
Bodo Mrozek (November 1, 2024). Conference: Pop History of Deindustrialization: Narratives, Economies, Identities. “The West” in Global Perspective (Cambridge, 14-16 November 24). PopHistory. Retrieved July 20, 2025 from https://doi.org/10.58079/12lqf


Leave a Reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *

This site uses Akismet to reduce spam. Learn how your comment data is processed.