Where the Everyday Begins: A Study of Environment and Everyday Life 9783839440773

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James Morrow Where the Everyday Begins

Sociology

James Morrow received his PhD from Katholische Universität Eichstätt-Ingolstadt. He lives and works in Kingston, Jamaica. His research interests include environment, cultural studies, and social history.

James Morrow

Where the Everyday Begins A Study of Environment and Everyday Life

Bibliographic information published by the Deutsche Nationalbibliothek The Deutsche Nationalbibliothek lists this publication in the Deutsche Nationalbibliografie; detailed bibliographic data are available in the Internet at http://dnb.d-nb.de © 2017 transcript Verlag, Bielefeld

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reprinted or reproduced or utilized in any form or by any electronic, mechanical, or other means, now known or hereafter invented, including photocopying and recording, or in any information storage or retrieval system, without permission in writing from the publisher. Cover layout: Kordula Röckenhaus, Bielefeld Printed by Majuskel Medienproduktion GmbH, Wetzlar Print-ISBN 978-3-8376-4077-9 PDF-ISBN 978-3-8394-4077-3

Contents

Preface | 9 Foreword | 13 Introduction | 21

P ART 1 – METHODS Method of Observation and Documentation | 31

Best Practises | 31 Supporting Methods | 33 Methods of Critical Analysis | 41

Anti-Environment | 41 Image Ecology | 45

P ART 2 – CASE STUDIES Sheffield, England | 59 Glory Days | 61 Looking For Life | 62 This Is Hardcore | 67 Common People | 71 The Fear | 75 Last Day Of The Miners’ Strike | 78 Something Changed | 82 After You | 89 Edmonton, Alberta | 91

Industrial Living | 92

Boom Town | 94 Queen Elizabeth II Highway/Nisku | 96 Gateway Park | 100 Gateway Boulevard | 101 Rail Yard | 105 Downtown | 107 Old Strathcona | 109 High Level Bridge | 111 Wind River Range, Wyoming | 113

Altitude | 114 Research | 117 Method | 120 Data Entry and Analysis | 123 Code Shift | 127 Monument | 128 Last Words | 130

P ART 3 – LEXICON Interpretive Lexicon | 135

Staging | 136 Stroboscopy | 141 Infrastructure | 145 Fragmentation | 151 Critical Lexicon | 155

Threshold | 155 Ground Truth | 159 Sustainment | 161 Complicity | 166 Solidarity | 171 Conclusion | 177

Appendix | 181 The Pastoral | 181 Umwelt | 183 Milieu | 184 The Overuse of the First Person in Academic Writing | 184 Narrative | 185 McLuhan’s Anti-Environment and Plato’s Cave | 186 A House Can Exist in the Middle of the Street | 187 The Noise of Industry | 187 The Means of Production and the Meaning of ‘Made in Sheffield’| 188 Pit Villages and Workwear | 188 The Soul at Work | 189 Grit and Fashion in Edmonton | 190 On the Importance of Edmonton and the Tar Sands to the Global Economy | 191 Company Names and Their Function in Industry | 192 The Burden of the Burden of Proof | 193 Heidegger and the Specifics of Staging | 194 Stroboscopy and Loud Places | 195 Stealth and Fragmentation | 196 Alternatives for Future Infrastructure | 197 An Indifferent Universe | 198 Parables of Solidarity and Care of Community | 199 Common Cause and the End of Snobbery | 201 Confidential Annex | 203 Bibliography | 207

Preface

I was born in Rochester, New York. It is not a large city. But it did have a claim to fame. It was home of Eastman Kodak Company. It also used to be the headquarters of Xerox and Bausch and Lomb. Rochester was a factory town. Chimneys were as much a part of its skyline as office towers. And it was a city that always seemed to be shrouded in a grey haze that never lifted. My father worked at Kodak. His wage packet bought the house I was raised in. It clothed and fed my family. It even put my brother and sister through University. Kodak defined a lot of my childhood. When I was in primary school, the workers’ children used to get together at Kodak’s Eastman Theatre on Christmas afternoon. We would watch cartoons and open gifts from company management. I still have fond memories of those Kodak Moments. My world changed in December 1991, when Kodak began a round of redundancies that would eventually halve the company’s workforce. Then, as Kodak continued to ‘downsize’, the city of my youth began to decay. The company’s executives said the layoffs were a response to a ‘brand new environment’. They said that closing factories and tearingdown the city’s livelihood would allow the company to prosper. They said that the good times would return.

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The factories were closed. Their gates were locked. The workers went home. And they loyally waited to be told when to go back to work. But the good times never came back. Instead, everything got worse, especially when the businesses that depended on other people’s paycheques followed Kodak into insolvency. When the hard times came, neighbours who used to stop to gossip about work when they passed each other in grocery store aisles would lower their heads and avoid eye contact. There was nothing more to talk about. They were too proud and too embarrassed to talk about the indignities of being redundant. Too often, damage was profoundly personal. I used to go to a friend’s house after school. His father always sat in a recliner, watching soap operas. He just sat there in the glow of the TV, his back to the door and a can of Genesee beer at his side. And when I once asked my friend what his father did all day, he just said, ‘Sometimes he cries’. Likewise, for my family, the brand new environment meant that my father, who was one of the first workers to lose their job, had to take a temporary job in Buffalo that required a daily commute of three hours. Then my mother, who was a teacher, took a second a job at a craft store so that we could ‘make it through’. When the hard times got worse, I went from being a child who dreamt of working at Kodak to being an angry teenager who threw rocks through the windows of the company’s old factories. My friends and I had nothing to do. Our parents were broke, so we all had to suffer together. My friends and I became a voluntary wrecking crew that tore-down what remained of the company that had torn-apart our world. There was not much else to do. We could either entertain ourselves in the ruins of industry or stew in our anger alone. When I was old enough, I turned my back on Rochester, and moved as far away as I could go. I began an odyssey that has taken me from Gunnison, Colorado to Vaxjo, Sweden to Vancouver and

P REFACE | 11

Victoria, British Columbia to Ft. Collins Colorado to Nottingham, England to Edmonton, Alberta and to Eichstätt, Bavaria. And I will keep moving for as long as I can because, no matter where I go, I will always be trying to run away from Rochester, Kodak, and the brand new environment. So, when I talk about environment, it is personal. The industrial environment is very literally a part of my blood. *** This book is a love letter to the people and places that have had to faceup to a new environment. There are a lot of us, and there will be a lot more. This book is also a tribute to anyone who, like my father, has walked through factory gates. And it is for anyone who, like my mother, has had to go back to work after hours and take-on extra jobs stocking shelves or tending bar. As I have written this book, the names of many people come to mind. They are the people who have helped me develop my ideas and grow from an angry, brick-throwing teen into a person capable of using my words. They are all good people who deserve to be recognised for their help, patience and friendship. They are: Brad Lewis, Leon Whalen, Dave Lanning, Bob Dill, John Baynes, Bill Niemi, James Stewart, Wally Lewis, Ethel Rice, Sabina Müller, Adam Johnson, Stefanie Fishel, George Chow, Jacquie Miller, Bill Chaloupka, Dawn Putney, Bill Jacobi, Betsy Goodrich, Amanda Crump, Eric Ishiwata, George Stetson, Siobhan Lynch, Laura Swain, Jonathan Redhorse, Charles Agar, Leah Ungless, Rachael Tucker, Verity James-Sinetos, Rob Shields, Andriko Lozowy, Kaylea Mitchem, Elena Siemens, Florian Mayr, Neil O’Donnell, Brian Tracz, Andrew Dibble, Martin Friedrich, Christoph Schiebel, Maria Dotzer, Rémi Bocquillon, Andrea Brummeißl, Silvia Mordstein and, as always, Jen. I must also thank my thesis advisor, Joost van Loon. Over the last few years, he has given me the opportunity and freedom to get my

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ideas in order and let me explain myself. And it was his work behind the scenes that has allowed this project to come to completion after many years of starts and stops. A lot of gratitude goes out to the other advisors that I have had over the years, namely Mike Featherstone, Couze Venn, and James Tully. I have probably learned more sitting in chairs opposite their desks than I ever did in any classroom. Many thanks go to my department secretary, Frau Alberter, and many other members of the staff at Katholische Universität, including Frau Regensburger, Prof. Dr. Grüner, Gerhard Wenzl, and Jessica Hofmacher. Kind regards go to all of the Erasmus and International students who have ever sat in my classroom or who I have seen about town. As someone who has been educated in four countries and a student for more years than can be counted on my fingers, I know their struggle. Lastly, I need to thank every student who I have ever had a pleasure to teach. So much of this text was first run past them in the classroom before it was ever typed-out. And without their tough questions and willingness to hear what I have to say, a lot of this text would never have been written.

Foreword

‘Where the everyday begins’ used to be an advertising tag-line for IKEA. It was followed by a boast that the everyday is ‘the most important day’. And both phrases were ubiquitous in the company’s marketing campaigns. IKEA’s campaign was meant to imply that they furnish the everyday. However, literally and figuratively, there is no way that everyday begins at IKEA. Nobody wakes-up everyday in the mattress or lounge section of an IKEA store. Nor does anybody start their day with a cup of coffee in the kitchen showroom. IKEA’s tag-line is a product of hyperbole and artistic licence, but it does raise a good question: Where does the everyday begin? Accordingly, to rest of this text is a long-form answer to the question of where the everyday begins.

C LARIFICATION

OF

L OGIC

The logic of how this text ties-together environment and everyday life can be summed-up in four steps: 1/ The everyday has to begin somewhere. It would make sense to say that it begins at home. But Martin Heidegger, in Being and Time, says the everyday involves a lot of happenings that are ‘unheimlich’, which

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roughly translates to ‘not-at-home’.1 Therefore, everyday life has to exist outside the interior life of the household. 2/ In The Human Condition, Hannah Arendt says that what exists outside ‘the shadowy interior of the household’ is agonistic and filled with ‘mass sentiments and mass desires’.2 So when people step out their front door, they walk into a world that is already in motion. And this means that the everyday can begin at ‘almost any time and anywhere’ and can take any number of forms. 3/ In spite of its multiplicity of overlapping and, sometimes, contradictory details and relations, everyday life must have common ground or, at the least, an ever-present and shared element. Otherwise, there is nothing on which the human artifice of everyday life can be built. 4/ The best answer to the question of where everyday begins is environment. It is the only sensible quarry and common element, as it is the sum of all surrounding things, conditions, or influences that give form to everyday life. Or as Albert Einstein puts it, ‘The environment is everything that isn’t me’.3

C LARIFICATION

OF

T ERMS

A few of this text’s most common terms have to be defined and clarified:

1

Martin Heidegger, Being and Time, trans. John MacQuarrie and Edward Robinson (New York: HarperPerennial, 2008), 188.

2

Hannah Arendt, The Human Condition (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1998), 2 and 35.

3

This quote is in such common use that its original source and citation cannot be found.

F OREWORD | 15

1/ Environment In this text, Environment will be defined as: ‘The circumstances, objects or conditions by which one is surrounded’. In common use, the word environment signifies a physical domain that is separate from human artifice. And in popular discourse, the term environment refers to biologic functions or forces of nature that are set apart from the processes of a man-made world. For example, in their promotional literature, environmentalists often depict nature as being a bucolic place that is far removed from everyday life.4 But this sense of separation between nature and humanity does not jibe with this text’s definition of the environment, in which they are bound together in perpetuity. To avoid any confusion about the use of the words environment or nature, this text will largely ignore common usage. Therefore, the word environment will be used in a way that is much closer in spirit to the german word ‘Umwelt’ and french ‘milieu’. And, to be clear, these non-english spirit-words are, respectively, defined as ‘surrounding world’ and a ‘domain that exists between two centres’.5 Furthermore, this text’s use of the term environment will be set by three heuristics: a/ Environment is immersive. There is no hard-set division between living and non-living or nature and artifice. b/ Environment is relational as much as it is material. All elements of life, including inorganic matter, exist within an environment, and are related, in any number of ways, by multiple ecologies. c/ Environment is not a static object. Its conditions can change and take-on different forms.

4

For more on the use of the Pastoral in environmental writing, see Appendix entry 1.

5

For more detailed definitions of Umwelt and milieu, see Appendix entries 2 and 3.

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Also, a stylistic quirk in this text’s grammar needs to be explained. With few exceptions, the word environment will rarely be proceeded or qualified by an article or determiner, such as the or an. And there are two reasons for this: a/ This text is written in an informal dialect and minimalist style that rarely affixes determiners to nouns. b/ The word environment will generally refer to the particular environment that immediately surrounds what is being discussed. 2/ Ecology Most dictionaries and academic textbooks define ecology as ‘the set of relationships between living organisms’. It is fine to conflate ecologies and relationships. As a matter of fact, there is no significant difference. But it is a mistake to simply limit ecology to organic matter. Within an environment, there is no clear separation between living and non-living. For example, non-living matter or actants, like viruses and prions, exist within an environment. Yet an actant, such as a virus, can destroy populations and disrupt everyday life. And the capacity to directly afflict and affect vital routines and behaviours means actants have ecology – as they are able to modify material, social or biologic relations. Likewise, it is important to expand the definition of ecology because it can explain how non-living material and other artefacts or effects – such as minerals, factories, microchips, brands, ideologies or tropes – can directly impact the set of relationships between living organisms. Consequently, in this text, ecology will be defined as: ‘The perceptible and imperceptible relations between an environment’s various elements and matter, which can be living or non-living’. Also, it needs to be noted that this text will, at times, use the words ecology, relations or relationship interchangeably.

F OREWORD | 17

3/ Everyday life Of all places, an IKEA catalogue offers one of the best definitions of everyday life, which is: There are moments in life that are special. And then there’s the everyday. All 6

those Mondays, Tuesdays and Fridays that make up the days of our lives.

In academic terms, everyday life is what Mike Featherstone calls the ‘routine, repetitive taken-for-granted experiences, beliefs and practices’ that give shape to modern life.7 Similarly, Henri Lefebvre defines everyday life as ‘common ground’ that forms ‘the sum total of relations which make… every human being’. Hence he says that the days of our lives are the setting where material and social practises, along with relations of production, are expressed, made and remade.8 Any event in everyday life, such as a trip to IKEA, involves a number of interactions with a ravel of common material, political and social ecologies, such as: − The use of roads or motorways that determine a city’s form and function − Following laws and cultural norms that dictate road safety and local traffic patterns − Passing-by, or even going to, shops or stores that sell consumer items that make up a significant part of any modern economy − Encounters with advertisements, gestures, fashion, uses of language or other cultural artefacts that are signifiers of status, class, gender, decorum, and any number of social cues

6 7

‘Where Everyday Begins’, IKEA (2015), 3. Mike Featherstone, Undoing Culture: Globalization, Postmodernism and Identity (London: SAGE Publications, 2000), 55.

8

Henri Lefebvre, The Production of Space, trans. Donald Nicholson Smith (Oxford, England: Blackwell Publishers, 1991), 67.

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− Shopping for furniture or other consumer goods that match an individual’s personal needs and culturally-informed aesthetics − Buying items that were made by labourers in distant factories and have been transported over complex transport networks − Spending money that was most likely earned from a job that is, in some way, connected to the everyday function of a local economy.

Image credit: Uyiosa It also needs to be noted that, in this text, the term everyday life is used in place of the words society or the social. And it is important because, in Lefebvre’s words, everyday life includes an ecologic mesh of ‘spatialities’ that are ‘profoundly related to all activities’.9

9

Lefebvre, 97.

F OREWORD | 19

C LARIFICATION

OF

S TYLE

This text is written for clarity and concision. Some of the rationale for its minimalist style will be discussed in greater detail later in the Introduction and methods chapters. But, to be clear, the word-choice and cadence in this text is intentional, as it is written for an audience that is larger than the small pool of scholars who also specialise in environmental sociology. Furthermore, this text has adopted a narrative style that is not common in academic writing.10 It is meant to maintain the readers’ interest in a way that rewards a good story with genuine insight into the hard particulars of its observations.11 And this text will do this by giving prominence to writerly devices like plot and scene over a selfconscious editorial tone or any effort to place the text within a peculiar academic debate. Finally, it is important to note that this text is put together in a way that is different than many others. Whereas most academic texts are composed of multiple chapters that can exist independent of one another, this text has been composed as a coherent whole. And, by integrating its methods, observations and analysis into a single narrative, this text’s structure is consistent with the complex, interdependent and self-reinforcing character of a subject matter that has consistently proven to be incomprehensible when viewed as anything less than a whole.

10 For more on this text’s approach to Academic Writing, see Appendix entry 4. 11 For more on Narrative, see Appendix entry 5.

1 Introduction

This text’s thesis is simple: Environment precedes everyday life. That is it. Four words. Yet, as is often the case, what appears to be simple is not necessarily easy. Therefore, as this text moves forward, those four words will take-on other, more complex and nuanced meaning. In more general terms, this text is a study of environment and everyday life. It will bear witness to the ways by which environment defines everyday life. And it will give detail to the multiplicity of ecologies and relations that bind environment and everyday life together.

1.1 O BJECTIVES This text has two objectives: 1/ Evidence and support the thesis Environment cannot be studied environmentally. As a subject of study, environment is so complex and engrossing that it cannot be fully understood solely in environmental terms. Environment is such a basic and intimate part of life that it is intrinsically imperceptible. Therefore, it needs to be studied in a way that can make sense of its multitude of contours and ecologies.

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Everyday life cannot be studied solely in social terms. The conditions of everyday life can be explained by social actions, processes, or structures. Or it can be interpreted as a function of class, gender, law or any number of social variables. But these analyses are limited because they only explain everyday life from within a social frame of reference. Consequently, neither environment nor everyday life can be understood without understanding the relationship between the two. So this text will approach everyday life from an environmental perspective. And, by doing so, it will give detail to the many ways by which environment precedes everyday life. 2/ Broaden the vocabulary of environment Environmental discourse is currently limited to a few terms and themes. The most common are biodiversity, climate change, pollution, and sustainability. And, though those terms and themes are very real issues, as terms of discourse, they are overused to the point that they have become meaningless. A glance at news headlines reveals the terms’ everyday use: ‘Study shows urbanisation’s impact on biodiversity’1 ‘Not even climate change will kill off capitalism’2 ‘Surviving Beijing’s pollution while pregnant: “I feel like a lab-rat”’3 ‘Wendel Berry: “for Americans to talk about sustainability is a bit of a joke”’4

1

Mark Kinver, ‘Study shows urbanisation’s impact on biodiversity’, BBC News, 12 February 2014.

2

Razmig Keucheyan, ‘Not even climate change will kill off capitalism’, The Guardian, 6 March 2014.

3

Yuan Ren, ‘Surviving Beijing’s pollution while pregnant: ‘I feel like a lab rat’, The Guardian, 7 March 2014.

4

Wendell Berry: ‘for Americans to talk about sustainability is a bit of a joke’, The Guardian, 6 March 2014.

I NTRODUCTION | 23

These are a few examples. Yet they reveal a vocabulary that is selfreferential and ready-made. In everyday use, terms like climate change or sustainability do not identify environmental damage as a problem to be confronted. Nor can it describe the current situation without resorting to stale stock phrases and worn-out metaphors that signify a certain type of advanced political opinion. In ‘Politics and the English Language’, George Orwell says readymade terms and phrases, which consist of ‘needless repetitions, and humbug and vagueness’, are selected for effect rather than meaning.5 And he believes that these terms limit range of thought by reducing detail and particulars to a series of prefabricated idioms. Thus he says that they ‘construct your sentences for you – even think your thoughts for you’.6 In order to root-out ready-made terms from contemporary debates about environment, there needs to be a new vocabulary of environment. It is important because, as Orwell puts it, ‘one can probably bring about some improvement by starting at the verbal end’.7 So, by following Orwell’s tack, this text will try to reset environmental discourse by changing the terms of debate.

1.2 S UPPORT In addition to the two main objectives, this text has four sub-objectives:

5

George Orwell, ‘Politics and the English Language’, A Collection of Essays by George Orwell (New York: Harcourt Paperbound Library, 1953), 170.

6

Ibid., 163 and 165.

7

Ibid., 170.

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1/ Describe environment ‘as it is’, rather than as it ‘ought to be’ This text will make visible the means through which environment precedes everyday life. It will do this by giving detail to particular observations about environment and everyday life. But it will not make any assumptions about what is real. And it will not craft a clever unifying theory. Instead, it will merely document environment ‘as it is’. Environment is so dynamic and bound-up in intersecting ecologies that it cannot be captured as a whole by metrics and static theory. Or, as Johann Wolfgang von Goethe puts it, any attempt to explain how the world works will always be simplistic, partial and speculative. Hence he insists that any study of how the world works should only aim to ‘give living expression to living thought’ by focusing on what is observable.8 To describe environment as it ‘ought to be’ is an imposition of attributes or qualities. In Maxims and Reflections, Goethe says, ‘everything in the realm of fact is already theory’.9 Therefore, to theorise and describe the world as it ought to be is a willfully abstract way of thinking about an abstraction, because: every act of looking turns into observation, every act of observation turns into reflection, every act of reflection turns into the making of associations; thus it is evident we theorize every time we look carefully at the world.10

So it is best to deal with the world as it is, and put in the effort to understand and work with what is already at-hand.

8

Johann Wolfgang von Goethe, Theory of Colours, trans. Charles Lock Eastlake (London: John Murray, 1840), 277.

9

Johann Wolfgang von Goethe, Scientific Studies, ed. Douglas Miller (Princeton, New Jersey: Princeton University Press, 1995), 307.

10 Ibid., 159.

I NTRODUCTION | 25

2/ Make clear the place of infrastructure in everyday life Infrastructure is vital to any understanding of environment and everyday life. It is the tangle of bridges, cables, grids, mains, pipes, roads, tunnels, waterways, and wires that keep everyday life in working order. Infrastructure is the form that sets-up the function of everyday life. Without it, there are no global supply chains or modern conveniences. Yet infrastructure is also a source of environmental damage because it makes the extraction and use of resources possible. For example, a car burns petrol that creates exhaust that contributes greenhouse gasses to the atmosphere. But before a car even burns a sip of fuel, oil infrastructure had to first be in place. So an oil well was dug. Then a pad was set-out. A rig erected. Specialised equipment lorried. Pipelines laid. Holding tanks fabricated. And all of that equipment depends on highways, steel mills and numerous types of quarries and mines. Plus it is all supported by work of labourers, human resources specialists, planners, and researchers whose livelihoods depend on mains electricity and fuel from the petrol stations. 3/ Demonstrate that subtle changes in environment have long-term impact on everyday life Changes in environment affect the function and organisation of ecologic communities. In fact, climate research shows that variability drives ecosystem dynamics. So changes in any number of minor environmental variables – like rainfall, temperature, or even the abundance of parasites or predators – impact species composition, diversity and interaction. As is the case in any other biotic community, social dynamics are constrained by environmental condition and circumstance. And this is important because any change in environment, no matter how insignificant it may seem, will produce large and persistent responses throughout everyday life. For instance, recent events have shown that drought in Ukraine can give rise to revolution in Egypt. Or, along

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similar lines, the mining of rare earth minerals in a Congolese rain forest can lead to deforestation, economic graft, and social devastation. 4/ Develop an environmental perspective for analysing the ways by which everyday events come together History is generally believed to be chronologic. People usually think of it as being a narrative sequence in which one event follows another, after another, and so on. And though it is true that events are sequential – that moments in time have causes and effects – history is also ecological, as it is composed of multiple, variously related contingencies. Environment does not have a proper, telelogic chronology or sequence. Nor is it linear. Instead, it is in medias res or ‘in the midst of things’. A forest is an archetype of how environment is in the midst of things. It is composed of a multitude of concurrent histories that converge, overlap, and operate on different scales and time frames. Each tree in a forest is a different age. Beetle populations rise and fall according to the forest’s maturation. Annual and perennial vegetation grow on the floor. Organic materials in the soil decompose at different rates and are in various states of decay. Glaciers that receded millennia ago still affect the shape and form of the landscape. Plus there are a number of almost imperceptible interactions that have particular timelines or occur only under specific conditions. Consequently, it is important to understand that, within an environmental context, history is contingent and constantly undergoing constant change.

I NTRODUCTION | 27

1.3 L AYOUT This text will be divided into three Parts: 1/ Part One will introduce the text’s methods of documentation and observation In order to draft case studies that are rich with details about environment and everyday life, this text requires methods that are attentive to context. So it will make use of immersive, observational methods that identify circumstances and variables that are present but not immediately visible. This Part of the text will introduce a set of best practises for gathering and presenting contextual observations that are derived from four immersive methods for research and writing: − − − −

Environmental writing Narrative journalism Psychogeography British working class ethnography

And it will introduce and discuss two sociologic methods of analysis and critique: − Anti-environmental analysis − Image ecology 2/ Part Two contains three case studies that make sense of how environment precedes everyday life This text’s case studies document the social and material ecologies that give form to everyday life. And the environments that will be studied are located in: − Sheffield, England. A city adapting to the decline of industry − Edmonton, Alberta. A boomtown in an oil-rich Canadian province

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− Wind River Range, Wyoming. A region where ecologists are researching the effects of climate change on a threatened forest. 3/ Part Three will analyse the case-studies presented in Part Two Unlike more conventional academic analyses, which are generally written in a series of long-form essays, this text’s analyses will be organised in a style that is similar to a glossary or lexicon. There are two reasons the analysis has been organised as a lexicon: a/ It fits this text’s second stated objective, which is the development of a new vocabulary of environment. b/ It can function as an index or reference for environmental research. Also, this text will finish with an appendix that clarifies and elaborates on a few terms and issues that require further discussion.

Part 1 Methods

2 Method of Observation and Documentation

Environment must be observed and described ‘as it is’. As Goethe says in Theory of Colours, ‘Search nothing beyond the phenomena’.1 Therefore, any attempt to make sense of environment requires a method of observation and documentation that is immersive and attentive to detail. This text will have its own method of observation and documentation that allows it to closely examine the complexities, nuance, and subtlety of environment. More specifically, it is meant to be stochastic. So it is capable of responding to shifting circumstance and the idiosyncrasies of small details whilst it sets-down observable facts in clear terms.

2.1 B EST P RACTISES In order to maintain flexibility and clarity of vision, this text’s methods are not prescribed. Instead, they observe a set of best practises, which are:

1

Goethe, Theory of Colours, 277.

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1/ Immersion and on-the-ground observation Immersion makes it possible to make sense of environment at a level that is more than visceral. It gives detailed observations about hard particulars and sensory details that are not ordinarily visible in archives, data-sets, spreadsheets, and official reports. Or, as Orwell says in The Road to Wigan Pier, it lets a researcher to ‘get much grasp of the processes that are going on’.2 2/ A broad view of environment Environment is too immense to be seen from a single, narrow frame of reference. Therefore, to better see environment’s contours and complex ecologies, the text has to make use of observational methods that match and adapt to environment’s magnitude. And this requires a style of reporting that looks for the contextual details and ecologies that bind everyday life and environment at large. 3/ The description and substantiation of details in context Context matters. Details cannot be stripped from the environment or setting from which they emerge. So they have to be examined and described in context. 4/ The use of narrative and literary techniques to illustrate setting Environment is imprecise and vague. In order to document happenstance and problematic effects, environment must be examined from multiple perspectives. And this means that the text has to embrace a methodologic plasticity that makes use of writerly techniques that can organise broad observations and seemingly unrelated details into a coherent narrative.

2

George Orwell, The Road to Wigan Pier (New York: Berkley Medallion Books, 1967), 33.

M ETHOD

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AND

D OCUMENTATION | 33

2.2 S UPPORTING M ETHODS There is no single method that can give an impartial and well-detailed account of how environment and everyday life relate. Hence this text uses a set of best practices instead of any one method. Yet best practises still have to be rooted in observational techniques that are field-tested and ready to be put to work. What follows is a discussion of four methods of observation that give form to this text’s best practises. 2.2.1 Environmental Writing In many ways, this text is an homage to the methods of observation and prose popularised by environmental writers. It is a style of writing given form by nineteenth century philosopher-naturalists, like Ralph Waldo Emerson, John Muir, and Henry David Thoreau. And, later on, it was bolstered by more prose-oriented writers, namely Aldo Leopold, Rachel Carson, Gary Snyder, Edward Abbey, and Hunter S. Thompson. Environmental writing uses observation to take note of the ecologies that bind culture, nature, politics and technology. In A Natural History of Nature Writing, Frank Stewart says an environmental writer’s interest is the circumstance and context of life, as it is lived. So there is an emphasis on documenting the fine details that make ‘the world larger and richer’.3 Most environmental writers take a broad view of the relationship between details and observations. In fact, it is one of their best stylistic virtues, as it allows them to closely examine the various, often overlooked, ways in which everyday artefacts and events fit together. Plus it allows them to find a perspective that can provide insight into more significant matters of concern.

3

Frank Stewart, A Natural History of Nature Writing (Washington, DC: Island Press, 1994), xxiii.

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However, the broad view sometimes leads to observations that can seem unlikely. For instance, in The Rum Diary, Hunter S. Thompson claims that he ‘finally understood the connection between children scavenging for food and shiny brass plates on the front doors of banks’ after making eye-contact with a captive lobster.4 And he admits that this sort of observation is absurd. But he reports it because it reflects the scale and scope of subject matter that is, too often, ambiguous, contextual and variable. Environmental writers are also known to use unique narrative techniques. More specifically, they sometimes cannot find the right words to describe what they have observed. So, to better explain themselves, they often break from conventional writing styles. Hence writers like Thompson and Edward Abbey use creative literary devices and irreverence. Gary Snyder leans on metaphor. Aldo Leopold is lyrical. And Rachel Carson is polemical. In terms of style, this text will be more straight-forward than most environmental writing. Literary devices, poetics, and metaphor will be kept to a minimum. But there is no denying that the basis of this text’s methodology is modelled on environmental writings’ broad view, as well as its emphasis on observing and documenting environment in context. 2.2.2 Narrative Journalism Like most other academic research, this text has a thesis to be tested, case studies that need to be examined, and information that must be analysed. But research on environment, which is a wide-ranging topic that covers so much territory, requires a style of documentation that blends good writing and in-depth reportage. So this text will put to use some techniques that are common to long-form and narrative journalism.

4

Hunter S. Thompson, The Rum Diary (New York: Simon and Schuster, 2011), 54.

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In order to get to its point, this text has to show how everyday happenings and events accumulate and intersect, which is a common skill amongst narrative journalists. For example, if a narrative journalist reports on a car accident, it is not enough for them to note that rubber was burnt onto the road or note a glint of sunlight in broken glass. Instead, they give their story greater coherence by describing the way it is possible for bodies, histories and pressures to come together at the same place and time. Gay Talese, who is a well-respected journalist, says that a narrative styles ‘is, or should be, as reliable as the most reliable reportage although it seeks a larger truth than is possible through the mere compilation of verifiable facts’.5 Thus it works because it allows the writer to subtly blend multiple perspectives into a concise, coherent form that gives consequence to a story’s hard particulars. And, as is the case with this text, this is significant because it gives context to small details whilst environment remains in the field of vision. 2.2.3 Psychogeography Environmental writing and narrative journalism are stylistic methods of documentation. But what is written requires content, and content needs to be gathered. This text’s research content will come from on-the-ground observations of the many ways by which environment and everyday life interact. And one of the best methods for gathering this type of data is psychogeography. As a matter of fact, Guy Debord, who is one of its original practitioners calls it the ideal ‘ecological science’ for gathering the ‘specific effects of the geographical environment’.6

5

Gay Talese et al., ‘The New Journalism’, in Writer’s Digest, January 1970, 34.

6

Guy Debord, ‘The Theory of the Derive’, trans. Ken Knabb, Internationale Situationiste #2, December 1958.

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In practise, psychogeography is little more than a deft form of walking wherein researchers ramble about with no particular purpose. Yet these jaunts and wanderings are not aimless. As Debord explains, ‘rapid passage through varied ambiances’ makes it possible for the psychogeographer to seek-out and discover points of view that give detail to the contours of everyday life.7 Accordingly, psychogeographers do not experience the built environment as it is designed to be used. Rather, with each step, they immerse themselves in the goings-on and leavings of everyday life. Plus, as Debord says, it allows them to drop their ‘usual motives for movement and action, and let themselves be drawn by the attractions of the terrain and the encounters they find’.8 Psychogeographers also seek idiosyncrasy. They see it as a way to take account of peculiarities that lurk in the joints and seams of everyday life. And this is important, because immersion in the cadences and happenings of what has been purpose-built gives psychogeographers unique insight into the ways by which the world works. *** As a method, Psychogeography has two consistent modes of observation: 1/ Flâneurie In ‘Le Peintre de la Vie Moderne’, Charles Baudelaire details the mentality of the flâneur who preceded the psychogeographer. According to him, the flâneur is a ‘passionate spectator’ who effortlessly ambles through ‘the heart of the multitude, amid the ebb

7

Debord, ‘The Theory of the Derive’.

8

Ibid.

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and flow of movement’ and serve critical notice on 'the ephemeral, the fugitive, the contingent’.9 Baudelaire compares the flâneur to a botanist. As he explains, both are able to be ‘interested in the whole world’ whilst keeping a keen eye for small, specific gestures that ‘identify the particular taxa’ of everyday life.10 2/ Montage In Passagenwerk, Walter Benjamin embeds himself within the everyday life of Paris’ arcades, which were common flâneur haunts. Moreover, the scope of Benjamin’s observations is immense because he wanders a part of Paris that is rich in social history. So his analyses range from passing comments on advertisements to sociologic analyses of capitalism and class struggle. Yet all of his observations are based on artefacts he found in the arcades’ jumble of dusty junk shops and high-end boutiques. Benjamin compares the flâneur’s critical notices and walking observations to a montage. He says: I have nothing to say. Only to show. I will purloin nothing valuable and will appropriate no witty formulations. But the rags, the garbage: I do not want to make an inventory of them but rather to do justice to them in the only way possible – to make use of them.11

Appropriately, Benjamin believes there is no need to fit artefacts into prescribed categories or schema, since ‘all factuality is already

9

Charles Baudelaire, The Painter of Modern Life, trans. Jonathan Mayne (London: Phaidon Press, 1964), 9.

10 Ibid., 9 and 12. 11 Walter Benjamin, The Arcades Project, trans. Howard Eiland and Kevin McLaughlin (Cambridge, Massachusetts: Harvard University Press, 1999), 460.

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theory’.12 Instead, he says the walker’s purpose is to give an artefact context by keeping detailed notes and observations. Accordingly, as it is applied in this text, psychogeography is a natural complement to environmental writings’ broad view and narrative journalism’s documentary techniques. Likewise, psychogeography’s immersive attention to small, specific details gives this text a sense of immediacy and intimacy. Plus its attention to detail makes it possible to illustrate and limn context, so as to provide deep insight into the ecologies of everyday life. 2.2.4 British Working-Class Ethnography The least obvious, though most direct, influence on this text is British working-class ethnography. In fact, this text is meant to be a follow-on to Richard Hoggart’s Uses of Literacy and George Orwell’s Road to Wigan Pier. Hoggart and Orwell’s texts deserve an environmental supplement. There are few other books that accurately describe the gripping wholeness of everyday life. And, more importantly, the way that they immerse themselves in the lives of those who they study is a model of how ethnography can give detail to the lives of others without diminishing the significance of environment. As a field of study, British working-class ethnography is flexible in its methods for reportage. Hence Richard Hoggart calls it a mode of study that has ‘something in common with several existing approaches, but not exactly any one of them’.13 And this lack of rigidity is reflected in the fact that some of its most well-known advocates – John and Barbara Hammond, Orwell, Bill Buford, and Patrick Wright, to name a few – are editorialists and journalists whose beats required them to

12 Walter Benjamin, Moscow Diary, trans. Richard Sieburth (Cambridge Massachusetts: Harvard University Press, 1986), 132. 13 Richard Hoggart, Speaking to Each Other, Vol. 2 (London: Chatto and Windus, 1970), 254.

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focus more on reportage than conventional academic analysis and critique. Though it takes multiple forms, working-class ethnography does have three common features: 1/ Unsentimental documentation of working-class life, whether that be at home, work or any other place of social significance British working-class ethnographers are suspicious of authoritative statements and analyses that are not drawn directly from everyday life. Accordingly, they think that metrics and surveys lack grit and are blind to the social relations that bind society. And they insist that social research must focus on context, even if it may be difficult to sort-out. In Hoggart’s words, working-class ethnographers seek ‘the quality of the life of a society as expressed in its texture’.14 So they are unsentimental in their reportage, as it is their belief that the authenticity of working class experience only needs to be reported in context, as it is felt. 2/ Direct participation and immersion British working-class ethnographers go to great lengths to embed themselves in the events and situations they study. As Hoggart says, immersion allows the researcher to ‘come into an active relation’ with their subject matter so that they can document ‘lived experience’.15 One of the earliest examples of immersion is Friedrich Engels’ The Conditions of the Working-class in England. Originally published in German in 1845, the text uses ‘personal observation and authentic sources’ to record the ‘real conditions of life of the proletariat’.16 Thus Engels, in a very straightforward manner, documents his personal

14 Richard Hoggart, The Uses of Literacy (London: Chatto and Windus, 1957), 17. 15 Hoggart, Speaking to Each Other, Vol. 2, 254. 16 Friedrich Engels, The Condition of the Working Class in England (Chicago: Academy Chicago Publishers, 1994), 2.

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interactions with industrial life. And this style of lived immersion allows his reportage to include detailed observations about workplace safety, standards of living, squalor, and environmental damage. Later working-class ethnographies share Engels’ willingness to interact with working-class life in close quarters. For instance, Orwell takes-on working-class jobs, lives with infirm factory workers and follows miners to the coalface. Richard Hoggart writes of his own childhood deprivations. And Bill Buford, in Among the Thugs, is arrested for hooliganism. 3/ Refusal to reduce analysis to generalisation or universalise particular observations Working-class ethnographers are suspicious of sociological studies that fit contextual details into a scripted set of statistics, stereotypes and tropes. As Bill Buford makes painfully clear in Among the Thugs, crowds are as predictable as they are unpredictable. Or as Arthur Seaton says in Saturday Night and Sunday Morning, ‘whatever people think I am or say I am, that’s what I’m not, because they don’t know a bloody thing about me’.17 On his desk at Birmingham Centre for Contemporary Cultural Studies, Hoggart used to keep a note on his desk that said ‘Keep it complex’. It is a statement that makes clear that working-class ethnographers think immersive documentation is the most effective way to capture ‘the sprawling and multitudinous and infinitely detailed’ character of the everyday. And this ability to keep it complex is what allows them to give detail to the full, rich life of working-class people where others would be content to reduce them to an immense, seething crowd.

17 Alan Sillitoe, Saturday Night and Sunday Morning (New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1959), 147.

3 Methods of Critical Analysis

This text emphasises immersion as a method for gathering details and observable facts. But immersion is not a form of analysis. Rather, it is a method for observing and collecting data. So, in addition to its method of observation, this text has a method of analysis that is able to put stray material and disconnected details in perspective. In order to see the forest for the trees, this text uses two methods of analysis. One of the methods is Marshall McLuhan’s ‘antienvironment’, which will sort-out the mass of environmental details. And the other method, which will be used to give context and coherence to the sorted details, is a type of media analysis called ‘image ecology’ that was developed specifically for this text.

3.1 ANTI -E NVIRONMENT In The Medium is the Massage, Marshall McLuhan, states that ‘Environments are invisible’.1 It is his way of saying that ‘No environment is perceptible, simply because it saturates the whole field

1

Marshall McLuhan, with Quentin Fiore and Jerome Agel, The Medium is the Massage (Gingko Press: Ginko Press, 2001), 84-85.

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of attention’.2 And he is firm in his belief that this is possible because environment’s ‘groundrules, pervasive structure, and overall patterns’ are so subtle and ingrained in everyday life that they tend ‘to be ignored and dismissed’.3 To illustrate environment’s imperceptibility, McLuhan recites an old aphorism: ‘We don’t know who discovered water, but it wasn’t the fish’. His point is that a fish knows nothing about water because it is totally immersed in it. So, unless it is out of water, the fish will take for granted the many elements and ecologies that pervade its life-world. In order to make sense of environment, McLuhan proposes the creation of ‘anti-environment’.4 As he puts it, an anti-environment works like a lightbulb, which ‘creates an environment by its mere presence’ by establishing ‘a means of perception and adjustment’.5 Hence it brings to light the details and contextual effects that are present, but ordinarily unseen, in everyday life.6 McLuhan says that anti-environment is effective because: I begin with ground and… [not] figure. I begin with effects and work round to the causes, whereas the conventional pattern is to start with a somewhat arbitrary selection of ‘causes’ and then try to match these with some of the effects. It is this haphazard matching process that leads to fragmentary

2

‘Understanding Canada and Sundry Other Matters: Marshall McLuhan’, Mademoiselle 64 (January 1967) 114.

3

McLuhan, The Medium is the Massage, 84-85.

4

Marshall McLuhan, Understanding Media: The Extensions of Man (New York: New American Library, 1964), 3.

5 6

Ibid, 8. For a comparison of McLuhan’s Anti-Environment to Plato’s Cave, see Appendix entry 6.

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superficiality. As for myself, I do not have a point of view, but simply work 7

with the total situation as obvious figures against hidden ground.

Accordingly, McLuhan is pointing-out that anti-environment illuminates environment’s general ground rules by taking into account the specifics of setting and context. Therefore, as a method of analysis, it takes an inventory of effects and interpellates the extent to which the form and build of environment sets-up the function of material and social ecologies. And it does this by asking a ‘tetrad’ of questions, which are: Enhances: What has anti-environment enhanced or intensified? Obsolesces: What has anti-environment rendered obsolete or replaced? Retrieves: What has anti-environment made visible? Reverses: What does anti-environment produce or become when pressed to an extreme?8

Conceptual diagram of anti-environmental effects

7

Marshall McLuhan, ‘To William Kuhns, Dec 6, 1971’, Letters of Marshall McLuhan, ed. Matie Molinaro et al. (Toronto: Oxford University Press, 1987), 448.

8

Marshall McLuhan, interview by Nina Sutton, Library and Archives Canada, November 1975.

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Moreover, McLuhan says his tetrad provides a ‘proper and systematic’ form of analysis that can sort out context and find environment’s ‘contours, lines of force, and pressures’.9 For instance, if a power plant were to switch from a coal-burning generator to another fuelled by natural gas, McLuhan’s tetrad analysis will illuminate the generator’s environmental effect like so: Enhances: The new generator will be more efficient. As well, it will be cleaner burning Obsolesces: The replacement of the generator will impact coal production, which may affect the future of coal mining and coal-related industries. Retrieves: The generator will increase demand for natural gas, which will require new infrastructure and lead to changes throughout environment. Reverses: The generator, because it is dependent on difficult to access gas reserves, increases the risk of environmental damage. McLuhan is adamant that this line of analysis ‘tells us where the new boundaries are on the changing frontiers of the Establishment’.10 Furthermore, the tetrad does not follow a sequential chain of thought, so that each question and answer draws a direct line between effects and their cause. Instead, its questions and answers overlap and create multiple points of view. So it develops what McLuhan calls ‘a mosaic or field approach’ that brings light to environment’s various and complex ‘causal operations’.11 Lastly, it needs to be noted that anti-environment and the tetrad will not provide a perfect answer to every question. Yet it does put

9

McLuhan, ‘Letter to William Kuhns, 6 Dec, 1971’, 448.

10 Marshall McLuhan, Culture is Our Business (New York: McGraw Hill, 1970) 288. 11 Marshall McLuhan, The Gutenberg Galaxy: The making of typographic man (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 1962), 7.

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forward questions that ‘can be asked (and the answers checked) by anyone, anywhere, at any time, about any human artefact’.12 Thus, as a method of analysis, anti-environment makes it possible to find evidentiary material in everyday life’s ‘compressed overlay’ of ecologies.13

3.2 I MAGE E COLOGY This text does not feature many physical images. But its case studies do capture a number of literary and social imaginaries that, when viewed as whole, form a portrait of environment’s place in everyday life. Plus these images require a critique that understands context and the role of ecologies in everyday life, which is difficult since there is no established or academic method for the analysis of an image’s ecology. Therefore, this text has had to develop its own method. Images bear witness to everyday life. They are snapshots of circumstances and events as they happened. According to Henri Cartier-Bresson, images document ‘the particular subject within the mass of reality… [and] the significance of an event as well as a precise organization of forms which give that event its proper expression’.14 And this means that images cache foreground content and background material. However, the cache of ambient details and residual ecologies that are contained in an image are often difficult to note. So image ecology has to approach its subject matter from a perspective that puts

12 Marshall McLuhan and Eric McLuhan, Laws of Media: The New Science (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 1988), 7. 13 Marshall McLuhan, ‘Address at Vision 65’, Essential McLuhan, ed. Eric McLuhan and Frank Zingrone (Toronto: House of Anansi Press, 1995), 219. 14 Henri Cartier-Bresson, The Decisive Moment (Göttingen, Germany: Steidl, 2014), 2.

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circumstance in full view. Or, as Elliott Erwitt says, ‘it has little to do with the things you see and everything to do with the way you see them’.15 *** Image ecology is not a hard-set or systematic method. It is meant to be moveable so that it can adapt to the subtleties of context and find nuance in any situation. As a technique for analysis, image ecology makes sense of the material and imaginings that are embedded within an image.16 So the analysis has to go beyond speculative, surface interpretation of subtext, symbols and signs. And it does this through the application of conventional techniques of critical analysis – such as comparison, contrast, or observation – that are field-tested and proven to be capable of finding even the most minute details.17 Moreover, image ecology finds the place of ‘the particular subject within the mass of reality’ through a careful study of an image’s environmental context and residual ecologies. But it is important to note that the type of images that are available for analysis are not limited to physical artefacts – such as paintings, photos, or video – because, by definition, image is not limited to any specific form or media. Therefore, figurative or textual representations, like illustrations and metaphors, are also open to analysis, as they retain elements and residual traces of everyday life. Accordingly, what follows are three short case studies that will show how image ecology can be applied to different types of image.

15 This quote is in such common use that its original source and citation cannot be found. 16 Jennifer Gabrys, Digital Rubbish (Ann Arbor, Michigan: University of Michigan Press, 2013), 13. 17 Ibid., 12.

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3.2.1 Artefact In April 1915, British soldiers who had served on the Great War’s front lines were replaced with reserves. Nine months of duty in the trenches had made the soldiers weary. So they were brought back to England to convalesce and heal the wounds of war. Many of the returned soldiers attended the FA Cup Final between Chelsea and Sheffield United. In fact, there were so many uniformed soldiers in attendance that the match was called the ‘Khaki Cup’. And, in an oddly ominous twist of fate – as it may appear as though the soldiers’ presence brought home the hard realities of war – the Khaki Cup was the last professional football match played in England until war was over in 1919.

Khaki Cup, 1919 Image credit: Manchester United Football Club An image of the Khaki Cup has become immortal. But, unlike most images that are famous for having liberated a moment from time, this

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specific image stands-out because the pitch and footballers are not in the frame. Instead, the camera’s gaze is focussed on a group of uniformed soldiers standing together on stadium terrace. The face of a single soldier is visible. He is young, and is obviously nursing wounds of war. On his head, under his aslant peaked cap, is a white dressing that stands-out against grey tones that fill the images’ field of vision. The image of the Khaki Cup focuses on the battle-hardened reveling in a moment of innocence. The soldiers’ backs are turned to the camera. The collars of their standard-issue trenchcoats are turned up, and in the distance there are open umbrellas. As such, even the most basic critique of these contextual observations shows that the match was played in cold and rain that is similar to what soldiers have learned to live with whilst on the front. In terms of its ecology, the image, like the wounded soldier’s cap, is precarious. The soldiers in the image appear to exist between two worlds. At the moment in which the picture was taken, they are safe – though, in some way, the price of their admission was having survived misery, bombardment and bullets. So, on the terrace, the soldiers exist within a world that is familiar, watching a sport many of them had played and were passionate about – and may have well been on their minds whilst in the trenches. The soldiers’ insignia and trenchcoats reveal that they belong to another world. They are elements that show that the soldiers have come from a reality in which the football match in front of them is only a respite from the privation of war. Thus, as evidenced by the bandages they wear, the soldiers have left a part of themselves back on the battlefield. Plus historical record adds an element of melancholy to the image, because it is not likely that any of the soldiers in the image lived to see the next FA Cup Final. An ordinary image of a Cup Final will show fans in the throes of a matchday’s emotions. It will generally focus on exuberant expressions and raised arms that follow the ecstasy of victory. Or the gaze will be fixed on sullen brows and stiff body language that are a part of defeat’s

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agony. But those details do not appear in the image of the Khaki Cup. Rather, it shows the indifference of a crowd whose thoughts are most likely somewhere far-off. Beyond what is immediately visible, the image of the Khaki Cup shows the Great War’s effect on everyday life. It reveals that war comes home. And it makes clear that a battlefield’s territorial gains come at the loss and ruin of human lives. Or, put another way, it shows that soldiers are not mere war matériel, and that those who wear a uniform have their own interests and points of view. Finally, the narrative laid-out above, shows some of the ways by which image ecology gives context to an artefact’s details by analysing the relation between environmental elements and compositional material. Otherwise, without context, the artefact is a surface effect that lacks potency or depth. So, in practise, image ecology enlivens context by using residual details to piece together a narrative that returns some depth to the various elements that have been compressed into an artefact. 3.2.2 Illustration An image’s physical artefact, such as a picture in an archive, is a fragment of everyday life that has been made permanent. And, because these artefacts keep an accurate record of people, places, and events that may be lost to the ravages of time, it is important that they are preserved. But an artefact is also problematic, as it is only a snapshot of a moment in time. Thus it often lacks any significant information about the context or circumstance from which the image was isolated. In order to better understand an artefact’s significance, image ecology looks past frame of reference. Therefore, it searches for details that are literally not in the picture. And this means its field of view extends beyond what is immediately visible to figurative or textual elements from secondary sources that can add detail or ‘capture the mood’.

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For example, Alan Sillitoe’s short story ‘Loneliness of the Long Distance Runner’ provides significant amount of insight into the private lives of the working class in post-war Britain. In the text, the main character, Smith, talks about the ways that his father’s workplace death, and the compensation that his family received, changed his family’s fortunes: a wad of crisp blue-black fivers ain’t a sight of good to a living soul unless they’re flying out of your hand into some shopkeeper’s till, and the shopkeeper giving you tiptop things in exchange over the counter... as soon as she got the money, mam took me and my five brothers and sisters out to town and got us dolled-up in new clothes. Then she ordered a twenty-one inch telly, a new carpet because the old one was covered in blood from Dad’s dying and wouldn’t wash out, and took a taxi home with bags of grub and a new fur coat. And do you know – you wain’t believe me when I tell you – she’d still near three hundred left in her bulging handbag the next day, so how could any of us go to work after that?

18

Smith goes-on to explain how his family lived-off the rest of the benefit-packet: Night after night we sat in front of the telly with a ham sandwich in one hand, a bar of chocolate in the other, and a bottle of lemonade between our boots, while mam was with some fancy man upstairs on the new bed she’d ordered, and I’d never known a family as happy as ours was in that couple of months when we’d got all the money we needed. And when the dough ran out I didn’t think about anything much, but just roamed the streets – looking for a job I told mam – hoping I suppose to get my hands on another five hundred nicker so’s the nice life we’d got used to could go on and on forever. Because it’s surprising 19

how quick you can get used to a different life.

18 Alan Sillitoe, Loneliness of the Long Distance Runner (Nottingham, England: Pan Books, 1961), 18-19. 19 Ibid., 19.

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Most explicitly, the image of Smith and his family gathered together in front of television ‘night after night’ reveals a lot about the limited realism of working class’ domestic life. It shows that the working class has little interaction with whatever is beyond their immediate environment because, as Richard Hoggart explains in Uses of Literacy, it is the television and other popular entertainments that are the window through which Smith and the ‘tamed helots of the machineminding class’ see the world around them.20 Plus the image of Smith and his family sat in front of television shows that a such small window onto the world creates what Hoggart calls an ‘anti-life’ that conceals ‘the more positive, the fuller, the more cooperative kinds of enjoyment, in which one gains much by giving much’.21 ‘The Loneliness of the Long Distance Runner’ also reveals the extent to which simple material and sensory details are a part of everyday working class life. For Smith, to have a ham sandwich and chocolate bar at hand, as well as a bottle of lemonade at his feet, is the lap of luxury. It is possible for him to eat more wholesome food, like fresh fruit and veg, but his craving for material pleasure is less complicated and more immediately rewarding. The poverty and deprivation of Smith’s environment is so dire that he blunts himself with stimulants. He does not want to enrich or nourish himself with goods for which he has no taste, especially when it is more satisfying to spend cash on cheap pleasures. Plus he has no need to save money since an extra margin will not change his condition. Smith’s passing references to articles of clothing, gives a surprisingly detailed account of working class couture. More specifically, his family’s mass clothing purchase is an illustration of the English proverb, ‘Only the wealthy can afford cheap shoes’. Thus a fur coat and sort of clothes that get five children ‘dolled-up’ is an indulgence that is so out of character that Smith emphasises the act of

20 Hoggart, Uses of Literacy, 191. 21 Ibid., 264.

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getting and spending. Or like Smith says, the purchases are less about a taste for ‘tip-top’ fashion than they are a transaction that allows his family to prove that they have enough money to toss at the shopkeep’s till. Albert Camus says that ‘style, like sheer silk, too often hides eczema’.22 As such, the sartorial details in ‘The Loneliness of the Long Distance Runner’ leaves an impression that, at least from a working class perspective, wardrobe can cover-up class but cannot improve the conditions of everyday life. And this is the reason Smith, even when outfitted with a new suit, continues to wear his work boots, seeing as any other type of shoe is not a good fit for the lifestyle and type of work that he pretends to search-out. Further, image ecology reveals the complexities and hard realities of Smith’s ‘nice life’. It shows that five hundred pounds – which was about a year’s wage in the 1950s – is not a sum that can carry Smith and his family away to a ‘different life’. As Smith says, a wad of ‘nicker’, in spite of its ability to provide small luxuries and bottomless bottles of lemonade, is nothing more than a temporary pleasure. Therefore, image ecology makes it clear that no matter how much Smith and his family dress-up their situation, industry and terrace set the limits of the working class’ environment.

22 Albert Camus, ‘The Fall’, in The Fall and Exile and the Kingdom, trans. Justin O’Brien (New York: The Modern Library, 1957), 6.

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3.2.3 Metaphor Metaphor transforms ideas into images. When properly put to use, metaphor enlivens or modifies terms of debate by replacing a poetic image with another that is more clear and comprehensible. So, as Orwell says, it ‘assists thought by evoking a visual image’.23 As a method of analysis, image ecology can add context to metaphor. It can also lay bare the specific signifiers and tropes that metaphors use to simplify an image. And by critically analysing the details that are conjured in a metaphor, image ecology can determine whether a metaphor is fit for purpose. In the sciences and quantitative research, metaphor is an important tool for presenting abstract or complicated ideas. As Robert RootBernstein puts it, ‘metaphors are essential to doing and teaching science’.24 For instance, invasion biology, which gets its name from an extended metaphor, is one of many disciplines where metaphor is endemic. *** Some of the most common metaphors in science are martial, which means they reference war or violence. As a matter of fact, when this type of metaphor first appeared in an ecology textbook in the late 1950s, it was difficult to differentiate scientific monographs from war plans and tactical reports. In fact, they read like a General’s brief:

23 Orwell, ‘Politics and the English Language’, 159. 24 Robert Root-Bernstein, ‘Metaphorical Thinking’, American Scientist 91, no, 6 (November 2003), 239.

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These are major engagements in the violent struggle against the spread of undesirable plants and animals that is affecting every country.25 a steady bombardment of alien species from other lands and waters, with 26

consequent explosions after the arrival of some of them.

Then, with time, these metaphors became common. For example, entomologists and science writers often use martial metaphors that envision ‘invasions’ and ‘mass attacks’ by non-native beetle populations. Or Universities put out press releases with infographics that map researchers’ lines of defence against the ‘Attack of the Pine Beetles’.27 And, eventually, headlines announce ‘Beetle Battles’ or ‘Frontlines in the Forest’.28 In spite of its vivid imagery, the ‘Beetle Wars’ metaphor is asymmetric, crass and over-simplified. Beetles are not crusaders in the Coleoptera Order. They do not have a command structure. They do not use weapons or heavy machinery. Nor do they coordinate operations or have any notion that war has been declared and battle lines drawn. The martial metaphor is lame because it is based on alternative facts. The beetles are a species that are endemic to a specific environment. But scientific texts and government reports use metaphors that imagine an alien horde that is dead-set on destroying human civilisation.29 Thus the martial metaphor evokes an image that

25 David Simberloff, ‘Charles Elton: Neither Founder Nor Siren, But Prophet’, Fifty Years of Invasion Ecology: The Legacy of Charles Elton, ed. David M. Richardson (Oxford, England: Wiley-Blackwell, 2010), 20. 26 Ibid., 21 27 Ibid. 28 ‘Attack of the Pine Beetle’, News and Events, University of Alberta, Office of the President, 26 August 2014. 29 ‘Mountain Pine Beetle Action Plan’ (Alberta Sustainable Resource Development, Edmonton, Alberta, December 2007).

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is not consistent with known ecologies, and this means that it fails to make sense of what is happening on the ground. *** A metaphor can be a potent rhetorical device when the ecology of an image complements what takes place on the ground. For instance, Hannah Arendt’s ‘web of human relationships’ works because it implies that people are bound together in ways in that are not always apparent.30 But a metaphor that relies on alternative facts is useless, as it does nothing to enhance the truth. Accordingly, image ecology can show how a misplaced metaphor can distort world-views or take a life of its own. It does this by confirming particular details, so as to see if the invoked image is verifiable. And, by being thorough about understanding context, it has the capacity to determine where the truth lies.

30 Arendt, The Human Condition, 183.

Part 2 Case Studies

4 Sheffield, England

Sheffield is simultaneously dying and being reincarnated. It is a city where aged red-brick terraces and once booming, then neglected, redbrick factories are being replaced by new build apartment buildings, open-plan offices and bespoke gallery spaces. The most visible example of redevelopment and regeneration in Sheffield is Park Hill estate. Inspired by the master plans and schemes of le Corbusier and the Brutalists, it is what architecture critics call ‘the welfare state in concrete’.1 Its bunker-like concrete form, elephantine lay-out, and immense scale – as it housed three thousand people in one thousand flats spread throughout thirteen buildings – makes it apparent that planners tried to use cubage and strategy to reinvent city life. But Park Hill never lived-up to the grand schemes that planners and designers had imagined for it. Instead, the tower blocks aged poorly and were in constant need of repair. And anti-social behaviour and petty crime gave a reputation for blight and menace.

1

Oliver Wainwright, ‘Wayne Hemingway’s ‘pop-up’ plan sounds the death knell for the legendary Balfron Tower’, The Guardian, 26 September 2014.

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Park Hill, December 2012 Image credit: Jennifer Klutsch By the late 1990s, Park Hill became a liability for city council. They called it a ‘drab, grey, dilapidated thing’, and portions of it were declared unfit for habitation.2 Yet clearance and demolition were not an option, because Park Hill was given Grade II listed status by English Heritage. So, by law, it was denied the spectacle of demolition and forced to accept a new lease on life whilst still standing. Now, a new generation of planners and developers have put together a scheme to bring life back to Park Hill. And, in attempt to make good on their intentions, they have put up a hoarding that advertises Park Hill’s regeneration with a line from a Human League song, ‘Donʼt You Want Me Baby? Turned You Around, Turned You Into Something New’.

2

Rowan Moore, ‘Park Hill estate, Sheffield – review’, The Guardian, 21 August 2011.

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But there is irony in the hoarding’s use of that particular line, because the song is a duet, and the lyric response to the bitter, pleading refrain of ‘Don’t you want me’ is: ‘I knew Iʼd find a much better place without or without you’.

4.1 G LORY D AYS In Sheffield, like most of England’s industrial Midlands and North, what has happened to Park Hill is not rare. There are other tower blocks, terraces, factories, mills, mining villages, and pit heads that await a new fate. And all of them are the remains of an industrial environment that, in many ways, still defines everyday life in the city. In 1968, Sheffield City Council commissioned a promotional film called Sheffield... City on the move. At the time, it was a low-budget public relations gambit meant to promote local industry. But, as time has passed, the film has become a visual archive of a moment in time at which the city proudly believed itself to be a ‘showpiece in civic developmentʼ wherein the city thrived on its modes of production.3 Or, as its narrator says, Sheffield was forged ‘on more than the human scale... in the smoke and grime of industry’.4 Sheffield... City on the move crafts a narrative in which a perfect condition of available natural resources, hard work, and ingenuity made Sheffield into an industrial powerhouse. It also describes the city as being brimful with iron ore, fast-flowing water reserves, millstone grit and coal measures – all of which are the makings of industry. And it says that these resources, when mixed with the labour of ‘these people of Sheffield’, stoked the fires and forged the steel that gave

3

Sheffield… City on the move, directed by Jim and Marie-Luise Coulthard (Sheffield, England: Sheffield City Council, 1970).

4

Ibid.

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shape to ‘an Empire of Things… of tracks and trains, of factories, and many hundreds of tools to engineer… the apparatus of modernity’.5 Sheffield… city on the move does not foresee a time when the cityʼs industrial environment would disappear. Instead, it says that the city has ‘a long life, it will still be there tomorrow’.6 Yet history was not so kind, because by the late 1980s, which was no more than fifteen years after the film was made, industry was gutted by a series of mill closures and mass redundancies. Then, by the late 90s, many of the factories were demolished to make way for a built environment heavy on shopping malls, chain shops and other conveniences of the postindustrial economy. As the saying goes, the more things change, the more they stay the same. So, even though the city is being upgraded, renovated and repainted, the redevelopment of old workshops into office parks and new-build retail developments cannot cover-up what has happened. It is a city that was made by industry, and certain realities of factory life will remain until the ruins of the old industrial environment are completely remediated.

4.2 L OOKING F OR L IFE A journey through Sheffield shows how industry set-up the city. Streets lined with aging brick terraces, disused industrial works and brownfields reveal prior forms of the built environment. And at streetlevel, these remainders mark the ways that the city’s history carries-on. Sheffield’s West End is where some of the city’s new postindustrial environment has been grafted onto the remains of industry. It is where many of the students from the cityʼs two Universities live. So it is teeming with a hep mix of pubs, cafes and shops that give it a

5

See also Melvin Bragg, ‘The North: An unsung seat of greatness’, The Telegraph, 14 June 2014.

6

Sheffield… City on the move.

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modish and vibrant character that has led several travel writers to boast that it is the cityʼs ‘big destination’.7 *** The spine of West End is Glossop Road and West Street, which functions as a high street of sorts that runs from City Centre to residential Broomhill Ward. It is one of the main roads through the city and a regular destination for a day or night out. Hence, when Sheffield bands like Pulp or Arctic Monkeys name-check Glossop and West clubs and shops, locals know the exact location. The architecture along Glossop and West shows that change is ever-present. At best, the polite style can be described as motley, since the buildings that line its pavements do not appear to have any commonality. For instance, on a single block of Glossop Road, there is a run-down Thatcher-era office block next to Glossop Road Baths, which is a large three storey brick hall built in 1836 and now occupied by a posh spa. And across the road is an Edwardian commercial building with renovated street-level storefronts that feature a small grocer, a charity shop and takeaways. The architectural jumble on Glossop and West is a remnant of the industrial environment. The factories, offices, houses, and shops in West End were not built on a mass scale at one and the same time. Instead, they were built much the same way that the city’s mills and workshops assembled a product: Piecemeal, component-by-component, part-by-part. So the city was built over time, and as the industrial environment broadened and intensified, many of the buildings were rebuilt or refit so they could keep their place, which has created an architectural vernacular wherein multiple incarnations of the city exist side-by-side.

7

Evan Rail, ‘Yorkshire, England’ in ‘52 Places to Go in 2015’, New York Times, 5 September 2014.

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*** Extending like ribs from the spine of Glossop Road are several side streets lined with rows of terraced houses. Simple and stolid, the terraces were built almost a century and a half ago, and were some of the first large-scale housing developments in Sheffield. Plus they are among the few examples of housing from the city’s earliest industrial days that still stand. On Victoria Street, which runs from Glossop to a brownfield where there used to be a metal works, there is a terrace row. In terms of build or design, there is nothing unique about this terrace, as the houses are the same as most others that were ever built: Red brick, two-up twodown, small rooms, narrow staircase, scullery, dark back kitchen, and paper-thin walls. Yet this row stands out because because of how well the houses withstood the ravages of time. In fact, if the ochre of the exterior brickwork a shade of grey by years of grime and soot, it would be hard to tell that this particular terrace row was some sort of overdetailed historical recreation. In The Town Labourer, the Hammonds call terraces ‘the barracks of an industry’.8 Likewise, they say terraces were built for the ‘great masses of people collected in a particular place because their fingers or muscles were needed on the brink of a stream... or at the mouth of a furnace’.9 And this point of view is definitely reflected in the Victoria Street terrace row’s immense and monotonous uniformity. So there is no distinct difference between individual residences because they were built on an industrial scale to house labourers. Interestingly, the houses on Victoria Street all retain an architectural feature that was common to almost every other terraced house in Sheffield: The front doors always open directly onto pavement. It is

8

JL and Barbara Hammond, The Town Labourer, 1760-1832: The New Civilisation (London, England: Longman’s, Green, and co., 1917), 39.

9

Ibid., 40

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a feature that is noteworthy because it reveals that there was no regard for the tenant’s privacy or solitude. On the terrace, where household affairs and the workings of industry were only separated by a door, there was no real separation between working and private life.10 Therefore, even if a terrace’s front door was shut, the timetable discipline and brutal rhythms of factory machinery still found their way into the home. For example, in Saturday Night and Sunday Morning, Alan Sillitoe describes the constant, ‘bastard’ din of industry as being an everyday household irritant. He says, ‘the dull thumping of factory turbines at the end of the terrace’ echoes down corridors, and rattles ‘plates and cups from downstairs’.11 And it is so ingrained in everyday life that it affects the cadence of ‘people walking the street, [and] children playing under lamp-posts’. *** On Cavendish Street, which is the next road towards City Centre from Victoria Street, there used to stand a row of terraces that have since been razed and replaced by two steel and stucco apartment blocks. Like most any terrace, the build or design of the houses that lined Cavendish Street were not exceptional. They were all two up, two down, with a small back garden and a front lounge that opened onto the street. Yet they are remarkable because there used to be a furniture workshop in the middle of the terrace row. Cavendish Street’s Hayball workshop took-up the space of a few houses. It was not large and it was not a model of heavy industry – at least not in the sense that it involved forge, foundry or chimney. But the works’ presence on the terrace row shows that there was no refuge

10 For more details on the place of terraces and everyday life, see Appendix entry 7. 11 Alan Sillitoe, Saturday Night and Sunday Morning (New York: Vintage International, 2010), 193.

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from workday life. Plus it confirms Richard Hoggart’s description of terraces as a place where ‘The houses are fitted into the dark and lowering canyons between the giant factories and the services which attend them’.12

Rear of terraces on Fitzwilliam Street from Arthur Hayballʼs Works, Cavendish Street Image credit: Arthur Hayball and Picture Sheffield An old picture taken from the furniture workshop’s rear window captures Sheffield’s industrial landscape. In its foreground is a row of terraces – or, more specifically, their back gardens. And in the background, through a grey haze and among the outline of rooftops that stretch into the distance is a vista of factory chimneys. The old picture reveals that everyday life was built into the industrial environment. In it, everything is, literally and figuratively, a shade of grey. So there is no separation between factory and home, as

12 Hoggart, Uses of Literacy, 52.

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every element of composition is immersed in a dim atmosphere that lacks variation in scene or colour. And even the few signs of life that show, like clothes hanging on a garden line, are obscured by dust and grime.

4.3 T HIS I S H ARDCORE In its time as a heavy industrial city, Sheffield was all about steel. Being known as ‘Steel City’ was an earned reputation, as it was where stainless steel was first developed and the processes for making crucible steel were perfected. In the late 19th Century, Sheffield’s mills produced half the steel in Europe. It is not an exaggeration to say the steel framework – the rails, girders, and armaments – of industrial Britain were made in Sheffield. Or like the narrator says in Sheffield... City on the move, the cityʼs ‘steel is built into our modern lives in countless essential ways’.13 Forges and mills used to be basic to everyday life in Sheffield. They were among the city’s largest employers. And their baneful smoke gave rise to the cityʼs stark environment. In The Road to Wigan Pier, George Orwell says Sheffieldʼs steel industry, with its ‘awful chaos of blackness and belching chimneys’, gave Sheffield a ‘sinister magnificence’.14 He even compares an evening ramble past the steel mills to a descent into a Satanic realm: Sometimes the drifts of smoke are rosy with sulphur and serrated flames, like circular saws, squeeze themselves out from beneath the cowls of the foundry chimneys. Through the open doors of foundries you see fiery serpents of iron being hauled to and fro by redlit boys, and you hear the whizz and thump of steam hammers and the scream of iron under the blow.15

13 Sheffield… City on the Move. 14 Orwell, The Road to Wigan Pier, 97. 15 Orwell, The Road to Wigan Pier, 97.

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Thus the city had become a landscape of environmental exhaustion and manual toil. *** In addition to steelmaking, there were numerous industrial trades and works in Sheffield. More specifically, the industrial production process was organised so that steel forged in the city was refined and crafted in local workshops. So, in place of a continuous flow of production where every industrial process took place at a single factory, the means of production were spread ‘cheek by jowl’ throughout the city and among the terraces.16 And, in practise, this way of organising production made industry self-reinforcing, since the city’s many worksites maintained material and labour ecologies that kept the mills in operation.17 Most of the worksites and shops that supported the mills have been cleared or redeveloped. Yet a few still stand. One of them is called Portland Works. It is located on the South side of the City Centre, not far from Park Hill. Inside and out, Portland Works looks much as it did when its sturdy multi-storey exterior brickwork was first laid in the 1870s. If white vans were not parked in the courtyard or the radios in the workbenches did not blast football talk at full volume, it would be hard to tell what exactly has changed.

16 Paul Humphries, ‘Built on tradition’, The Guardian, 2 April 2008. 17 For more on the means of production and the meaning of ‘Made in Sheffield, see Appendix entry 9.

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However, there are signs that Portland Works has seen better days. The roof leaks. Foliage grows from the top of the courtyard chimney. Windows are broken and have been boarded-up. And its exterior has become a canvas for graffiti – the most recent of which in says ‘DESTROY’ in large white block letters.

Portland Works Image credit: Google Maps *** Portland Works is a rare industrial antiquity. Among its dark and cramped spaces, a small group of Little Mesters – which is a colloquial term for craft workers – toil at the same benches where generations of labourers plied their trade.18 And many of this generation of Mesters apprenticed at the Works and still use the same skills and well-worn tools that kept their Masters in work. Though it remains productive, Portland Works is constant threat of redevelopment. The most recent attempt to remake the Works came in 2009, when its landlord submitted a plan to Sheffield Council that sought permission for a ‘Change of Use’ to convert the Works into bedsit flats and office accommodation. The proposal said the conversion would bring the building’s ‘surviving elements and

18 Humphries.

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features... back into good repair’ and put it to ‘sustaining new uses’.19 But there was no recognition that Portland Works had been sustained for decades by the labour of tradesworkers. Nor was there any mention that the Works’ was occupied by tenants. So the Little Mesters were thought to be disposable, like relics without value. Under threat of eviction and obsolescence – since the cost of moving specialised equipment and setting-up shop elsewhere was either too expensive or reason to retire – the Mesters offered to buy Portland Works. They supported their bid with a community share issue that raised several hundred thousand pounds. And, in Spring 2013, after the collapse of the financial environment that initially inspired the landlord’s development plans, the Works was sold to the Mesters and their supporters. The purchase of Portland Works secured the Mesters’ livelihoods. Yet hard realities will persist. In becoming owners, the Meesters are no longer self-employed labourers. They have become what Boris Johnson likes to call ‘creative entrepreneurs’, which means they are now personally responsible for maintaining the Works and passing its legacy on to another generation.20 Plus, whilst the Works is an exception to the collapse of Sheffield’s industrial environment, with time, it is going to be difficult to weed-out new labour and material ecologies that are taking root throughout the city. Just as foliage can grow from the courtyard chimney, seeds – strategic partnerships, investment opportunities, buy-ins, leverages, price-points – from the post-industrial environment outside the Works gates will eventually set-in and force the Little Mesters to make management decisions.

19 Ibid. 20 Mayor of London, ‘Mayor announces £20m fund to help London businesses & boost innovation’, press release, 21 January 2016.

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4.4 C OMMON P EOPLE There used to be a stanza from an old miners’ poem printed on the wall of the Thurcroft Welfare Hall in Rotherham. It read, Our civilisation Is built upon coal. Let us chant in rotation Our civilization That lump of damnation Without any soul, Our civilisation Is built upon coal.

Indeed, coal was modern civilization’s source of power. It stoked steel mill furnaces. It fired the kilns that made the bricks that built the walls of factories and terraces. It produced the steam that pulled trains. It turned turbines and generators. And it made fires that kept people warm. Empires, industries, and the welfare of populations depended on coal. The British Royal Navy could not patrol distant seas without coaling stations in far-away ports. Nor could fleets of steamships carry cargo across oceans. Plus coal kept the Industrial Revolution’s machinery working. And all these uses for coal kept miners and labourers working at the coalface and factory. Coal precedes industry. Its existence predate civilisation by thousands of millennia – as it is a product of millions of years of environmental and geologic forces. Therefore, before a single lump of coal ever stoked a fire or was piled in a scullery, it had to be mined. Thus, without someone digging ‘That lump of damnation’, there would be no such thing as ‘Our civilization’. ***

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By good fortune, South Yorkshire rests atop several bituminous coal seams. It means the region is rich with a type coal that can be easily refined into metallurgical coke that is the fuel for iron smelters. So local industries made use of having a bounty of resources, and they dug small coal mines throughout South Yorkshire. Then, when steelmaking took hold in Sheffield, the mines were expanded and transformed into fully-functioning collieries with coking ovens, holding yards, and railway depots. And, later, small villages were built in the area immediately surrounding the collieries. The pit villages were the mines’ barracks. They consisted of little more than some shops that supplied bare necessities and a few terrace rows that were built and maintained by mine owners. And, though it would seem that the owners were trying to be beneficent by providing housing, it was actually an act of self-interest, as they wanted maximise working hours and extraction yield by having having miners live at pit head.

Pit Village Image credit: Christopher Killip

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Over time, the mine permeated every part of everyday life in the pit villages. It made possible a social bond that was hardened by the heavy realities and exertion of ‘digging the seam’. Plus the mutuality of working life led to the development of close-knit working-class communities. Or as Bill Nighy’s character puts it in the film Pride, ‘The pit and the people are one and the same’.21 Life in the pit villages was not easy. Work in mines involved a lot of graft for low pay, and working conditions were incredibly dangerous. So the miners had to watch each other’s back because their lives were, literally and figuratively, in each other’s hands.22 And, all the while, above ground, the day-to-day life in the pit villages was drab, as wives and extended family worked without pay to keep homes together and stomachs full. Likewise, households were almost always single-income, which means families relied on someone digging the seam. Plus rent took-up so much of the miners’ wage packet that there was no margin for small luxuries. Or, worse, injury could bring ‘thin times’ where support from the community was a matter of survival. The villagers put great value in taking care of each other. As Hoggart says, the people and the pit are defined by their mutuality and willingness attend to ‘the common needs and amusements of a densely packed neighbourhood’.23 So in the villages, solidarity had real meaning, as it was a way of life that eased the burden of poverty and hardship. *** A few kilometres from Sheffield city centre is a colliery and pit village called Orgreave. It is a seemingly unremarkable place that is interchangeable with most any other pit head in England and Wales.

21 Pride, directed by Matthew Warchus, (2014; London, England: BBC Films). 22 For more on coal mining and identity, see Appendix entry 10. 23 Hoggart, Uses of Literacy, 45.

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Yet it is one of the most infamous villages in Britain because it was the backdrop to significant confrontations during the Miners’ Strike in 1984/85. And in the years since the strike, it has become known as ‘the cemetery of the Sheffield steel and mining industry’.24 Until the mid-1980s, the Orgreave colliery was a bustling complex that former workers describe as having stretched ‘as far as the eye could see’.25 It was an ‘integrated’ facility, where the pit’s coal was coked at an on-site plant. Plus it had it’s own rail yard and a branch that freighted the coke directly from the colliery to Sheffield’s steel mills. And, like most mines, the pit village held the entire operation was held together. Now, the colliery and coking plant are gone. The mine’s machinery and winding wheels have been scrapped. The administrative buildings were demolished some time ago. The pit’s spoil heaps and tips – which contained some twelve million tonnes worth of slag and recoverable coal – have been physically removed and remediated. So the only noticeable bit that remains is a grassed-over and rusting length of railway that goes nowhere. In consequence, Orgreave’s pit village is fallow. There are no shops. Many of the terraces have either been torn-down or boarded-up. The primary school is closed. And the Welfare, which used to serve as a pub and meeting hall, is now a weedy greenfi eld. In fact, with the exception of a scattering of house lights that come on at night, there are almost no visible signs of community. But it is hard to see how those few people who remain get-by without the pit.

24 Dan Milmo, ‘In Orgreave, hope rises from the fields where miners fought and lost’, The Observer, 8 July 2012. 25 Ibid.

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4.5 T HE F EAR The decimation of coal mining in Orgreave and the other pit villages around South Yorkshire was not a result of diminished production yields. Nor was it a consequence of changing market demands or consumer tastes. Rather, it was part of a deliberate and well-prepared plan put in motion by the Thatcher government. In 1978, The Economist published a document that had already circulated between Margaret Thatcher and Conservative Party leadership. It was a short report drafted by Nicholas Ridley and his Economic Reconstruction Group that outlined Tory economic strategy if Thatcher were to form a government. The Ridley Plan, as the Economic Reconstruction Group’s document came to be known, was supposed to be confidential. Yet its conclusions and recommendations were so contrary to Britain’s postwar consensus that Tory insiders leaked it in hope that public attention would give such ‘ideas least chance of flowering’.26 But the leak did nothing to keep it from seeing the light of day. In fact, it became government policy when Thatcher was elected Prime Minister in 1979. *** The Ridley Plan is brash. It moralises about the British public’s willingness to accept business-as-usual. It says that the nationalised industries’ a lack of ‘innovation and efficiency’ is the fault of ‘the boys… who work in them’.27 And, after a lot of cruel and bitter criticism of ‘the enemies of the next Tory Government’, it declares that whatever is not working will be ‘written off’.28 For all its bombast, the Ridley Plan goes into painstaking detail about how it will retool the British economy. As a matter of fact, the

26 Kenneth Joseph to Margaret Thatcher, 21 December 1978. 27 Economic Reconstruction Group. 28 Ibid.

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Plan is organised around a ‘Policy of Fragmentation’ that calls for ‘industries... to be broken up into smaller units’, which it says can be done in three steps:29 1/ Require all power stations to install oil-fired turbines The Ridley Plan calls fragmentation an ‘instrument of control’.30 And the energy supply that powers industry is a control on the means of production. So, according to the Plan’s inverse Marxist logic, the fragmentation of the power supply is ‘the chosen battleground’.31 Simply put, the use of oil-fired turbines reduces demand for coal, which had long been Britain’s sole source of power. Likewise, the Tories wanted to exploit Scotland’s North Sea oil, and the installation of new turbines creates a captive demand for a commodity that lacks a market. Plus the Plan says that investment in oil extraction and infrastructure will hustle ‘new advances in capital’, like hedges and financial services, that will transform how Britain does business.32 2/ Close coal pits The Ridley Plan states that it will use the new turbines as a ‘casus belli’ for the closure of ‘uneconomic’ mines.33 The Plan urges the Tories to be ‘tactful’ and ‘stealth’ about how they manufacture the break up of industries.34 Otherwise, ‘discontent will be found’, and the opposition will not ‘let the policy get too well established’.35 Thus the Plan stipulates that the Tories justify the Policy

29 Economic Reconstruction Group. 30 Ibid. 31 Ibid. 32 Ibid. 33 Ibid. 34 Ibid. 35 Ibid.

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of Fragmentation by repeatedly stating that ‘unproductive’ mines have to be closed because of reduced demand for coal at power stations.36 The Plan estimates that the Policy of Fragmentation’s closure of pits will have a corrosive effect on half of Britain’s heavy industry. It says that cuts in coal will force steel mills and factories to retool, so as to not be built upon coal. And it insists that the cost of new infrastructure is the burden of industry, as the Plan makes it clear that insolvent firms will receive no favours from a Tory government.37 3/ Marginalise trade unions For much of the twentieth century, organised labour had made the Tories’ greatest domestic antagonist. In fact, previous governments and attempts to make industry more ‘commercially oriented’ had failed because of recalcitrance by National Union of Miners.38 So the Ridley Plan makes no secret of intent to bust unions. In order to cut the power of labour, the Plan says that the Policy of Fragmentation must be extended to work contracts and shop floor rules.39 More specifically, it insists that management at industrial firms compel unions to take job action by sub-contracting non-union workers or announcing mass redundancies. And the Plan has specific reasons to be confident that a hostile work environment is profitable: a/ Workers will refuse to down tools The Plan insists that fragmentation of the industrial environment through closures, downsizing or redundancies will cause workers to choose their job over solidarity. And it is expected expects that a break in solidarity will increase the odds that union members will not respect pickets, which may sap organised labour of its morale and purpose.40

36 Economic Reconstruction Group. 37 Ibid. 38 Ibid. 39 Ibid. 40 Ibid.

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b/ Management and government will be ready to outlast any strike The Plan says it will force labour to protract job action. The goal is to keep unions at the pickets, so as make labour deplete their finances and damage community goodwill.41 And this is significant because it will make unions unable to afford future job action. The Plan also states that management of industries must ready themselves for strikes ‘by stealth’.42 In particular, it directs managers to stockpile essential resources, like coal, so that industry can function if and when union members down their tools. Accordingly, the Ridley Plan is a divide-and-conquer strategy that was designed to deaden workers’ ability to resist economic reform. It is meant to disrupt business-as-usual and fragment the industrial ecologies that were built into everyday life. And by doing so, the Ridley Plan created a new environment where corporate holding boards, managers and those who have wealth and power can act with impunity, even if it comes at the cost of people’s livelihoods and the continued existence of their communities.

4.6 L AST D AY O F T HE M INERS ʼ S TRIKE In March 1984, the Ridley Plan became reality. After five years of fragmentation policies, the government released a schedule for pit closures that would cut twenty thousand jobs. Moreover, when it became clear that Thatcher is ‘not for turning’, and that her government had no intent to negotiate, the National Union of Miners called a strike. Yet it was not an easy decision. Arthur Scargill, the Union’s leader, said the strike ‘is certainly about more than the miners’

41 Economic Reconstruction Group. 42 Ibid.

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union. It is for the right to work. It is for the right to preserve our pits. It is about the right to preserve this industry’.43 Thatcher’s government was well prepared for the strike. In accordance with the Ridley Plan’s ‘policy of preparation for preparation’, power stations were converted to oil-burning turbines and coal transport contracts were awarded to non-union haulage firms. Plus the government stockpiled more than a year’s worth of coal, which all but undermined a strike’s ability to cut supply and force the government to negotiate.44

Police cordon and miners’ picket at Orgreave coking plant Image credit: BBC The National Union of Miners, however, was not prepared for the strike. Even though the Ridley Plan was published before the Tories formed a government, and had been policy for five years, Scargill and the Union assumed they had a solid negotiating position and were

43 Arthur Scargill, ‘We could surrender – or stand and fight’, The Guardian, 7 March 2009. 44 Economic Reconstruction Group.

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powerful enough to test Thatcher’s will. But the extent to which Thatcher, through fragmentation and her policy of preparation for preparation, had already changed the industrial environment was not yet obvious. So, even if the Union had negotiated a favourable settlement, industry and the workplace were never going to be the same once the Ridley Plan’s wrecking-ball programme of dismantling industry had its way. *** After a year of tense negotiations and periodic violence at pickets, the Strike ended on 3 March 1985. For the miners, it had become obvious that Thatcher was not going to stop closing pits or give any concessions. Therefore, with further hardship and faltering morale becoming a real possibility, the miners called an end to the strike. The next day, 4 March, miners across England marched in funerallike processions that slowly made their way from the pit villages back to the collieries. And, for most everybody in the villages, these processions were a solemn last act of solidarity and resistance. In fact, they wanted to show that, even if Thatcher got the best of them, they still ‘had me pit boots on’.45 As time has passed, many of those who walked the pickets refer to the processions as the last stand of the working class. ‘It was class war’, says Pete Mansell, who used to be a miner.46 ‘The people above didn’t want us to win. The people with money didn’t want us to win. If we had won, they wouldn’t be able to get away with what they are

45 AL Lloyd, ‘With me pit boots on’, (1960 by Prestige/International). Also, for more about the significance and symbolism of work boots and workwear in mining communities, see Appendix entry 9 46 Helen Pidd and David Conn, ‘Margaret Thatcher’s death greeted with little sympathy by Orgreave veterans’, The Guardian, 8 April 2013.

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doing now, cutting benefits for disabled people and things like that. The unions would have stopped them. But we lost’.47 Subsequently, ‘the last day of the Miners’ Strike’ is remembered as a threshold event.48 It is the exact moment at which the Tories’ ‘weird machine’ finally got to have its way with Britain industry’s decline into oblivion began to accelerate. And, as Jarvis Cocker says, it is the point at which ‘socialism gave way to socialising’.49 In the years that followed the last day, Sheffield, as well as many other cities and countless pit villages, had to endure lean times that were as grim as they were limited. As the pits and mills closed, unemployment in South Yorkshire exceeded the national average for the first time since records were kept, and stood at 15.5% in 1987.50 Further, employment in industry and manufacturing, which was at 50% in 1971, had fallen to below 24%.51 And, tragically, by the early 90s, suicide briefly became the most common cause of death in Sheffield.52 Richard Hawley, a local musician who came of age in wake of the last day, says that ‘All the situation in Sheffield was shit’.53 As he describes it, the collapse of industrial environment and lack of work turned everyday life into a struggle to survive. ‘Nobody had any money’ he says. ‘We survived on the dole… I’ve had one proper job, and I only worked that job for nine weeks’.54

47 Pidd and Conn. 48 Pulp, ‘Last Day of the Miners’ Strike’, Hits (2002, Universal Island Records). 49 Pulp, ‘Last Day of the Miners’ Strike’. 50 ‘Poverty and the Poor in Sheffield 1993: The review of areas of poverty, Sheffield Directorate of Planning and Economic Development’, Sheffield City Council, 1993. 51 Ibid. 52 Ibid. 53 Beat is the Law, Part 1, dir. Eve Wood (Sheffield Vision, 2010). 54 Ibid.

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4.7 S OMETHING C HANGED It took Sheffield over a decade to get past the last day of the Miners’ Strike. In time, there was improvement in unemployment. Some of the abandoned mills and factories were torn-down and redeveloped. So, in the words of Human League, a lot of Sheffield has been turned around and turned into something new. One of the most iconic developments in Sheffield and South Yorkshire’s post-industrial environment is Meadowhall Centre. It is a shopping mall that was the region’s first large-scale regeneration project. And when it opened in 1990, it was the second largest mall in Europe.

Meadowhall Centre Image credit: Richard Smith It is not uncommon to hear locals refer to Meadowhall as ‘Mad-ashell’. As they see it, Meadowhall is a shameless attempt to profit on the hardships of what went down after the last day. More specifically the

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mall is built on the site of three demolished steelworks, and they are mad as hell that retailers are selling aspirational lifestyles in the exact place where people used to work for a living. Plus, even if redundant workers could afford to buy what Meadowhall has on offer, they can never really get away from the heavy realities of an environment of despair that has been brought-on by the mill closures and life on the dole. Therefore, they see Meadowhall as a fool’s paradise where the downtrodden are told to soothe their misfortune by imagining themselves ‘spoilt by choice’ and capable of going ‘on a spree with their lottery millions’.55 Further, in spite of public discontent, Meadowhall’s promotional literature emphasises that the mall’s management is ‘doing our bit towards making the world a better kind of place for us all’.56 But there has been no equity in the number or type of jobs that have returned. For instance, the fifteen thousand jobs that were spread between the three works at Meadowhall have been replaced by less than seven thousand positions. And where the mills once provided permanent jobs and weekly wage packets with some margin for savings, the mall retailers now hire workers on zero-hour, minimum wage contracts – which means shifts and earnings are not consistent or reliable. *** Another example of the post-industrial environment’s new realities is at Orgreave, where the colliery and coking plant are in the early stages of a £100m revitalisation project. At the turn of the millennium, soon after remediation of the site was completed, light construction began on the Advanced Manufacturing Research Centre that, when completed, is supposed to be ‘a sophisticated manufacturing labora-

55 ‘About us’, Meadowhall Shopping Centre. 56 Milmo.

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tory’ that specialises in the research and development of future industrial technologies.57 There is also a plan to expand the redevelopment of Orgreave into a larger scheme. It includes four thousand houses, ‘commercial opportunities’, and three artificial lakes with ‘stunning waterside frontage’.58 Yet, as it stands, the Centre is limited to a small, temporary facility on the far corner of the Orgreave site that is nowhere near where the pit or coking plant existed. The developers at Orgreave like to tout that ‘a new industrial ecology is being nurtured’.59 On paper, everything in the plan for Orgreave has its place. A supermarket here. A few houses over there. Maybe a business park or two. But it is all just idle speculation, as there is no proof of concept – seeing as no permanent properties have been built. Moreover, their schemes do not reveal how this new ecology will work, as their master plan does not show what future residents will do for a living. Nor do the developers show how their pleasures and entertainments will fit into the life of the community. And these concerns are important, because what the developers want to build is made of thousands of detached houses where tens of thousands of people are all doing their own thing. Hence this new industrial ecology is fragmented before it is even built, as it lacks the mutual support and solidarity that were once ‘built into our lives in countless essential ways’.60 *** In addition to tearing-down industry, the Ridley Plan’s policies for fragmentation and creative destruction also tore-apart ecologies of everyday life. Thatcher wanted to create an environment wherein

57 Milmo. 58 Ibid. 59 Ibid. 60 Sheffield… City on the move.

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‘every man is a capitalist’.61 And to bring such an idea to life, she had to break-down every vestige of the industrial way of life. Therefore, every element of everyday life, including social relations, had to be redeveloped. Thatcher and her supporters in the City of London wanted British businesses to be ‘pure-play’. The idea was that each company should strictly focus on their most profitable ‘main-line activity’ – so that they can maximise competitive advantage and minimise investor risk.62 So companies were expected to achieve ‘full efficiency’ by spinning-off ‘uneconomic’ and ‘loss-making activities’.63 Thatcher knew pure-play policies would cause ‘major social problems’.64 As the Ridley Report clearly states, ‘There are whole towns dependent on steel works, coal mines and ports, which might be severely deprived if full efficiency policies are carried out’.65 Plus it contains an explicit admission that there will be ‘victims of industrial change’.66 But the cost of communities losing their livelihood and the indignities of poverty were considered a small price to pay to get ‘value for money’.67 *** As South Yorkshire’s mines and heavy industries were closed-down, the local supply chain began to fracture and collapse. Then local shops, which were a part of the region’s self-reinforcing way of doing business, failed. And, soon after, the pure-play mindset began to fragment social relations and what remained of everyday life.

61 Economic Reconstruction Group. 62 Ibid. 63 Ibid. 64 Ibid. 65 Ibid. 66 Ibid. 67 Ibid.

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To illustrate the fragmenting of the post-industrial environment’s social ecologies, Richard Benson retells a story about redundant miners: A friend called Bruce who worked at Silverwood colliery once told me that when he and some friends left in the 1990s, they got jobs filling shelves at a supermarket. The manager assigned them an aisle each. If one man was rushing to keep his shelves full, the others who were not busy went to help him. ‘And the manager came and said, “I told you, one aisle each. Don’t go in each other’s aisles, or you’ll be down t’road”. But we’d always helped each other, it was how you got things done. But a lot of modern managers don’t like that, because it challenges them. They liked to control you, and that eats at your self-respect. No one ever talks about that’.68

Under the circumstances, the manager’s work ethic typifies Thatcher’s reductionist belief that ‘There is no such thing as society’.69 Likewise, the censure of the workers’ mutual support shows the extent to which Thatcher’s pure-play individualism had trickled-down into everyday life. Those responsible for managing the new environment took it upon themselves to sanction social relations. Yet their acts of control were not part of their job description or necessarily willful. Rather, their initiative is a product of the pure-play mindset’s perverse morality, which devalues a community’s connectedness if it cannot be commodified or quantified for private gain. So, as Aldous Huxley once told Orwell, ‘The change will be brought about as a result of a felt need for increased efficiency’.70

68 Richard Benson, ‘Why industrial chic is back in fashion’, The Guardian, 19 January 2013. 69 Douglas Keay, ‘Interview With Margaret Thatcher’, Woman’s Own, 23 September 1987. 70 Dominic Cavendish, ‘Golem, Young Vic, review: “groundbreaking with strokes of genius”’, The Telegraph, 14 December 2014.

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Furthermore, the pure-play mindset is the same reason Thatcher and Fleet Street demonised football fans and ravers in the late 1980s. Like Michael Holden says in an essay about the Thatcher government’s scene-smashing, ‘even the most simplistic divide and conquer analysis suggests that, from a ruling class point of view, everyone – people of all races, backgrounds or football allegiance – getting along… wasn’t something that could be entertained for too long. At least without sponsorship’.71 *** The pure-play mindset has now found its place at a group of redeveloped warehouses located between Sheffield’s West End and Portland Works. It is a £150m regeneration scheme called Creative Industries Quarter that, when completed, will host a hundred or so cultural businesses – most of which are marketing and design firms – that may employ as many as a thousand ‘creative’ workers. The Creative Industries Quarter represents a transition from a working environment that was social in substance to one that is artistic in essence.72 Industry in Sheffield used to be self-reinforcing. It was an environment where the modes of production and ecologies of social life constituted one another – or as the Hammonds described it, factories made the great masses that made the factories. As it is, the post-industrial environment’s modes of production and ecologies of everyday life are not built into each other or even have a proper place in the city. Instead, they have been fragmented into interests, desires and passions that are to be internalised into the work of the individual because, like Thatcher said, ‘Economics is the

71 Michael Holden, ‘Thatcher’s War on Acid House’, Vice, 9 April 2013. 72 See also Charles Mudede, ‘Why the Artist Should Not Be Our Example for Citizenship’, The Stranger, 31 December 2014.

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method; the object is to change the soul’.73 Therefore, the type of production that is supposed to happen at Creative Industries Quarter is consistent with her veneration of the individual over social obligation. Or put another way, creative types are generally thought to be rebellious and free-spirited – which are not exactly traits that Thatcher found productive. As counterintuitive as it seems, the artist, by putting their soul to work, embodies Thatcher’s pure-play mindset. In fact, Thatcher’s statements about individuality and hard work read like lines from Richard Florida-type creative class manifestos. For instance, Thatcher defined success as ‘a mixture of having a flair for the thing that you are doing; knowing that it is not enough, that you have got to have hard work and a certain sense of purpose’.74 Hence artists, by the sheer force of their own initiative and individual talent, as creators, doers or tastemakers, ought to be venerated for their entrepreneurial autonomy and willingness to pay the price for their passions. The creative-types who are drawn to the Creative Industries Quarter are Thatcher’s unwitting and underpaid stewards for creative destruction. As stated in the Quarter’s development plan, the creative workers’ clever ideas and entrepreneurial spirit are supposed to beget an urbane lifestyle that will regenerate industrial neighbourhoods and make Thatcher’s wrecking-ball programme look good. And people like George Osborne think that this plan, which promotes an officially sanctioned way of life in a place where there has been community death, will make Sheffield a Northern Powerhouse for the pure-play mindset.

73 Ronald Butt, ‘Mrs. Thatcher: The First Two Years’, Sunday Times, 3 May 1981. For a more in-depth description of the soul at work, see Appendix entry 11. 74 Micha Kaufman, ‘Why Women are defining Successful Entrepreneurship’, Forbes, 13 April 2013.

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4.8 AFTER Y OU In the best of times, Sheffield’s industrial environment was far from ideal. It was grim and looked nothing like Blake’s vision of a perfect ‘Jerusalem builded here, among these dark Satanic mills’.75 Its hierarchies of class and gender were rigid and wretched. And the limited reality of everyday life – in which people who were born and bred among the haze of industry know of nothing but the haze of industry – was too often defined by its desolate and hopeless drudgery. The post-industrial environment has its faults. Whilst labour is certainly much less dangerous and is not as physical as it used to be, it is in many ways just as defined by mindless toil as industrial work ever was. Likewise, the fact that job security has become uncommon is a great step back, as is the docility and precariousness that are the terms and conditions of zero-hour contracts. Plus the relentless pursuit of full efficiency and the pure-play mindset are a destructive enterprise that have torn-down long-standing elements of everyday life and, too often, replaced them with nothing. Thatcher was adamant that the post-industrial environment would liberate the individual. But many of the people it was supposed to benefit have become its victims. As Dee Boyle says in the documentary The Beat is the Law, ‘Thatcher left communities bereft of fucking community’.76 So the demolition of heavy industry also destroyed the group life and mutual support of communities. And it has turned the old associations, certainties and identities of everyday life into quantifiable commodities. In place of social ecologies in which solidarity meant people could get through thin times by sticking together, the new environment has produced social relations that are fragmented and antagonistic. In the

75 William Blake, ‘Jerusalem’, Milton: A Poem (London, England: William Blake, c. 1811). 76 The Beat is the Law.

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Pulp song ‘After You’, the narrator frets that everyday life has been reduced to shopping, 'loathing and hate’. As he says, From disco to disco From Safeway to Tesco We’re shopping around from the cradle till death row From Tesco it’s down to the 7-11 To chase through the night time...77

Consequently, in the context of what has happened to Sheffield, the song expresses a fear that the only solidarity that remains is the ability to hold open a door and say, ‘No, I insist’.78

77 Pulp, ‘After You’ (2013, self-released). 78 Ibid.

5 Edmonton, Alberta

Edmonton is an industrial city. But it does not look industrial. Factories are not a prominent feature. There are no grey, desolate slums or massive blocks of social housing. Nor is there the blight or decay that burden other industrial cities, like Sheffield, Detroit or Duisburg. At a glance, Edmonton is suburban. It is laid-out along a grid of over-planned and repetitive avenues that hem-in automotive-age houses and stripmalls. It has an abundance of lush, well-managed green spaces. And summer evenings feature a soundtrack that is heavy on bird song and the din of lawnmowers. In fact, Edmonton is so conspicuously suburban that its largest tourist attraction is a shopping mall. As placid and provincial as they may seem, Edmonton’s residential features are little more than cladding that cover-up its industrial nature. For instance, Edmonton’s East side is called Refinery Row because it is teeming with oil refineries and upgraders that form an imposing framework of metal that can be seen from anywhere with a view to the city’s east side. Likewise, overhead transmission lines, pipelines, and train tracks trace elaborate patterns throughout the city. And a quarter of the city’s total area is covered by warehouses and marshalling yards filled with heavy-duty kit. Industry is the font of the hustle and rhythm of everyday life in Edmonton. It affects everything from careers and work schedules to

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fashion and urban planning.1 So, in many ways, industry makes the city work.

5.1 I NDUSTRIAL L IVING The impact of industry on Edmonton is most obvious in the working life of Edmontonians. Industry employs one-third of city’s labour force, which is almost twice the national average.2 And this is a statistic that is clearly reflected by an industrial culture that prides itself on being the muscle and soul of ‘Alberta’s Industrial Heartland’.3 There is still a working class in Edmonton. It is apparent in the types of jobs people work, since general labourer, technician or welder are common trades. Yet Edmontonians often shun formal job titles, as they feel it does not fully describe how they make their living. So, when asked about what they do at work, they will often say they are a ‘yard monkey’, ‘roughneck’ or ‘toolpusher’. Or they will give a personalised description, like ‘Climb around containers, check pallets and stuff, and make sure everything is jake’.4 Edmonton works in shifts. In other cities, business hours, like nine to five, define the working day. But in Edmonton, it is common for workers to swing shifts according to the task at hand. For example, machinists work ‘rotation’ or ‘turnaround-shifts’ until a task is complete. Or convenience store clerks pull late-night ‘flex-shifts’ to

1

For more on the relationship between industrial fashion and grit in Edmonton, see Appendix entry 12.

2

City of Edmonton, Technical Report: Economic + Industry Analysis (Edmonton, Alberta: City of Edmonton, April 2012), 50-1.

3

City of Edmonton, ‘Alberta’s Industrial Heartland Association’, City of Edmonton, nd.

4

Anonymous interviewee, in discussion with the author, January 2012.

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keep aisles stocked with bags of crisps and energy drinks for ‘glideshifted’ warehousers.5 Daylight or weather have no impact on working life in Edmonton. When dusk descends over the city, floodlights come on at the job-sites, and the night sky glows a rum shade of orange. And when temperatures plunge below negative twenty degrees celsius – as they regularly do in the long Alberta winter – workers put on heavier layers of winter clothing, cover their faces with balaclavas, and get-on with their jobs. *** Cadence Weapon, a popular Canadian rapper, often refers to Edmonton as ‘Dirt City’.6 He means it as a term of affection for the city where he was raised and, for a time, was the poet laureate. As he explains, calling it Dirt City is a way of ‘making the most of your environment’, and dealing with the realities of a place that ‘gets too gritty’.7 Cadence Weapon’s references to dirt and grit can seem like wordplay. But the allusion to grit is a clever use of double-meaning. In a literal sense, grime is self-evident, seeing as Edmonton is continually covered in a grit that is spread on winter roads. And it is a figurative social comment, since the city can get gritty, as in its local culture can be coarse and grim, especially for those who have not hit pay dirt. Locals are proud of Dirt City. It is their condition and identity because, as Cadence Weapon explains, ‘your physical environment affects your actual personal physicality’.8

5

Anonymous interviewee.

6

Cadence Weapon, Hope in Dirt City (2012, Upper Class Recordings).

7

Patrick McGuire, ‘Premiere: Cadence Weapon – When It’s Real ft. Jarell Perry’, Noisey, 28 May 2013.

8

Martin Bauman, ‘Cadence Weapon talks “Hope in Dirt City”, serving as Edmonton’s poet laureate, and his plans for the future’, The Come Up Show, 10 October 2012.

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5.2 B OOMTOWN Edmonton’s whole existence and industrial character is a consequence of paleogeographic chance. Historically, its proximity to resources has made it a convenient location for extracted minerals and material to be assembled, refined, and sent-out for consumption elsewhere. And, now, with the build-up of an oil boom in the regions near the city limits, it is an essential cog in Canada’s extraction economy. Edmonton is a boomtown. It is built on the boom-bust of mineral and resource extraction. And this means that its existence follows the highs and lows of far-off markets. So it physically and economically expands and contracts with the intensification or tailing of resource extraction. Yet Edmonton is also different than most boomtowns. Whereas most extraction-dependent cities are located at the base of whatever they are meant to extract, the resources and minerals that make the city boom and bust have never existed within Edmonton’s city limits. Hence, amongst the many monikers it has earned, it is called ‘the Gateway’, because it is where extraction is supported and staged. Or, as the City of Edmonton’s promotional literature makes clear, ‘Edmonton keeps industry connected with raw materials’.9 *** The first boom in Edmonton was animal furs. Hudson’s Bay Company, which arrived in 1791, maintained a trading post and supply depot at what was then called Ft. Edmonton. Then the fur market collapsed. Then there was a gold boom. Then Edmonton became a supply town for a timber boom. Then there was a coal boom. Then a series of oil and gas booms. And, now, Edmonton is the gateway for a bitumen boom that is taking place five hundred kilometres to the North, in the Athabasca Tar Sands, which are a sub-region of Canada’s vast boreal hinterland.

9

City of Edmonton, ‘Rail & Intermodal Service’, City of Edmonton, nd.

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Distributed across an area that is slightly larger than England, the Tar Sands contain the world’s second largest reserve of petroleum oil. However, unlike conventional crude oil that can be pumped in liquid form from wells, bitumen – or Tar Sands oil or Oil Sands, as is often called – is a tar-like substance trapped in sediment. In technical terms, it is a ‘geologically unevolved oil’ that is the remains of organic matter that was never buried ‘deep enough, nor long enough, to be transformed into crude petroleum’.10 And this makes it difficult to recover and refine. Moreover, there are two methods to access bitumen: 1/ Surface mining Surface mining requires forests and wetlands be cleared. Then all the land that has been cleared is scraped-off the underlying bitumen deposit – which generally reaches a depth of sixty metres. And, after that, the bitumen is strip mined and shovelled into enormous trucks that carry the material off to upgraders where it goes through a complex refining process. 2/ In situ recovery In situ recovery is an industrial process in which the ground is heated from below until the bitumen is liquified and capable of being pumped from a well like conventional oil. As it is, no method of bitumen extraction is clean or cost-effective. It is not enough to, as people in the field say, ‘recover bitumen’. Since the sediment is unevolved – as it is extremely viscous and impure – it has to be refined and upgraded through a series of heavy industrial processes into ‘synthetic crude’. So surface pits or in situ wells almost always have an attached upgrader, which is a specialised type of oil refinery, that is connected to a series of pipelines that carry the bitumen

10 Martin Lukacs, ‘Canada becoming launch-pad of a global tar sands and oil shale frenzy’, The Guardian, 16 April 2014.

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away to other upgraders. Plus there are more pipelines to carry the refined bitumen down the line to upgraders in Edmonton that will continue the process until the bitumen is refined enough to be mixed with crude oil. There are there no mines anywhere else in the world that can match the Tar Sands in scale or size.11 In fact, it is the only mine in the world where more than a thousand square kilometers of earth has been turned-over. And it is the only operation where a total haul of a billion some-odd kilograms has ever been achieved. The Tar Sands are otherworldly. What used to be a seemingly endless wooded green has been replaced by the dulled grey of industry. And the entire operation – which includes crews to cut timber, workers to maintain the pit, fitters to lay pipelines, and many other jobs and tool – are put in place by outfits that work out of Edmonton.

5.3 Q UEEN E LIZABETH II H IGHWAY /N ISKU Queen Elizabeth II Highway – or ‘QEII’, as Albertans call it – links Calgary and Edmonton. It is the only major North-South motorway in Alberta, which makes it the road to Edmonton. And, like the two cities it connects, QEII has always been a part of Alberta’s resource booms. The original path of what would eventually become QEII followed an indigenous game trail. Later, it was expanded and built into a cart trail that connected forts and outposts that supported the fur trade. Then it became a wagon trail, a stage trail, gravel road, paved road, two-lane highway and, eventually, a four-lane divided expressway. As time passed, Hudson’s Bay Company trading posts and oxcarts have been replaced by service stations and trundling wide-load lorries hauling industrial machinery. But as the technologies of transport have

11 For more on the importance of Edmonton to the global economy, see Appendix entry 13.

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moved-on, the motorway’s purpose has not changed, as it is still the prime mover between Calgary and Edmonton. *** On its way North from Calgary, QEII passes kilometer after kilometer of intricate yet infinitely spacious parkland. It is a pastoral setting where woods of evenly-spaced aspen are broken-up by hectares of grain fields. Thus, with the exception of places where machines have laid straight lines onto the landscape, such as roads or fields, the landscape is all contours that trace the gentle curves of hills and vales that stretch into the distance. Then, as QE II nears the South side of Edmonton, the contours of the tilled fields become overgrown with gridlocked roads, business parks, stripmalls, and suburban tracts. Thirty kilometres South of Edmonton, at the limits of a town called Nisku, the motorway speed slows, traffic lanes crowd, and roadside civilisation becomes a fixture. On one side of QEII is a long row of sprawling service stations. On the other, there are multiple motels with names like Executive Express and Western Budget that advertise ‘Low Weekly and Monthly Rates’ on motorway-side hoardings. The motels are what Hunter S. Thompson calls a ‘margin’ or ‘junction’.12 It is the sort of place that attracts punters whose ‘work is where they find it’ and have ‘no pattern except that they all seem like holdovers from the Great Depression’.13 And, in Thompson’s words, these people are ‘the boomers, the drifters, the hard travelers, and the tramp diggers who roam the long highways of the West’ and will never be found where people ‘wear suits and ties or work at steady jobs’.14 The weekly and monthly rates advertised are not for leisure travellers. The long-stay motels are the first stop for those who have

12 Hunter S. Thompson, ‘Living in the Time of Alger, Greeley, Debs’, The Great Shark Hunt (New York: Simon & Schuster, 2003), 374. 13 Ibid., 375. 14 Ibid., 374.

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been brought to Edmonton by the prospect of work. Hence the car parks are filled with vehicles that have number plates from far-off places like Ontario, Newfoundland and Labrador, or Texas. Nisku’s junction motels are a home away from home that accommodate Tar Sands operations by giving boomers time to get their bearings and find their place. For example, tucked-in among the motels is a small stripmall where there is a laundromat where luggage trolleys from nearby motels pull duty as clothes baskets. And, next door, is a shop stocked almost exclusively with microwaveable meals and provisions, like laundry detergent, videogames and mobile phones – all of which indicate the boomers are staying around for a while. *** The peculiarity of Nisku extends beyond the junction. Everything about the town is out of place. It has no neighbourhoods or schools. There are no footpaths or pedestrian crossings. Nor is there a high street or amenities – like ice rinks, parks or softball fields – that are common elements of everyday life in close-by communities. Be as it may, Nisku is not a ghost town. It is quite the opposite. In fact, bustling is not a strong enough word to describe what happens within its limits. More specifically, Nisku is different because it is a destination for labour. Thus, in the same way that office workers usually commute to city centre, the labourers in Nisku travel from city centre on past the far suburbs to go to work. Approximately fifteen thousand people are employed by the one hundred and fifty-some-odd factories, warehouses, workshops, and yards in Nisku. As it happens, the day shift’s arrival usually creates morning rush-hour jam of pick-up trucks and commercial that backs-up for more than a kilometre. And this daily rush only represents the vanguard of trades workers, because Nisku, like most job sites in Edmonton, works around the clock every day. ***

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Labourers, especially those with the right skill-set, are in demand at the operations in Nisku. Business is booming, and it is a jobseeker’s market. But like everything in Nisku, there is nothing conventional about finding employment. Jobs in Nisku are not announced in newspapers or on websites. Instead, openings are printed-out on handbills and pinned to business signs in front of the sheds and warehouses – so it is not uncommon to see groups of men in boilersuits gather around to read the posts. And there is a certain desperation in how the handbills are worded: ‘Come in if you have a clean record we’ll hire today. See Cheryl at the desk’. Then again, some firms are so hard-up for workers that they will send their foremen to other outfit’s shop floors with contracts in hand. *** In the language of its industry, Nisku is classified as a holding yard. But this is a slight misnomer. It is actually multiple yards – and all of them are at least several hectares in size. And in terms of acreage, it is the second largest industrial site of its kind in North America – with only Green’s Point in Houston being marginally larger.15 Nisku’s hectares of yards are where the extraction industry’s building blocks are staged and readied for use. The yards are filled with neatly organised rows and stockpiles of pipes that will be fitted into pipelines. Furthermore, there are a few yards that specialise in sorting and assembling pipes, valves and various components into prefabricated modules that will be used at energy complexes like refineries and pumping stations. Plus there is a yard that readies consignments of heavy-duty equipment, like bulldozers and cranes, for use in the holding yards. The yards in Nisku have a single purpose: Prepare matériel for operation. More specifically, the yards and surrounding job shops are

15 City of Nisku, Nisku Area Structure Plan, nd.

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laid-out in a way that makes their mode of production seamless and field-ready to be fit into place.

5.4 G ATEWAY P ARK After Nisku’s day shift workers clock-out, the night shift takes over. Their job, generally, is to put finishing touches on the prior shift’s work. Then, when everything is ready, the night-shift loads the finished work onto flatbed trailers that will be hauled by lorry to Tar Sands. Like clockwork, lorries leave Nisku every evening at ten o’clock. It is a carefully choreographed operation in which every detail is managed down to the minute. The lorries even have their exact route directed by dispatchers so they avoid traffic on Edmonton surface roads and arrive at specific coordinates right as the day shift is clocking-in at the upgraders and other industrial site in the Tar Sands.

Prefabricated upgrader module en-route to Ft. McMurray Image credit: David Levene

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At the Southern limits of Edmonton, the lorries pass Gateway Park. It is a roadside pull-off where the city maintains a welcome centre. But in a place where most visitors’ bureaus would feature roadside services or a playground, the main attraction at Gateway Park is Wilson #2 oil derrick – which is a forty-metre high steel scaffold that towers over the motorway. The derrick at Gateway Park is not operational. It has not been in working order for decades. It is not even in its original location. But it is one of the original derricks from Edmonton’s first oil boom, which followed the discovery of the oil patch that laid below the wheat fields that border Gateway Park. The oil boom that followed the construction of Wilson #2 and several others like it – which oil geologist call the Leduc Discovery – turned Alberta into one of the largest producers of crude oil in the world. It made Edmonton part of the global energy trade, earning it a reputation as the ‘Oil Capital of Canada’. And, as oil derricks became a feature of farmland and forest, it led to a profound transformation of Alberta’s economy and landscape. Accordingly, there is a symmetry to the lorries and their cargo trundling past Gateway Park: The derrick stands as a static monument to Edmonton’s core industry, but when it is juxtaposed with lorries in motion, it is a testament to the distance that the oil industry will go to keep their product flowing.

5.5 G ATEWAY B OULEVARD A few kilometers North of Gateway Park, the QEII becomes Gateway Boulevard. It is the only major road running North through Edmonton. Of course there are other routes, but none of them are as sprawling, built-up or basic to the everyday life of the city. Gateway is symptomatic of Edmonton’s car culture and reliance on oil. It is lined with kilometres of stripmalls and car parks interspersed

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with petrol stations and fast food joints. And all of it is made possible by oil. The largest stripmall along Gateway Boulevard is South Edmonton Common. Other than the fact it has a lot of home improvement and furnishings stores, nothing really sets it apart from any other stripmall on Gateway. Yet it is noteworthy because across the road from one of its car parks is an oil platform and an ethane extractor – which looks like a miniaturised oil refinery. What is most notable about the platform and extractor facility is that they appear to go unnoticed. For example, people leaving a stripmall store will walk to their vehicles, pack-away their purchases, buckle their kids in, and drive-off without even a quick glance at the industrial set-up a few metres away. To them, such a sight is nothing extraordinary. It is just a part of the background of everyday life in Edmonton. *** Like the Wilson #2 derrick, the platform near the strip-mall does not pump oil. Instead, it is a training facility for labourers seeking a career in the oil industry. Due to the shortage of skilled workers in Edmonton and Tar Sands, oil service companies use the South Common platform – as well as several others like it elsewhere in the city – to give their next crew of labourers hands-on experience with the tools and machinery that they will eventually maintain. At any time of the day, every day of the year – including holidays – around a hundred apprentices and ‘ginzels’ learn their trade. Plus, like any jobsite, the platform trains at least two daily shifts. Thus it hosts four different cohorts every year, which means it annually readies about a thousand labourers for the field. And these numbers are significant because they give an idea of the Tar Sands’ intensity and scale, especially when the other training platforms are taken into account.

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*** Further up Gateway Boulevard, between a Real Canadian Superstore and a small convention centre is an undeveloped, weedy waste. At one time, it was a small industrial yard that, for whatever reason, was cleared and left to sit empty. However, in Edmonton, empty does not mean unused. In fact, on weekday afternoons, food trucks park in the middle of the waste and set-up shop. And, throughout the year, even the coldest days of winter, people drive from nearby business parks and industrial estate to get a meal made to order. The makeshift food court is a daily scene that, at times, resembles an informal village fun fair. The whole scene is chaotic, disorienting, and liminal, as there seems to be no organisation or governing principle for behaviour. For example, there is no car park or designated spaces, and there is no coherent organisation or layout. So work trucks, white vans, executive cars and minivans are all parked haphazardly. For those who have never had a meal at the waste, the process of ordering food is not as simple as standing in a queue and ordering from a set menu. Instead, the diners crowd around the food trucks and wait until the cashiers point to them. Then, in response, the diner who has been singled-out will push their way forward and place their order in a grammar that is unique to each food truck. Further, there are set rules for how or where people eat. Most noticeably, there is no seating. So some people dine in their vehicles whilst others use vehicle tailgates, bonnets or bumpers as improvised benches and tables. The scene at the waste is defined by its shambolic conviviality. Punters mingle, they shake hands, share a few laughs, and make plans. They often talk shop about topics that are almost always oil-related. Or they will carry-on a never-ending debate about the local hockey teams, the Oilers and Oil Kings. But, either way, it is almost guaranteed that the word oil will find its way into every conversation. ***

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At weekends, the waste takes-on a different, more orderly purpose. The food trucks and punters are gone. And in their place are rows of neatly parked rows of white pick-up trucks and utility vehicles. The trucks are parked at the waste on Friday night, just after the evening commute has passed. They arrive on car carriers pulled by a small convoy of lorries that picked them up at a nearby rail yard. And, prior to their arrival at the yard, the trucks had travelled for several days and a few thousand kilometres from production plants in the Eastern Canada and the United States. The trucks parked at the waste are not for sale or lease. Rather, they were purchased before they were even built. More specifically, they are part of a fleet of thousands of vehicles used by oil companies to shuttle workers and equipment to and from various extraction sites spread across Tar Sands. But the trucks parked at the waste are not directly shipped-on to Tar Sands. Before they are put to work, they have to be modified at garages in Edmonton that will ruggedise and outfit them with a reinforced suspension, better wheels, built-in tool cabinets, extra petrol tanks, trailer hitches, and miscellaneous specialised equipment. But the garages are only open during workdays, which is why the trucks must be held – or ‘staged’, as is the technical term – at the waste. Lastly, the waste is significant because it is a part of the infrastructure of oil and everyday life. As has already been pointed-out, empty does not mean unused – and the waste is certainly not unused. In fact, between functioning as a type of modern village green and doing time as a depot for industrial vehicles, the waste has a place in the staging and sustainment of operations in Tar Sands. And this means it provides a clear view of the extent to which everyday life in Edmonton is organised around oil extraction.

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5.6 R AIL Y ARD Trains can always be heard shunting about Edmonton rail yards. In other cities, it is a rare sound. But in Edmonton, it is part of the noise of everyday life. All day, every day, the rev of locomotive engines, blare of horns, squeal of brakes and clang of freight wagons coupling and uncoupling hangs in the air. And, at night, when the rest of the city quiets and slows down, the diesel-powered clamour of the rail yards carries-on. Rail lines criss-cross Edmonton. To all appearances, there is no division between urban sprawl and railway infrastructure. For instance, traffic jams at level crossings are a scheduled part of everyday life – so much so that local radio stations broadcast train timetables. Plus it is not uncommon to see locomotives amble past local playing fields or backyard gardens. Nor is it odd that stacks of cargo containers are visible from residential streets. *** In many ways, Edmonton was built by the railroad. Prior to the railroad’s arrival, the city had been a trading post and supply depot for an isolated settlement that was never larger than a thousand people. Everything changed in 1891. That was the year that Calgary and Edmonton Railway Company laid a line that terminated at the Edmonton’s Southern limits. Then, within a year of the its arrival, the Railway surveyed and subdivided the area around its terminal. Later, it planned housing plots, graded roads and opened title offices to promote settlement and sell its designs for a city. Twenty years after the Railway first laid-out its foundations, in 1922, the City of Edmonton was officially amalgamated. But in the years between the founding of Strathcona and its being incorporated as Edmonton, the Railway continued to lay infrastructure and bring in settlers, which required more infrastructure and settlers to complete the job. And these early public works projects created an enduring legacy

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of over-designed infrastructure – including High-Level Bridge, a kilometre-long steel two-deck truss over the North Saskatchewan River – and grid-lined sprawl that are still defining features of everyday life in Edmonton. *** Trains and rail yards are often assumed to be a relic of an era when steam locomotives and factory chimneys were the model of modern life. Yet, in Edmonton, the city and train cannot be separated. In fact, they are mutual and reinforcing, because the trains supply the boom that the city administrates. There are three rail yards in Edmonton. In rail company jargon, they are ‘Intermodal Terminals’, which means they shunt, sort and store freight wagons. So, every day, a combined total of nearly three thousand wagons roll through the three yards. It is through the terminals that most rail cars, cargo containers, and oversize loads moving between East and West of Canada or the Territories to the North have their movement coordinated and staged in Edmonton. And this means that the city is the dispatch and logistic hub for railways and other transport networks in Western Canada. Some of the freight is bound for other cities and ports, like Vancouver, Winnipeg, Toronto or beyond. However, Edmonton is the end of the line for most of the freight. So, more often than not, what comes to Edmonton are industrial consignments that have to be sorted and readied for delivery to the Tar Sands. Accordingly, the terminals are in constant motion. Their lattice of rails constantly snap and switch. Massive gantry cranes straddle the tracks; their loading tools – or spreaders as they are called – pick-up, shift and stack containers. Plus there are countless pullers, which look like small locomotives, that shunt back and forth across the yard in a strangely coordinated pattern, as they pull apart or form trains that are kilometres in length.

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Also, the busyness of the terminals spills-over into surrounding industrial estates. Trains follow sidetracks to holding yards stacked high with containers. Lorries rumble up and down dusty roads. And through the open bay doors of warehouses, forklifts can be spotted scuttling about. *** Built next to a cluster of refineries and upgraders on Edmonton's East side, there is a type of rail yard that specialises in loading tanker wagons with refined bitumen. It is called the Edmonton Rail Terminal, and there is no other facility like it anywhere else in the world. Like oil, refined bitumen is usually moved through pipelines. But the production of bitumen is currently outpacing pipeline capacity. So oil producers have turned to trains to make up the difference. In terms of capacity, Edmonton Rail Terminal is capable of loading two hundred and fifty thousand barrels of oil a day –which, if it is fully refined, is enough fuel to fill the petrol tanks of five hundred and seventy thousand cars. But the upgraded bitumen is not immediately bound for consumer markets. Instead, it will be transported to refineries and oil facilities throughout North America, where it will supplement crude reserves.

5.7 D OWNTOWN There used to be a rail yard in what is now downtown Edmonton. In fact, much of the city’s office buildings and car parks were built around the yard – and this means that much of the city’s layout was predicated on the railway. But, as Edmonton urbanised and grid of streets pushed further into the prairie, the city and rail yard began to get in each other’s way. Plus the yards’ operator, CN Rail, wanted to divest itself of older urban yards and consolidate at a larger, more modern yard on the city’s North side.

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The downtown rail yard was closed in 1998. The vacated land has since been redeveloped into a university campus surrounded by stripmalls and residences. And the warehouses and industrial properties that were built in the rail yard’s margins have found new life as entertainment venues and lofts. *** The last of the rail yard’s remaining structures is CN Tower. From 1966 until 2008, it was the administrative headquarters for all rail operations in Western Canada. So it was designed to signify the railroad’s importance to the community and local industry. And, at 26 storeys, it was Edmonton’s first skyscraper and, for a time, the tallest building in Western Canada. CN Tower is an architectural statement. Built in a brutalist style and clad in pre-cast concrete panels, it is meant to look solid. It resembles an enormous bunker that has been forced out of the ground. Therefore, in many ways, the design is appropriate, as it was built to administrate the movement of goods throughout Canada’s West and North – hence it had a rooftop control tower that that watched-over the yard’s operations. Interestingly, a lot of the buildings that have become a part of Edmonton’s skyline have the same bunker-like vernacular as CN Tower. And this is not a coincidence. Nor is it a consequence of a lack of creativity or a specific design aesthetic. Rather, the city’s concrete simplicity is an effect of its office buildings being fit for purpose, because everything that happens in the Tar Sands is managed and put together in Edmonton. So the buildings are built to be utilitarian, since the sustainment of industrial operations is less about charm or appearance than pure and simple function.16

16 For more on the names of companies based in Edmonton and their function in industry, see Appendix entry 14.

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5.8 O LD S TRATHCONA Edmonton is not all about oil. After all, people who live in the city and its surrounding communities do not exist just to work. Thus the city shows signs of life that exists outside the workplace. And this is evident in its burgeoning gourmet food and craft coffee scene that is as good as what is on offer in cities that have more hep reputations, such as Vancouver or Montreal. One of the most fashionable and well-known neighbourhoods in Edmonton is Old Strathcona, which is located at the terminal end of Gateway Boulevard and one of the city’s rail yards. In terms of layout, it is very much the same neighbourhood that was originally developed by Calgary and Edmonton Railway. But as the oil industry has replaced the Railway in the local environment, and the nature of doing business has changed, Old Strathcona has left its industrial roots and become a retail and entertainment destination. Every year, a local lifestyle magazine, Avenue, publishes a list of Edmonton’s Top 10 Neighbourhoods. And, every year, Old Strathcona tops the list, for which it always receives the same praise for ‘its bustling year-round farmers’ market, walkability and abundance of shops, restaurants and bars’.17 Plus every write-up will, in some way, mention that Old Strathcona is one of the city’s cultural ‘fixtures’ and ‘one of the best places to people watch, hands down’.18 Old Strathcona also has a reputation for being bohemian, since it features an eclectic mix of high-end and low-rent. For example, in the basement of a major bookseller there is a used bookshop that specialises in vintage erotica. And there are a number of artisan coffee shops, boutiques, and fancy sit-down restaurants, just as there are donut chains, novelty shops, and kebab take-aways.

17 ‘Top 10 Neighbourhoods’, Avenue Magazine, 20 August 2014. 18 Sydnee Bryant, ‘Strathcona Stays on Top’, Avenue Magazine, 30 July 2013.

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*** The contrast of high and low is part of the difference between day and night in Old Strathcona. As the sun goes down, the neighbourhood changes character and takes-on an added life as an entertainment district. So, when dusk falls, the pavements in front of cafes double as patios, and venues fill-up with those out for a night on the town. Yet, even as the scene changes from day to night, the contrast between high and low remains. It is most apparent in the neighbourhood’s entertainments, as Old Strathcona has as many playhouses as it does billiards halls. Therefore, at certain times of the night, it is not out of the ordinary to see people in suits and stilettos rub elbows with offshift industrial labourers still wearing boilersuits and boots. Old Strathcona’s mix of high and low shows that grit is a constant in everyday life. Even when the city tries to go upscale, it cannot keep up the image, as there is no way to properly dress-up an industrial environment. In fact, oil is such a part of the city’s life that a lot of people, in one way or another, depend on the oil industry for their livelihood – even if they are not directly employed by an oil or service company. *** Edmonton relies on industrial workers’ wage packets to pad business ledgers. And, at least until the flow of oil stops, the boom economy works according to a simple course of action: Oil goes down the pipeline and, one way or another, money flows up. Accordingly, Old Strathcona is where the upward flow of money from Tar Sand and oil industry is most visible – as it is a place where money goes when people want to spend it. But, like most everything in Edmonton, the scene in Old Strathcona is not too conspicuous. For the most part, people’s purchases are sensible – as they usually buy nothing more than some produce at the Farmer’s Market, an

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indulgence from a boutique and, maybe, a few too many drinks after a meal.

5.9 H IGH L EVEL B RIDGE Behind Old Strathcona Farmer’s Market there is a workshop filled with old streetcars in different states of repair. It is where a group of volunteer mechanics, engineers and trainspotters get together every winter weekend to refurbish old rail kit. And throughout the summer, they provide a scheduled service to City Centre. The streetcar’s route is relatively straight. It is just a few kilometres long and lasts less than fifteen minutes. But a large segment of the service crosses High-Level Bridge, which is almost a kilometre long and some fifty metres above the North Saskatchewan River. And if everything is running on schedule, the streetcar will usually stop halfway across the bridge to allow passengers to take in the view. The river valley below the bridge is wide and verdant – in fact, it is the largest urban park in North America – and it provides a good idea of what the environment looked like before modernity and its need for oil set-in. More importantly, though, the view from High-Level gives a panoramic look at Edmonton’s built environment. On the River’s North Bank, passengers can see the city centre’s concrete office towers and apartment blocks. On the South, they will see some high-rise apartments and the treeline of Old Strathcona’s urban forest. Then, if they look down and trace the North Saskatchewan’s course to the East, they will see Refinery Row’s kilometres of metal framework, chimneys, flares, and its ever-present plume of acrid smoke. And this is a rare view that reveals the extent to which the refineries are the focal point from which Edmonton’s built environment extends outward.

6 Wind River Range, Wyoming

Every study of environment, whether it is a work of science, journalism or literature, can never fully define environment. It is so big, so engrossing, and so unyielding, that its intricate relations and many peculiarities cannot be properly illustrated or put into words. Yet environment’s grandness of scale does not keep scholars and field researchers from trying to make sense of how it all fits together. In spite of the apparent futility of environmental analysis, there are researchers who, day in and day out, go into the field, climb mountains, traverse forests and brave harsh conditions to make observations and gather data. It is a Sisyphean task in which the field researchers go the distance to see what they can find. And it is how, bit-by-bit, piece-by-piece, it becomes possible to gain some sense of environment’s workings. In an article called ‘Community Ecology: Is It Time to Move On’, David Simberloff insists that the work of field researchers should be adopted as a model for environmental research. As he explains, ‘there are nearly not enough studies… [and] as a group, case studies can point to rough generalizations that can guide and facilitate further case studies; in other words, they advance both theory and practice’.1 So, in

1

David Simberloff. ‘Community Ecology: Is It Time to Move On?’, The American Naturalist 163, no. 4 (June 2004), 788.

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place of ‘precise, quantitative, general laws’, Simberloff proposes the creation of a ‘catalog of case studies’ and a field-collected inventory of effects that can be collated, cross-referenced, and used to identify environment’s myriad ‘patterns and differences’, as well as its ‘structures and workings’.2 What follows, then, is an attempt to add to Simberloff’s inventory of effects, because this text will document and bear witness to the everyday life of field researchers. Its purpose is to show exactly how field researchers carry-out ‘the tedious, difficult elaboration of details’ that sets-up climate change data and scientific knowledge of environment.3 And, by doing so, it will give technical insight into what researchers’ data signifies, as well as the mechanisms by which environment is mediated and transformed. Plus it can provide context to some of the ways that material covered in this text’s Sheffield and Edmonton case studies relate to global events.

6.1 ALTITUDE Not far from Wyoming’s Grand Teton and Yellowstone National Parks is the Wind River Range. It has been described as one of ‘America’s Best Kept Secrets’, and has a reputation amongst ramblers for being one of the most pristine places in the Rocky Mountains.4 As would be expected of a place that is held in high esteem, the Wind River Range fits almost every naturalist’s definition of picturesque. Its mountains are majestic, serene, and what Ansel Adams describes as ‘a glitter of green and golden wonder in a vast edifice of stone and space’.

2

Simberloff, 787-788.

3

Ibid., 787.

4

Michael Lanza, ‘America’s Best Kept Secrets: Wind River Range, WY’, Backpacker Magazine, March 2011.

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Two hundred kilometres long and seventy-five or so kilometres wide, the Winds, as the range is called, are made-up of forty-one mountains that are higher than four thousand metres in height. They are the backbone of North America’s Continental Divide, which means it is the headwaters of several of America’s largest rivers. And they are the location of some of America’s last wilderness – because within its granite-walled valleys and against the rock and ice of treeline, there are forests that have never been felled by saw. Mountain tops may appear to be far removed from everyday life, but what happens high-up on far-away peaks trickles-down to the towns and cities below. More specifically, the water that fills the reservoirs that nourish America’s crops and turns its hydro-electric turbines flows from the Winds’ creeks and streams. So any change in the quality or quantity of the water that runs-off the mountains will have a direct impact on life elsewhere. Plus some plants and animals that dwell at treeline are specialised and specific to the Winds, which means any changes to environment can fragment fragile mountainside ecologies or eradicate well-rooted ways of life. *** Something not so subtle is happening atop the Winds’ peaks. Trees that live at or near treeline, which rests at roughly three thousand metres, are starting to die-off. And one species of tree, whitebark pine, are nearing extinction – and they are supposed to be one of the most stresstolerant trees in their genus. Whitebark pine – Pinus albicaulis, in the proper nomenclature – are what ecologists call a keystone species, which means they have a particular, vital role in an environment’s function. In fact, the environment in which whitebark live would be dramatically different if the trees, as a species, were not present or unable to provide certain ecological ‘services’, like:

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− Stabilise soils and regulates water runoff, which helps control water quality and flow volume in the streams, rivers, and reservoirs below. − Initiate habitat succession after fire and other disturbance events − Provide of seeds that are a high-energy food source for several animal species, including grizzly bears, red squirrels and Clark’s nutcrackers. − Serve as summer habitat for elk and grouse species.5 Moreover, in terms of their place in everyday life, whitebark pine are culturally significant to local indigenous peoples, as its seeds are an ingredient in traditional food and medicines. Plus treeline is a point of interest for ramblers and mountaineers, which gives it recreational value and some purchase in the local economy. *** A convergence of climate-related variables has started to make whitebark’s environment inhospitable. Rising temperatures and changing rainfall amounts in the landscape far below treeline have made life difficult for other tree and plant species. Therefore, as conditions allow, these other species have started to move up the mountains, as it is the best way to find more suitable habitat. Whitebark do not have the luxury of being able to summit the peaks above. Simply put, there is nowhere left for them to go. If they had time to adapt to the situation, they would also move to a higher altitude. But even if whitebark could climb, their seedlings cannot grow in the ground above what is now treeline because millennia of glaciers and wind have worn mountain peaks down to stone and skree – so there is no soil for seedlings to take root. And, supposing a

5

See also Diana Tomback, S F Arno, and R E Keane, eds., Whitebark pine communities: ecology and restoration (Washington DC: Island Press, 2001).

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seedling did find a nice mountaintop location to call its own, it would have to go it alone, as it is not likely other seedlings will be as lucky. Thousands of years of selection have made whitebark well-adapted for their environment. They cannot come down the mountain; and even if they could, the habitats and forest-types that exist just a few hundred metres below treeline have never been suitable. Whitebark are a Goldilocks species. They can only exist within a particular micro-environment that has just the right kind of temperature. Just the right amount of moisture. Just the right type of soil. Just the right canopy height. Just the right species composition. To borrow a figure of speech, this is the whitebark pine’s last stand. They have nowhere else to go. They cannot keep pace with the speed at which their environment is changing. Plus they do not have enough time to adapt or use any of the few resources they have available to change their situation. So it is mountaintops of the Wind River Range where whitebark pine will pass from history.

6.2 R ESEARCH Most people have heard William Fawcett’s riddle: If a tree falls in a forest, does it make a sound? It is philosophical question meant to challenge popular assumptions about observation and the nature of reality. In his answer to his own riddle, Fawcett says that a falling tree does not make a sound. As he explains, ‘it is silent and invisible and nameless’. But it should also be noted that Fawcett admits his answer is faulty, because if a tree ‘were to vanish, there would be no tree at all’.6 In the case of the Wind River Range’s whitebark pine, trees are falling and nobody is around to hear it happen. Moreover, as whitebark

6

William Fawcett, Natural States (London, United Kingdom: R & J Dodsley, 1754).

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are quietly extirpated, a unique environment will collapse and particular, well-adapted ways of everyday life will be irrevocably damaged. Or like Fawcett says, ‘any meaning will vanish’ with the tree, and there will be no way ‘to make of it all’.7 Whilst whitebark still hold their ground, there is still research to be done and a lot to be learned. Therefore, in summer 2007, researchers from Colorado State University climbed the peaks of Wind River Range to find-out whether whitebark are producing seedlings and, if so, whether they are in any position to be able to succeed. And in order to complete their work, the researchers set-up plots and collected data that would be later be entered into an inventory of effects that would be used as evidence in published reports. *** Most of the researchers who did the whitebark study’s field research are women. This is significant because the researchers’ gender goes against the common image of foresters as wisened, bearded lumberjacks in woolen plaid shirts. But the women who carried-out the studies’ field work are as skilled with a chainsaw as any lumberjack, and are as knowledgeable about forest life as any woodsman. So the fact that old-fashioned stereotypes continue to exist shows that social constructs reach far beyond everyday life and into terrain where few men tread. The whitebark researchers also do not fit any common stereotype about scientists. They do not wear white lab coats or do science with microscopes and vials. Instead, their laboratory is in the field, where they use a mix of observation and low-tech equipment to quantify and record forest dynamics. Thus, in the words of Martin Heidegger, they

7

Fawcett.

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are the type of scholar who climbs ‘into the abyss, to attend there to intimations and signs’.8 *** The whitebark researchers live and directly interact with their subject matter, just like foresters whose footsteps and trails they follow into the mountains. So they spend their days traversing high altitude whitebark forests. Then they spend their nights bedding-down under its canopy. All the time the researches spend in the field has made them experts at identifying every species of life that exists at treeline. They can distinguish a fir from a spruce at a distance just by glancing at a tree’s silhouette. And they can tell the difference between mountain pine and Ips beetles by the shape of entry holes that have been chewed into a tree’s bark. To quantify their field knowledge, the field researchers use tools that are quite unique and rather rudimentary. With the exception of the GPS unit they use to identify the exact location of their plots, they work with many of the same tools – such as hand compasses, angle gauges, clinometers, or hip chains – that foresters used a century ago. Moreover, those are the tools they use to ‘mensurate’ or inventory what forestry textbooks call ‘a forests’ timber and nontimber vegetation parameters [such] as regeneration, lesser vegetation, woody detritus, and carbon’.9 For instance, the whitebark researchers and foresters both use a clinometer to measure the height of trees and the percentage of a mountain’s slope – the latter of which is very important, because slope generally correlates with the amount of water available for vegetation to consume. Or if foresters and researchers

8

Martin Heidegger, ‘The Origin of the Work of Art’, Poetry, Language, Thought, trans. Albert Hofstadter (New York: HarperCollins, 1971), 95.

9

Bertram Husch, et al. Forest Mensuration, 4th ed. (Hoboken, New Jersey: John Wiley & Sons, 2003), 228.

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want a general measurement of a forest’s density, health, or relative age, they use the angle gauge to estimate the size and number of trees.

6.3 M ETHOD In the field, the whitebark researchers carefully document specific mensural details about all of their sites by applying the following method: 1/ Select study site Guided by rough coordinates for the locations of multiple whitebark forests that were provided by regional foresters and wild-land firefighters, the researchers scouted the mountainsides of the Wind River Range. Specifically, they were looking for potential study sites that had similar features, which were: − high altitude [2700 to 2900 metres] − recent damage from fire, which is important because the researchers wanted to study sites that had been disturbed, since this is the type of environment where whitebark seedlings will often thrive and establish a new forest Then, after the researchers identified the sites that fit their criteria, they set-up their sampling protocols and began collecting data. 2/ Sample At each site, the researchers walked along mapped-out lines – or what they call ‘transects’ – that followed mountainside contours through burned and non-burned forests which, depending on the size of the mountain, could be kilometres in length. But as much as the word ‘walk’ gives the impression that the researchers are out for a pleasant ramble, there is nothing easy about ‘walking the line’. It is a method that requires researchers to perform deft feats of strength and agility, as

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they have to clamber over and under everything in their path, whether it was a fallen tree or an imposing bit of landscape, like an outcrop or cliff. Considering the fact that the whole reason for a researchers’ ramble is to collect data, walking the forest and dealing with terrain is only half their labour. Along their walks, at intervals of two chains, which is equivalent to forty metres, depending on terrain, the researchers stopped to take measurements and record data. And this involved intensive, technical and time-tested procedures that often had the researchers dropping to their hands and knees to quantify their observations. 3/ Recording of data To document the habitat in which whitebark and their seedlings grow, the researchers recorded observations: − aspect, which a measure of the direction of the mountainside’s downward slope − percent slope − disturbance type; to understand other disturbance that can affect forest regeneration, the researchers noted the presence of non-fire disturbances, which include salvage logging, selective cuts, domestic livestock grazing, burn piles, and planting of seedlings − percentage of ground-cover; to understand relations between whitebark pine and the vegetation it may be regenerating in, the researchers estimated how much of the forest floor was covered by grasses shrubs and forbs − number and age of whitebark seedlings − total number and species of all other trees

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And this is what data sheets looked like:

Image credit: Jennifer Klutsch

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6.4 D ATA E NTRY

AND

ANALYSIS

The whitebark researchers’ work was not finished when they left the field. It was not enough for them to have rambled through forests and filled-in data sheets. In order to contribute to Simberloff’s inventory of effects and show what is happening to whitebark, they also had to analyse their data, write-up the results, file reports, and publish their findings. Or as Robert Frost says in his poem, ‘Stopping by Woods on a Snowy Evening’, The woods are lovely, dark and deep, But I have promises to keep, 10

And miles to go before I sleep,

Consequently, for every month the whitebark researchers spent in the field, they spent two more in an office cubicle, bathed in the harsh glow of fluorescent lights and computer monitors, typing their workdays away. Computers and cubicles are rarely included in the popular image of laboratory work. It is usually a picture of glassware being watchedover by people wearing safety glasses and lab coats. But day-to-day lab work involves data entry and coding peculiar statistics programmes. So even though the whitebark researchers were experts in fieldcraft, like most scientists, they were also expected to be more than capable data analysts. Therefore, in addition to being a throwback to foresters and naturalists of a bygone era, the researchers pull extra duty as common office drones. ***

10 Robert Frost, ‘Stopping by Woods on a Snowy Evening’, Collected Poems, Prose, & Plays, ed. Edward Connery Lathem (New York: Henry Holt and Company, 1979), 224.

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Away from the field, the whitebark researchers’ lab was a basement office filled with other off-season field researchers poring-over data sheets. It was a scene straight-out of most any corporate office. And it is in this sterile office environment, amongst the clatter of keystrokes and sporadic, hushed conversations, where data is transformed into presentable information that adds to the inventory of what is known about climate change. In the lab, the whitebark researchers’ go-to tool was an Excel spreadsheet. It is a basic application. But its rows and columns are also the infrastructure on which most datasets and statistical analyses take shape. Plus it makes data collected in the field machine readable – which is to say it digitises and reorganises hand-written data sheets and readies this data for higher arithmetic and statistical operations. However, ubiquity – or what Microsoft calls an ‘industry standard’ – does not necessarily correlate with ease of use. Excel is not an intuitive application, since data has to be entered into it keystroke-bykeystroke, which is a tedious and time-consuming job. For the whitebark researchers, data entry is a protracted process that took almost two months of typing and constant cross-referencing to complete. Then when all the data was entered – and after small errors, such as misplaced numbers, were fixed or ‘cleaned’ – this is what their completed spreadsheets looked like:

Image credit: Jennifer Klutsch ***

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Data is useful. But in order to be truly meaningful, it has to be analysed and interpreted. And this requires the use of statistics, as it is the most common and, perhaps, effective way to infer meaning from information that is seemingly raw and unrelated. A spreadsheet is good for organising data, but it is limited – as it can do little more than summarise basic results. In order to identify significant relationships and test hypotheses, the whitebark researchers had to write code into two statistics programmes – one called R and the other, SAS – that assisted with these more complex operations. In the same way that entering their data into Excel took months, writing code and running the programmes took more time, and yielded a ‘script’ that looked like this:

Image credit: Jennifer Klutsch

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Then after the researchers had their code in working order, the statistics programmes produced an output that looked this:

Image credit: Jennifer Klutsch Yet the statistics output was still relatively unreadable and in need of interpretation. So the outputs were transformed into what are called data visualisations, which are charts and graphs that make it possible for the researchers to see correlations and relationships in their data:

Image credit: Klutsch et al., 2015

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Finally, after all the outputs and visualisations were in order and sensible, the researchers were able to draw conclusions and write-up their results that ended up being published as this:

Image credit: Jennifer Klutsch

6.5 C ODE S HIFT By the time a scientific article is published, its data has gone through multiple transformations. What started as a tree in the forest became a number or symbol on a piece of paper. Then it became an entry on a spreadsheet. Then a distinct variable in a line of code. Then a bit of information on a graph. Then, in time, it became an effect that was reported in the publication. For the whitebark researchers, the transformation and mediation of data is necessary to do science. In the same way that the mensuration techniques that they used in the field are a tool that assists with

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measuring a tree’s unseeable attributes, data is a tool that helps makes sense of an environment’s strange multiplicity of artefacts, effects and ecologies. But it cannot reproduce, in form or matter, whitebark pine or its environment. By its very nature, data is a dislocated abstraction. It is thousands of lines of code, spreadsheets filled with rows and columns of numbers, and data sheets that are composed of symbols and technical nomenclature. And none of these are a true, physical recreation of forest life – as they are all several degrees removed from what is real. Therefore, when data is well-organised and well-presented, it can conceal hard particulars and heavy realities. Or as Werner Herzog says, it ‘reaches a merely superficial truth, the truth of accountants’, which is to say it is a mechanistic or simplified simulacrum of whatever field researchers documented on their data sheets, and not the sum total of what exists in environment.11 Moreover, the presentation of data never reflects the hard work that went into its collection, collation, and publication. There is a physical disconnect in the transformation of material into numbers and graphs, since they do not show the distance the researchers travelled, the places they have been, and the totality of what they have seen. Hence, as Marx and Engels put it, this disconnect is a type of alienation, in that it turns what is material and real into an abstraction that distorts the source material’s real condition.

6.6 M ONUMENT The transformation of a forest into data does not mean that environment can be filed away or forgotten. As a matter of fact, what still remains at a study site where data was collected has to be kept in

11 Werner Herzog, ‘Minnesota Declaration: truth and fact in documentary cinema’, Herzog on Herzog, ed. Paul Cronin (London: Farber and Farber, 2002), 301.

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view, as it is a constant that can give detail and insight into what is happening to the world at large. Therefore, whilst they were in the field, the whitebark researchers left behind ‘monuments’ that are physical waypoints that other researchers can visit, so as to track changes to environment. In the vernacular of forest research, a monument is an established research plot that can usually be identified by sets of posts, tree tags or brass plaques. And these monuments are important because they delineate a research plot’s exact location and physical parameters, which makes it possible for researchers to return to the same site and, if the trees still stand, return to where they left off their studies. So it is possible to collect longitudinal data that can reveal long-term changes to environments. Monuments add an element of radical transparency. Their existence makes it possible for anybody who is willing to go the distance to check-in on the site’s condition. Plus, if they are so inclined, they can add to the researcher’s inventory of effects by collecting more data. However, in the case of the whitebark study, the researchers’ monuments have an added, grim meaning. As whitebark near the edge of extinction, they may well disappear without a trace, as it is very likely that nobody will be present to hear the sound the trees will make when they fall. Therefore, it is important that the researchers leave a monument to the whitebark, as it allows others to return and bear witness to the extirpation of a forest. *** Environmental activists sometimes make reference to the Lorax who, in Dr Suess’ eponymous text, speaks ‘for the trees’.12 As they see it, felled trees need somebody to speak on their behalf. So the activists take after the Lorax and give voice to forests that have fallen. And, on

12 Dr. Seuss, The Lorax (New York: Random House, 1971) 23.

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occasion, they reference a monument that the Lorax leaves behind, which ‘was a small pile of rocks, with one word… UNLESS’.13 At a glance, it may appear the whitebark researchers have a lot in common with the Lorax and environmental activists. But it is a false equivalence, because the researchers do not have any pretensions about speaking for the trees. In fact, they believe that speaking for the trees is unreasonable, in as much as it embodies what Gilles Deleuze calls the ‘indignity of speaking for others’.14 Or, put another way, to speak for the trees because ‘they have no tongue’ is a failure to put in the effort to understand how a forest and its ecologic constituents are capable of speaking for themselves.15 The need to make sense of what the forest is trying to say about its own well-being is the very reason that the field researchers climb mountains and traverse forests to take measurements. And it is this willingness to go the distance that sets the whitebark researchers apart from activists and other scientists who implicitly trust their data but have not done the work to verify whether it can stand on its own or speak for itself. Consequently, the whitebark researchers’ monuments are not a vague, moralistic warning that are written on behalf of a voiceless dead. Rather, they are a testament to the fact that someone has taken note of what the trees had to say.

6.7 L AST W ORDS Every child in a maths class is told to show their work. It is never enough for them to simply name an integer, since it does not show how

13 Dr Seuss, 58. 14 Deleuze in conversation with Foucault, "Intellectuals and Power", Language, Counter-Memory, Practice, ed. Donald Bouchard, trans. Donald Bouchard and Sherry Simon (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1977), 209. 15 Dr. Seuss, 23.

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they arrived at their conclusion. And this same critique must be applied to the conclusions that researchers derive from data. Too often, the anecdotes and narratives that come from data analysis are a consequence of a failure to show the work that went into gathering and interpreting data. More specifically, lack of detail gives the impression that data has no human element, as it betrays the toil that went into making it all come together. Plus it conceals what researchers call the ‘ground truth’ of what is physically happening in the field. The purpose of this case study is to ‘show the work’ and bear witness to the ways by which a forest is mediated, and given or denied the opportunity to speak for itself. Or, put a different way, it was meant to show that data comes from somewhere, and that someone puttogether a procedure to collect it, went to the field to record it and putin a lot time to make sense of what it all means. So, to modify an earlier anecdote about the sound of a tree falling in a wood, this text is a record of how a tree can literally and metaphorically vanish. And this is important because it shows how environment can be obscured, even when it is in plain sight.

Part 3 Lexicon

7 Interpretive Lexicon

It is not easy to change terms of debate. Popular discussion about environmental issues is limited to a few technical terms. And this has led to the development of a limited social imaginary that frames environmental issues in narrow and impractical terms.1 In order to give new expression to environmental thought and broaden the social imaginary, the lexicon that follows will analyse several matters of concern that have been documented in this text’s case studies. Plus it will define terms that can be immediately applied to interpreting almost any issue that relates to environment or everyday life. Hence, in Raymond Williams’ words, it will ‘take meaning from experience, and… make it active’ by creating an index or reference that assists with the interpretation of the ecologies by which environment and everyday life interact.2

1

For more on environmentalism and the burden of the burden of proof, see Appendix entry 15.

2

See also, Raymond Williams, Culture and Society (Garden City, New York: Doubleday & Company, 1960), 357.

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7.1 S TAGING In this text’s observations on Sheffield’s industrial environment, there is a mention of Thatcher’s ‘policy of preparation for preparation’. It was a well-formulated strategy that let her policies play-out in a way that made specific outcomes inevitable. So, in the case of the Miners’ Strike, the government spent some five years preparing for the Strike, by which they followed the Ridley Plan’s schemes for the reorganisation of how industries went about their business. Ecologists, engineers, and logistics managers have a word for Thatcher’s policy of preparation for preparation. They call it ‘staging’. As they see it, every event is preceded by a multitude of other occurrences in which matériel is put in place and conditions are primed for a particular purpose. For example, ecologists report that certain bird species stage their seasonal migrations, and flock together in a single location to rest and gather strength before they begin their journeys. Another example of staging is the way that industries and militaries stage and prepare matériel for use. In the technical language of logistics, staging makes smooth functioning possible. And, as is the case in Edmonton, this means equipment and matériel are laid-out in a way that lets later operations follow a specific, continuous order. 7.1.1 Heidegger and Staging In several of his texts, Martin Heidegger says staging is the means by which environment is made ‘into man’s dwelling’.3 More specifically, in ‘The Question Concerning Technology’, he gives detail to three inextricably linked modes of staging that ‘puts to nature the

3

Martin Heidegger, ‘What Calls for Thinking?’, trans. F. D. Wieck and J. Glenn Gray, Martin Heidegger: Basic Writings (London: Routledge, 1993), 379. Also, for more specific details relating to Heidegger’s concept of staging, see Appendix entry 16.

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unreasonable demand that it supply energy which can be extracted and stored’:4 1/ Enframing Heidegger defines enframing as a ‘commandeering of everything into assured availability’.5 It is his way of saying that events play-out according to set formulae that prepare material to be staged. So, before staging is in full operation, raw material have to be extracted and gathered together in a way that expedites ‘the furthering of something else’.6 2/ Ordering Once enframed, material is set-in-order. This means it is made to ‘exhibit itself as a coherence of forces calculable in advance’.7 Accordingly, material – whether it be coal, water, foodstuff or any other consumable – has to be precisely measured so that particular qualities conform to pre-set standards that establish what is to be readied as ‘mere stock’ and what is of no value.8 Then, after material has been set-in-order, the environment is set-up so that the extraction and yield of raw material and finished goods is maximised. Or as Heidegger says, ‘Air is now set upon to yield nitrogen, the earth to yield ore, ore to yield uranium… [then] uranium is set upon to yield atomic energy, which can be released either for destruction or for peaceful use’.9

4

Martin Heidegger, ‘The Question Concerning Technology’, The Question Concerning Technology and Other Essays, trans. William Lovitt (New York: Harper & Row, 1977), 17.

5

Martin Heidegger, ‘The Origin of the Work of Art’, 83.

6

Heidegger, ‘The Question Concerning Technology’, 16.

7

Ibid., 21.

8

Ibid., 17.

9

Ibid., 15.

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3/ Standing reserve After it is enframed and ordered, material becomes what Heidegger calls ‘standing reserve’.10 Thus it is inventoried and ‘ordered to stand by, to be immediately on hand, indeed to stand just so that it may be on call for a further ordering’.11 The establishment of standing-reserve winds-up an undertaking wherein ‘what is concealed in nature is unlocked, what is unlocked is transformed, what is transformed is stored up, what is stored up is, in turn, distributed, and what is distributed is switched about ever anew’.12 7.1.2 Analysis Staging is the means by which matériel is assembled and readied for use. It coordinates and gives order to the distribution of matériel held in reserve. And it determines the function of later operations, actions and work. This text’s three case studies contains well-detailed examples that explain how environment and everyday life are staged and organised: 1/ Wyoming The work of the field researcher is an important undertaking that advances knowledge of environment. But it is also an unintentional staging of environment. It happens each time that the researchers’ data is transformed. Therefore, in each iteration, the data less resembles the life of a forest than it does any ordinary entry on a spreadsheet or input into an algorithm. And this means environment has become a calculable coherence of forces that can be modelled, accounted for and regulated.

10 Heidegger, ‘The Question Concerning Technology’, 17. 11 Ibid. 12 Ibid., 16.

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To paraphrase one of Heidegger’s entries in ‘The Question Concerning Technology’: The researcher who measures a forest and, to all appearances, walks the same path in the same way as foresters who came before them now has to collect data that adds material for an algorithm that analyses and models the forests’ ecology. Subsequently, the forest is made subordinate to the orderability of information – that is to say it is challenged forth by the need for evidence that can explain the effects of climate change. Then the data, after it has been writtenup in a presentable form, is delivered to publishers, activists, politicians, and media outlets who set public opinion to swallowing their interpretation of what it all means.13 2/ Edmonton The city of Edmonton is built to stage the extraction of resources. It was its purpose when it was a fur trading outpost. It was its purpose when timber and coal were booming. And, now, the extraction of oil from Tar Sands has given the city a significant role in the global oil trade.

Nisku holding yard Image credit: Ledcor Inc.

13 Heidegger, ‘The Question Concerning Technology’, 18.

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Politicians and businesspeople in Edmonton say the city keeps industry connected with raw materials. As they see it, the logistics and staging of extraction is the city’s business. And this point-of-view is hard to deny when a quarter of the city’s landmass, as well as a third of its workforce, is dedicated to the staging of equipment, material, and labourers that keep Tar Sands operations in working order. Oil cannot flow if matériel is not staged and allowed to circulate through Edmonton’s holding yards, warehouses, job shops, offices, pipelines, refineries and miscellaneous industrial kit. Or, to put it more in simple terms, if Edmonton does not work, the city would be little more than a cold and unimportant outpost in the Canadian hinterlands. 3/ Sheffield The film Sheffield… city on the move says the city is built ‘on more than the human scale… in the smoke and grime of industry’.14 It is a statement that shows that the industrial environment preceded the modern city. Plus it fits the Hammonds’ description of the industrial city as ‘a settlement of great masses of people collected in a particular place because their fingers and muscles were needed on the brink of a stream here or at the mouth of a furnace there. These people were not citizens of this or that town, but hands of this or that master’.15 The build-up of the industrial environment in Sheffield was brought-about by the staging of resources and labour. As Orwell says about his time in Sheffield in the 1930s, it was self-evident that ‘The machines that keep us alive, and the machines that make the machines, are all directly or indirectly dependent on coal’.16 But, before those machines turned, and the works and mills were put into motion, there was a long series of events that had to be staged. Therefore, before there were machines, coal reserves had to be located. Then mines put in place, and labourers sent to dig the seam. Later, the coal brought up

14 Sheffield… city on the move. 15 JL and Barbara Hammond, 40. 16 Orwell, The Road to Wigan Pier, 31.

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from seam was stockpiled and marshalled. And, in time, turbines burned the coal that turned the machines that created the industrial haze in which the terrace rows took shape and everyday life emerged.

7.2 S TROBOSCOPY In Ernest Hemingway’s The Sun Also Rises, it is revealed that the protagonist, Mike, is bankrupt. Out of curiosity, a friend asks Mike how he lost his fortune. ‘Two ways, ’ Mike says. ‘Gradually, then suddenly’.17 It can also be said that every interaction in everyday life happens two ways. Gradually, then suddenly. To all appearances, everyday life is a product of a long chain of routines and habits that are the consequence of sudden or precarious circumstances. For example, King Mob graffiti that once appeared along the tube line between Ladbroke Grove and Westbourne Park said, SAME THING DAY AFTER DAY – TUBE – WORK – DINNER – WORK – TUBE – ARMCHAIR – TV – SLEEP – TUBE – WORK – HOW MUCH MORE CAN YOU TAKE

Then again, philosophers and theologians – not to mention ecologists, geologists and physicists – say that everyday life is an insignificant, passing moment in the gradual unravelling of history’s grand scheme. Moreover, this difference in historical perspective – that the passing of time can be consequential or insignificant – is an aporia that reveals the aspectival and multivariate context of everyday life. Or in less technical terms, it shows that every moment is preceded by a multitude of phenomena and chance occurrences that, as Wittgenstein says, ‘have

17 Ernest Hemingway, The Sun Also Rises (New York: Scribner, 2006), 141.

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no one thing in common... [but] are related to one another in different ways’.18 7.2.1 Discothèque In an interview with John Armitage, Friedrich Kittler says ‘history is a series of jolts that can usefully be compared with the stroboscopic lighting effects one encounters in a discothèque’.19 Kittler says that history happens through a sequence of shocks and jumps. So, in the disco, when the strobe is on, everything is suddenly held in place. And, when the strobe is off, everything gradually moves into a new position that is suddenly revealed when the strobe comes back on. In history, as well as the dark of a discothèque, a stroboscopic flicker is the sudden and gradual coming-together of circumstances and variables that relate in any number of ways. And this point of view is important because it means that: 1/ No moment in time is exclusive of any other moment in time. 2/ Every moment is simultaneously a response to what has occurred, as well as an anticipation of what will be. According to the image ecology of Kittler’s disco, every flash of the strobe illuminates an ever-incomplete set of phenomena that is dynamic, relational and immersed in what Heidegger calls ordering. Thus elements of what will come are gradually staged and set in motion whilst elements of the past are suddenly being illuminated.

18 Ludwig Wittgenstein, Philosophical Investigations, trans. G E M Anscombe et al. (Hoboken, New Jersey: Wiley Blackwell, 2010), xciii. 19 John Armitage, ‘From Discourse Networks to Cultural Mathematics, An Interview with Friedrich Kittler’, Theory, Culture & Society 23, no. 7-8, 28.

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Stroboscopy is neither linear or sequential. And this means that one specific moment does not necessarily lead into another. For example, in Kittler’s disco, a multitude of phenomena coexist within a contradiction-ridden, tension-filled environment where various moving parts come-together and interact.20 They can also move-on. Or, sometimes, they come back for more. So, at any given moment, whilst everything is happening, it is not clear if anything is in-sync or how it all relates. 7.2.2 Analysis Stroboscopy is important for understanding the order and organisation of environment and everyday life. It shows that every moment is less a consequence of cause and effect, and more a convergence of many gradual, almost imperceptible happenings that, in time, lead to a sudden and very visible threshold event. Plus it explains how staging happens without drawing much attention. In this text’s case studies, there are multiple examples of the stroboscopic gradual and sudden of environmental changes in everyday life. And these are: 1/ Wyoming At a glance, the relationship between everyday life and a few mountaintop whitebark pine trees appears tenuous. But they are linked. In fact, the tenuousness is an effect of the almost imperceptible and faraway changes in everyday life that have come together over time to suddenly make whitebark’s environment inhospitable. It is plain to see that whitebark pine are suddenly dying. One year the trees are green. Then the next, they have turned brown or have lost their needles. Yet suddenness is not the cause of death. Rather, the dieoff of whitebark, for the most part, comes from a convergence of

20 For more on the relationship between Stroboscopy and loud places, see Appendix entry 17.

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changes in environment that gradually added-up until the trees finally gave-in to circumstance. The death of whitebark is an after-effect of everyday life far below alpine mountaintops. More specifically, the gradual increase of global temperatures since the mid-19th century, when industrialisation took hold in places like Sheffield, has led to subtle environmental changes to which whitebark pine could never adapt. Plus a recent increase in atmospheric greenhouse gasses, like methane and carbon dioxide, which are a by-product of on-going extraction and refining operations in places like Edmonton, have accelerated the extirpation of whitebark. And, seeing as the present condition is a consequence of many, indirectly related events that already have or will soon come together, this means that everyday life is temporal as much as it is material or physical. 2/ Edmonton In Edmonton, the industrial holding yards always seem to be chockfull with the extraction industry’s odds and ends like lengths of pipe, service rigs and assorted industrial kit. So it appears that nothing ever moves. But this is all an illusion because, every night, much of the matériel is carried-off by lorries, destined for Tar Sands. Then, all the while, duplicates of the matériel that rolled-out arrives throughout the day at the holding yards, where the staging and preparations for transport starts over again. Most of the kit and consignments moved from the holding yards suddenly appear at extraction sites, refineries and upgraders in Tar Sands. Or, as is the case with the pipelines, lengths of pipe and construction material will reappear in woods and fields where pipelines will eventually be laid. Yet it is an undertaking that happens gradually and suddenly, because it takes years to gradually stage the matériel offsite before it is shipped and suddenly appears on-site, ready for use.

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3/ Sheffield The companies and consulting firms involved in the development of the new economy in Sheffield often use words like revitalise, renew, refurbish, and regenerate to describe the city’s sudden rise from the past’s debris. They also tout the ‘new industrial ecology’ that they say will bring ‘creativity to all sectors of the economy’. However, these claims do not make it clear that the green shoots of renewal only came after three decades of gradual decline that followed the sudden devastation of the industrial environment. And this focus on spectacle of the sudden conceals the fact that it took well-over a century to gradually piece-together the infrastructure on which the city’s new form is being built.

7.3 I NFRASTRUCTURE In Albert Camus’ The Fall, the story’s narrator tells his companion that everyday life is built on crisis and damage: Haven’t you noticed that our society is organized for... liquidation?... Well, that’s what their organization is. ‘Do you want a good clean life? Like everybody else?’ You say yes, of course. How can you say no? ‘O.K. You’ll be cleaned up. Here’s a job, a family, and organized leisure activities’... But I am 21

unjust. I shouldn’t say their organization. It is ours, after all...

As it is, this is a novel critique. Most other analyses – especially those that come from an environmental perspective – will never use a word like ‘liquidation’. And even if they do, they will never say that liquidation is caused by the organisation of society and day-to-day routine. The measure of what Camus can contribute to environmental analysis is not a question of whether his analysis is sufficiently

21 Camus, ‘The Fall’, 7-8.

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ecological in nature. Rather, it is a question of whether he has gone far enough in identifying the deeper, underlying causes of damage. And, by putting forward the idea of organisation as a form of damage, he takes environmental critique in a unique direction. According to Camus, it is not enough to simply state that environmental damage is bad. Hence he asks his companion to look at how our society is organized and see the ways by which social activity makes liquidation a matter of routine. And the common element of what he calls a ‘good clean life’ is infrastructure, because it is, quite literally, the framework that holds the modern world together. What follows are four short analyses that will dig beneath the surface of everyday life to show how infrastructure simultaneously gives form to everyday life and makes the liquidation of environment possible. 7.3.1 Mod Cons On its surface, the idea of a ‘good clean life’ that Camus writes about is filled with all the modern conveniences. As the character Renton in the film Trainspotting says, everyday life is ready-made, because all people have to do is: Choose Life. Choose a job. Choose a career. Choose a family. Choose a fucking big television, choose washing machines, cars, compact disc players and electrical tin openers. Choose good health, low cholesterol, and dental insurance. Choose fixed interest mortgage repayments. Choose a starter home...

22

Moreover, seeing as these choices come pre-assembled or only require a few forms be filled, people rarely give any consideration to how anything works or became present-at-hand.

22 Trainspotting, directed by Danny Boyle (1996, Channel Four Films).

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Camus says that ‘We get into the habit of living before we acquire the habit of thinking’.23 Therefore, thoughtlessness is a distinct characteristic of everyday life. For example, most modern conveniences are advertised as being pre-assembled, ready-to-wear, user-friendly or as simple as pushing a button. Plus ease of use has made everyday life so serviceable and accommodating that there is no need to put any thought into flipping a switch to get light. Nor does anybody think much about the amount of data that needs to be moved just to watch a video online. And, because thoughtlessness is such a part of the modern condition, the infrastructure that makes it all happen is a banal part of the background of everyday life. One way or another, every modern convenience is made possible by the underlying framework of bridges, cables, mains, pipes, roads, tunnels, waterways, and wires. So when everything works as it should, there is no reason to think about the different bits and pieces that fit-out all the modern conveniences. But strip away the infrastructure that supplies energy and entertainments – as well as most anything that is vital to keeping modern conveniences in working order – and people will definitely notice that everyday life has come to a standstill. Therefore, the thoughtlessness that comes with everyday life is a byproduct of infrastructure. 7.3.2 Build In this text’s observations on industry in Sheffield, there was a stanza from a poem that says: Our civilisation Is built upon coal

23 Albert Camus, The Myth of Sisyphus, trans. Justin O’Brien (New York: First Vintage International, 1991), 8.

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It is statement that was a matter of fact throughout the Industrial Revolution and much of the 20th century. As Orwell says in The Road to Wigan Pier, ‘Practically everything we do, from eating ice cream to crossing the Atlantic, and from baking a loaf to writing a novel, involves the use of coal, directly or indirectly’.24 As time has passed, coal has ceased to be a primary source of power. But this does not mean the poem or Orwell’s comment are any less significant. As a matter of fact, both sentiments are applicable to infrastructure, seeing as modern living’s conveniences do not work if infrastructure is not in place.

Motorway infrastructure in Chicago Photo credit: Jason Peterson More precisely, infrastructure is the form that gives function to everyday life. After all, mains electricity charges batteries. Pipelines carry oil to the refinery and on to petrol stations. And motorways make

24 Orwell, The Road to Wigan Pier, 40.

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it possible for lorries to carry fresh fruit and veg from greenhouses to grocers’ shelves. 7.3.3 Liquidation Architects and city planners sometimes call infrastructure a ‘transitional object’. In an essay called ‘Transitional Objects’, Brian Taggart says that infrastructure is a ‘holding environment’ or ‘potential space’ that connects ‘inner objects and outer objects’.25 Or, in less technical terms, infrastructure is the means by which a natural environment is made to transition into a built environment. This text’s Edmonton case study contains several examples of infrastructure as transitional object. For example, in its observations on Old Strathcona’s place in the city of Edmonton, there is a description of how the neighbourhood was surveyed, grid-planned, and laid-out before the Railway arrived. Likewise, it was shown that, in time, the Railway’s original groundwork of roads and mains created the form on which the modern city was built. The concept of infrastructure as transitional object gives substance to Camus’ statement that society is organised for liquidation. For instance, in Alberta’s Tar Sands, bitumen is extracted and ‘cleaned up’ through a process by which dirt is, literally, liquefied. Yet this process of liquefaction is only possible because an infrastructure of pipelines, refineries and upgraders, holding yards, and office space were in place before extraction operations were initiated. Consequently, oil cannot flow if industrial kit is not in place. And if oil does not flow, everyday life in Edmonton and beyond cannot function smoothly. Or put another way, if Tar Sands are not liquefied, the built environment has no form, modern conveniences will not function, and everyday life is of little or no significance.

25 Brian Taggart, ‘Transitional Objects’ (unpublished conference paper, 2007), 3 and 13.

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7.3.4 Apparatus of Capture In the film Sheffield… City on the move, the narrator states that the city’s industry produces the matériel that lays the foundation for an ‘Empire of Things… of tracks and trains, of factories, and many hundreds of tools to engineer… the apparatus of modernity’.26 And in that narrative, there are two unintentional allusions to more complex ideas, the apparatus of modernity and the Empire of Things, which can provide deeper insight into the particulars of how infrastructure appropriates environment and sustains everyday life: 1/ Apparatus of modernity It is generally assumed that an apparatus is a piece of technology, a tool or mechanism. However, as Giorgio Agamben defines the term in ‘What is an Apparatus?’, an apparatus is ‘literally anything that has in some way the capacity to capture, orient, determine, intercept, model, control, or secure the gestures, behaviors, opinions, or discourses of living beings’.27 The phrase ‘apparatus of modernity’ signifies a world in which environment has been captured and brought under control by the infrastructure of modern life. In A Thousand Plateaus, when Deleuze and Guattari discuss ‘the apparatus of capture of territory’, they are implicitly referring to infrastructure.28 And, as such, it is infrastructure that reorganises environment, or what they call an ‘itinerant territory’,

26 Sheffield… City on the move. 27 Giorgio Agamben, ‘What is an Apparatus?’, What is an Apparatus? and Other Essays, trans. David Kishik and Stefan Pedatella (Stanford, California: Stanford University Press, 2009), 14. 28 Gilles Deleuze and Felix Guattari, A Thousand Plateaus: Capitalism and Schizophrenia, trans. Brian Massumi (London, England: Continuum, 2004), 441.

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by fragmenting it into smaller pieces of land that are redistributed ‘according to a common quantitative criterion’.29 2/ Empire of Things The phrase ‘Empire of Things’ is an imperial metaphor. It is a reference to a domain or territory wherein a form of order – or what Agamben calls an apparatus of ‘rules, rites, and institutions’ – has been imposed by an external power.30 Therefore, like any other Empire, the Empire of Things is sustained by the extraction of resources and material from lands that are presumed to be uncivilised. Infrastructure is a colonising force. It turns landscape and resources into usable material. Or as Deleuze and Guattari put it, infrastructure ‘reterritorializes on deterritorialization itself’.31 And it does this by capturing territory and imposing a particular material order or mode of damage that benefits what Camus calls ‘our organisation’. The convenience and sophistication of the Empire of Things are surface effects that obscure the artifice and organisation of everyday life. After all, everyday life does not just happen. Rather, it is a construct that has been built-up over time. So, before everyday life can take shape, a framework of artefacts and material have to be at hand and in place.

7.4 F RAGMENTATION In this text’s observations on the decline of industry in Sheffield, it is noted the Thatcher government had a ‘strategy of fragmentation’. Or as Nicholas Ridley crassly put it in his Report, they wanted to use the ‘break up [of] the industries’ as a ‘stick’ to whip the British economy

29 Deleuze and Guattari, 487. 30 Agamben, 5. 31 Deleuze and Guattari, 421.

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into shape.32 So it was a foregone conclusion that fragmenting ‘the industries as far as possible’ would make everyday life ‘commercially oriented’.33 According to the Ridley Report, fragmentation is the most effective way to rework industrial power. It is a simple divide and conquer strategy wherein social and material ecologies that are ‘part of our way of economic life’ are broken into ‘subsidiary and peripheral’ bits. And this makes environment manageable, as it is easier to colonise and control ecologies that are fragmented than it is to work with wellestablished, ‘institutionalised’ ways of life.34 7.4.1 The Science of Fragmentation Ecologists use the word fragmentation to describe the break-up of environment. In fact, the Ridley Report’s working definition of fragmentation is similar to what is used in most ecology textbooks or published research articles. But, unlike the Ridley Report, ecologists believe that it rarely has a positive connotation. It has been observed that fragmentation disrupts and endangers flora and fauna. Ecologists say it happens because an environment is broken-down into smaller plots that become isolated from one another and develop dissimilar characteristic and ecologies. And, thereafter, the isolated plots lose the capacity to absorb damage or the ability to muster the proper resources that would ordinarily make recovery possible. Therefore, in time, minor fluctuations in climate or other factors become catastrophic. Ecological research shows that fragmented communities lack integrity. For instance, a study by ecologists at University of Helsinki says that ‘highly connected populations can experience less impact

32 Economic Reconstruction Group. 33 Ibid. 34 Ibid.

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from infectious disease than isolated groups’.35 Or as one of the researchers, Anna-Liisa Laine, puts it, ‘If we have these little islands of susceptible hosts in a landscape, harboring high levels of infection that transmit to everything around them, the potential is there for spillover’ that will eventually extirpate entire species and decimate ecologies.36 7.4.2 Extraction The Ridley Report is dogmatic about using fragmentation to create an environment that is beneficial to Tory economic policies. It is a type of opportunism that uses crises to extract material value from the ruin of environments and social ecologies. And it is guided by a ratchet logic that finds ever more opportunities to extract value from the damage it has manufactured. From the perspective of Ridley and others who adhere to likeminded policies, whether it be David Cameron’s Austerity or Structural Adjustment in Latin America, fragmentation is a form of extraction. For example, in the Edmonton case study, the fragmentation of the boreal landscape makes it possible to extract bitumen. Or, as was the case in Old Strathcona, the railway and land developers were able to extract value from their investments only after a wood was cleared to make way for grids of tree-lined streets and residential parcels. The Ridley Report’s emphasis on being ‘stealthy’ is an implicit acknowledgment that fragmentation and extraction are meant to cause damage.37 Hence the Report went to great lengths to advise Thatcher on the fine details of how to plan, stage and politically benefit from a policy of managed decline that was contrived so as to crush coal power

35 Jussi Jousimo, et al., ‘Ecological and evolutionary effects of fragmentation on infectious disease dynamics’, Science 344, no. 6189 (2014), 1289. 36 Brandon Keim, ‘Increasing the Fragmentation of Natural Landscapes May Help Spread Disease’, Wired, 12 June 2014. 37 Economic Reconstruction Group.

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and tear-down industry.38 And it worked. Thatcher became an idol that is worthy of veneration by some and scorn from others. But, more importantly, her legacy has bequeathed other politicians the opportunity to further fragment the industrial environment and extract more concessions from social institutions, which has led to the wholesale privatisation of entitlements and the spectre of total devastation.

38 For more on stealth and fragmentation, see Appendix entry 18.

8 Critical Lexicon

Like the Interpretive Lexicon that precedes it, this lexicon is meant to ‘take meaning from experience and make it active’ by developing a new vocabulary of environment. But it also introduces several critical ideas that can spruce-up environmental discourse. In The General Theory of Employment, Interest and Money, John Maynard Keynes writes about ‘a struggle of escape from habitual modes of thought and expression’.1 He says, ‘The difficulty lies, not in the new ideas, but in escaping from the old ones’.2 So, following Keynes, this lexicon gives words to a criticism of the most damaging habits of everyday life and pushes forward ideas that can change how people make sense of environment.

8.1 T HRESHOLD Ecologists use the word ‘threshold’ to describe the point at which environmental change is irremediable or beyond repair. As it is defined by one of the most cited articles on the topic, which has the collegially

1

John Maynard Keynes, The General Theory of Money, Interest and Employment (New Delhi: Atlantic, 2008), vii.

2

Ibid.

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long title ‘Ecological Thresholds: The Key to Successful Environmental Management or an Important Concept with No Practical Application?’, a threshold is ‘the point at which there is an abrupt change in an ecosystem quality, property or phenomenon, or where small changes in an environmental driver produce large responses in the ecosystem’.3 And this definition is important because it is explicit about a threshold being a consequence of ‘small changes’. Therefore, in addition to signifying the passing of one environment to another, a threshold is a delayed, ‘large response’ to gradual changes in environment’s ecologies and form. As has already been discussed in this text’s Interpretive Lexicon, environmental damage happens two ways, gradually and suddenly. Accordingly, the gradual is the staging and coming-together of what ecologists call ‘drivers’, and catastrophe is the spectacle of the sudden. And this means threshold is a dividing line or, as ecologists put it, a ‘regime shift’ that represents the ‘reconfiguration between’ gradual and sudden.4 Environment is never the same after a threshold has been passed. In the case of Thatcher’s wrecking-ball programme of deindustrialisation, the threshold was passed when the coal and steel industries could no longer hold together the material and social ecologies of everyday life. And in Edmonton, the city will pass the threshold after the oil boom in the Tar Sands comes to an end. Or in Wyoming, the threshold will be passed when the trees have nowhere left to climb. The environment that comes after a threshold has been passed is precarious. The succeeding environment and its ecologies are not yet capable of what Deleuze and Guattari call ‘smooth functioning’. And this happens because an environment’s prior ecologies have been

3

Peter Groffman et al., ‘Ecological Thresholds: The Key to Successful Environmental Management or an Important Concept with No Practical Application?’, Ecosystems 9 (2006), 1.

4

Tom Anderson et al., ‘Ecological Thresholds and Regime Shifts: from theory to operation’, Trends in Ecology and Evolution 24, no. 1 (2009), 50.

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fragmented and new ecologies have yet to become well-rooted. It is, therefore, not a coincidence that the creative class in Sheffield’s new cultural industries work in a precarious environment where there is no set employment contract, let alone a stable workplace. 8.1.1 Catastrophe Words like catastrophe, devastation, and apocalypse are common synonyms for threshold in popular discourse. They are a regular fixture in the popular media’s articles and ledes on environment. And they have come to signify what James Lovelock, in The Revenge of Gaia, calls ‘the tipping point’ or ‘point of no return’ at which ‘the Earth... [will] realize the severity of its illness’.5 Catastrophe makes headlines and gets attention. It is flash and compelling. But the spectacle of catastrophe is the last act of a complex and telling record of events that have gradually come together over years, decades or even centuries. In an essay in which they lament the failure of journalists to provide in-depth coverage of environmental issues, the editors of the Guardian have admitted that: We prefer to deal with what has happened, not what lies ahead. We favour what is exceptional and in full view over what is ordinary and hidden.

6

The problem, then, with paying attention to spectacle is that it makes it hard to see the ‘other extraordinary and significant things happening’.7 Therefore, spectacle is a glittering lure or surface effect that distracts

5

James Lovelock, The Revenge of Gaia (London: Allen Lane, 2006), 6 and 56.

6

Alan Rusbridger, ‘Climate Change: why the Guardian is putting threat to Earth front and centre’, The Guardian, 6 March 2015.

7

Ibid.

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from the true depth of damage. Plus it glosses-over the remaining artefacts that can be used to make sense of what is still to come.8 In order to avert catastrophe, those who want to change environment must not gaze at the spectacle of the sudden. No matter how razzamatazz it may be, spectacle is little more than an afterimage of the damage that has already been done. So it is best to get engaged on a level beyond flash and look for the gradual.9 8.1.2 Reasonable Hope and the Habit of Action Searching for a threshold’s gradual elements requires the tedious elaboration of details, even if they appear inconsequential. But seeking-out the gradual makes it possible to identify some of the factors that directly lead to a threshold event. And the knowledge that comes from giving nuance to specific details, such as those that the whitebark researchers work to unearth, can only benefit any attempt to remediate damage and forestall catastrophe. Otherwise, damage, fragmentation, the further break-down of social relations and more catastrophes are inevitable. Plus, as Camus puts it, ‘for those who do make this effort… in so doing they will find a reasonable hope and the habit of action’.10 In this text, the work done by the field researchers in the Wyoming case study is a prime example of a search for the gradual. Likewise, it can be found in other places that have not been discussed in this text, such as Oaxaca, Mexico, where cultural anthropologists have unearthed a direct relationship between the decline of oak forests,

8

Rusbridger.

9

‘The Wheel’, Mad Men, dir Matthew Weiner (Lionsgate Television, 2007).

10 Albert Camus, Between Hell and Reason, trans. Alexander de Gramont (London: Wesleyan University Press, 1991), 135. Also, for more on alternatives for future infrastructure, see Appendix entry 19.

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social inequality, political corruption and the global arms trade.11 Or further afield, research commissioned by the International Monetary Fund shows that seemingly insignificant fluctuations in crop yields and commodity prices can do irrevocable damage to ‘the Business Cycle’.12

8.2 G ROUND T RUTH In Rural Rides, which is a series of essays published between 1822 and 1826, William Cobbett says that ‘Those that travel on turnpike roads know nothing of England’.13 It is a small, passing comment on how the route and speed by which one travels can significantly distort and abstract the on-the-ground realities of everyday life. But, these days, Cobbett’s observation is prescient, seeing as people can now transit or fly-over borders and entire countries without ever noticing the slightest change in a landscape or culture’s contours. And this is troublesome because it means that people can circle the globe without knowing any hard particulars about what is going-on in the world around them. In some sciences, ground truth is a method of analysis that uses direct observation to verify and make sense of objects, events, and ecologies that, at a glance, appear abstract. More specifically, the term ground truth refers to the use of fieldcraft to make sense of details that only appear in the field. So, sciences like cartography or meteorology dispatch research crews to specific locations to establish ground truth, which allows them to correlate or cross-reference real-world happenings with computer-generated models and theorems. The work done by the whitebark researchers in this text’s Wyoming case study is another example of ground truth. In fact, their

11 Karla Zabludovsky, ‘Reclaiming the Forest and the Right to Feel Safe’, The New York Times, 2 August 2012. 12 World Economic Outlook: Housing and the Business Cycle, International Monetary Fund, April 2008. 13 William Cobbett, Rural Rides (London: A Cobbett, 1853), 284.

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willingness to go the distance to monument the whitebark’s last stand serves as a model of how ground truth is pieced together. Plus their travels into the field has provided real insight into the intricacies and inner-workings of ecologies that are ordinarily out of view. *** Ground truth is not a replacement for the scientific method. In practise, it is a form of hypothesis testing and data collection that brings abstract concepts to life. But ground truth is also unique because it bears witness to the material realities that are latent or unseen in the rows of data and analytic code. Ground truth is a way to ‘show the work’. Hence, in the Wyoming case study, the field researchers established monuments that give the parameters of a study site. And this is quite radical because it makes the science of data collection transparent and open, at least for those who are willing to go the distance to add to the inventory of effects. To modify William Cobbett’s words, ground truth allows people to know something of environment. It does this by making the production of scientific knowledge public. For example, climate change researchers often have citizen scientists – who are, generally, very motivated and enthusiastic non-experts – assist with the collection and monitoring of temperature readings, precipitation data, and other far afield information that would ordinarily consume researcher’s time and resources. Thus it can expand the scope of a researcher’s work and, by allowing the general public to participate in fieldwork, it increases the public’s understanding of discrete events and phenomena. Finally, ground truth is not limited to the work of science research. It can be also found in first-person accounts of post-industrial dole life in Sheffield that redundant workers tell. Or it can be seen in the images of Tars Sands operations that have been captured by photographers like Andriko Lozowy, Edward Burtynsky, and Peter Essick. And all of this information is important because it introduces perspectives that add to

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a more detailed knowledge of how environmental and social ecologies relate.

8.3 S USTAINMENT Almost every discussion of environment will include a mention of sustainability. It is even written into treaties and intergovernmental protocols, like the United Nations’ Agenda 21, which states that its purpose is to improve ‘the quality of life while living within the carrying capacity of supporting ecosystems’.14 Therefore, sustainability is a catch-all term that is supposed to make environmental damage more manageable by establishing quantifiable development goals and limits on extraction yields. When the word sustainability first appeared in environmental discourse in the 1960s and 70s, it was a regulatory term. It referred to the ability of government agencies to set-aside resources and cap extraction yields. Hence the United States’ Multiple-Use and Sustained Yield-Act, which was passed in 1960, defines sustainability as: ‘the achievement and maintenance in perpetuity of a high-level annual or regular periodic output of the various renewable resources of the national forests without impairment of the productivity of the land’.15 In the mid-1980s, sustainability took-on new meaning. At the time, environmental catastrophes, like Chernobyl or the Piper Alpha incident, received significant media coverage. So with the consequences of environmental catastrophe being very real and in fullview, environmental issues became a conspicuous matter of social interest, and sustainability became a key word in the language of environment. However, instead of explicitly fixing quantitative limits for productivity and yield, it became a vague, normative rationale for

14 Caring for the Earth: A Strategy for Sustainable Living, IUCN/UNEP/ WWF, October 1991. 15 Multiple-Use Sustainable-Yield Act of 1960, PL 86-517, 12 June 1960.

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development goals and broad remedies. For instance, the Brundtland Report specifies that sustainability is a form of 'development that meets the needs of the present without compromising the ability of future generations to meet their own needs’.16 In its everyday use, sustainability is now associated with an increasingly popular notion that environment naturally exists in a steady, balanced state or organic system wherein everything has a natural place. And this is reflected in the United States Environmental Protection Agency‘s new definition of sustainability, which makes reference to ‘the conditions under which humans and nature can exist in productive harmony, that permit fulfilling the social, economic and other requirements of present and future generations’.17 Or in the words of John Mackey, the founder of Whole Foods, which is famous for promoting wellness, sustainability is a form ‘self-adjustment’ that allows the natural order to attain ‘spontaneous equilibrium’.18 Thus it is now presumed that systemic problems that have built-up and compounded over time can be corrected through managerial tweaks and incremental improvements in performance. 8.3.1 Disharmony This text’s case studies have shown that environment is anything but stable or harmonious. Nor do they demonstrate that there is a coherent natural order. Instead, they show that environment is dynamic and full of radical dislocations, as is the case in:

16 Report of the World Commission on Environment and Development: Our Common Future, United Nations World Commission on Environment and Development (1987). 17 ‘What is Sustainability’, United States Environmental Protection Agency (2009). 18 John Mackey and Rajendra Sisodia, Conscientious Capitalism (Boston, Massachusetts: Harvard Business Review Press, 2014), 31.

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1/ Sheffield There was nothing natural or spontaneous about the tear-down of industry in Sheffield. The demolition of the industrial environment was the consequence of a well-planned economic programme. And that programme had no intent to sustain coal mining and steel production. In fact, the Ridley Report clearly states that anything less than the ‘fragmentation’ and total ‘break up [of] the industries’ is to be considered a failure.19 Likewise, there was no equitable counter-balance to the loss of jobs and redevelopment of everyday life in Sheffield. Nor did the city return to anything that could be described as equilibrium. It took over twenty-five years of further decay, blight, concerted effort and capital investment for a new economic environment to be built-up. Yet the new environment does not share any of the number or quality of material or social ecologies that were present in the environment it replaced. 2/ Edmonton There is nothing sustainable about extraction operations in Tar Sands. In practise, bitumen extraction leaves behind scars that are so large and disfiguring that oil companies do little to conceal their existence. And though there are a few exceptions, little is done to return the land or boreal forest’s ecologies to anything like what existed before it was strip-mined. Therefore, the operations are unsustainable, because extraction depletes resources without conserving what has been tornapart, pushed aside or stripped bare. The staging of equipment and matériel in Edmonton shows that the only thing that will be sustained in Tar Sands is the expansion of extraction operations. More specifically, the constant turn-over of matériel in holding yards makes it clear that companies involved in extraction have no intent to leave any bitumen in the ground. So the mining companies will keep building-up their operations until the oil

19 Economic Reconstruction Group.

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boom cannot be carried-on ‘in perpetuity’ and it all goes bust, just like the booms that have preceded it. 3/ Wyoming Whitebark pine are incapable of ‘self-adjusting’ by picking up their roots. The world around the high-altitude whitebark pine forest is rapidly changing. They have no place to go, and there is nothing they can do to avoid extinction. And even if it was possible for the forest to return to some sort of equilibrium, it will not include whitebark, which are doomed to die-off. 8.3.2 Limits of a Noble Idea Sustainability is a noble idea. But it is an ineffective regulatory tool. And this is because it has, so far, failed to keep environmental damage under control. Nor has it come to terms with on-the-ground realities. Sustainability is, in Heidegger’s words, a calculative ‘instrumentality’ that reduces environment to a set of functions and computational processes.20 It does this by counting on abstract mechanisms, like equilibrium and self-adjustment, that have no real sense of ground truth or the hard particulars of how different ecologies, as well as matter and subjectivities, relate. Plus it operates according to the same opaque Thatcher-inspired cost-benefit thinking that is already prevalent in everyday life. As the entries in this text’s interpretive lexicon have made clear, everyday life is organised for liquidation. As it is, damage is a byproduct of the ways by which built environments are staged and laid-out. In the most simple of terms: There must be damage. Otherwise, all the modern conveniences will never be in working order, and everyday life will fail to function. And this means sustainability is an

20 Heidegger, ‘The Question Concerning Technology’, 2.

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impossibility as long as matériel continues to be staged and infrastructure remains in place. *** To be able to endure, sustainability needs to be more than a synonym for equilibrium. In its everyday use, sustainability has become a notion that comes-off as well-meaning in advertising campaigns and political speeches, but it has no sensible connection with the environment it aims to protect. Or, worse, it can be said that damage has, so far, proven to be more sustainable than most any attempt at environmental protection. Sustainability is problematic. But there is another idea, ‘sustainment’, that can easily take its place. And, though it may seem to be an artful dodge to substitute one word with another that is almost identical, the swap is necessary because it does away with many of the conceits that have made sustainability unworkable. Despite being lexically similar, sustainment is not sustainability. The most noticeable difference is the fact that sustainment is not an abstract noun, seeing as the suffix -ment indicates action – and this immediately sets it apart from sustainability, which has become offhand for passive management. Beyond semantics, sustainment is a word that, in its common use, explicitly focuses on the ‘provision of logistics and personnel services required to maintain and prolong’ a task at hand.21 So, in practise, it prioritises ground truth and a detailed understanding of how material and social ecologies relate over pre-existing categories and sums. Sustainment’s emphasis on logistics and personnel services means it has to consider externalities or social practises, such as decisionmaking, consumer behaviour, or cultural values, are built into everyday life. Otherwise, it will never fully be able to properly maintain

21 Operational-Level Logistics, Marine Corps Warfighting Publication 4-12 (Washington, DC: US Marine Corps, 2 June 2016), 13.

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infrastructure and resources in a way that limits environmental damage or, worse, the continued deformation of the current state of affairs. A working, though small-scale, example of sustainment is Sheffield’s Portland Works. It is a jobsite that has stayed in operation for well-over a century. And it has sustained itself by maintaining material and social ecologies that are part of a mode of production that relies on the circulation of labour and resources. So it has never relied on economies of scales or extreme specialisation as much as it does hard-earned skill and an intimate knowledge of how the community around it is organised. So, when times have changed, the Little Meesters have never had to demolish or replace the Works. Instead, they have always found a way to add, transform and reuse.

8.4 C OMPLICITY Amongst climate change researchers, there is no debate about whether climate change is real. For them, it is not a question of if it is happening. Rather, they are concerned about its severity. In fact, a survey of published, peer-reviewed journal articles shows that over ninety-seven percent of research on the subject confirms that climate change is occurring and that human activity is responsible. Quantitative data makes it clear that the planet is at the beginning of a new epoch that can be identified by: – an upward trend in global temperatures – atmospheric carbon dioxide amounts that are higher than at any time in known history – diminishing biodiversity – acidification of oceans Moreover, the data shows that this new epoch has its origins in the 19th century, around the time that industrialisation took hold in places like Sheffield. And it reveals that this epoch was firmly in-process, and

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had even intensified, by the mid-20th century, at a time when carbonheavy energy sources, such as oil from Edmonton, became the primary source of atmospheric carbon. Some scholars, including Nobel laureates like Paul Crutzen, now call this new epoch the ‘Anthropocene’.22 As they see it, climate data clearly indicates that there is a direct link between climate change and human activity. Likewise, as John Gray explains in an essay published in The Observer, the Anthropocene will end in a crisis that will come from a ‘clash between the expanding demands of humankind and a finite world’.23 8.4.1 There is No Alternative This text’s case studies have made it clear that environmental damage is a byproduct of modern convenience. For example, Sheffield would never have been ‘a city on the move’ if coal fires had not powered the machines of industry and pumped smoke from chimneys. Or Edmonton will suffer a bust economy if bitumen is not extracted and mechanically upgraded. Orwell says that ‘the high standard of life we enjoy’ makes for ‘an evil state of affairs’.24 Likewise, he insists that the link between civilisation and damage is binding, because ‘you acquiesce in it every time you step into a taxi or eat a plate of strawberries and cream’.25 This text’s observations on life in Edmonton shows how common it is for people to go about their daily routine without giving much thought to ways by which they support mineral extraction and damage.

22 Joseph Stromberg, ‘What is the Anthropocene and Are We in It?’, Smithsonian Magazine, January 2014. 23 John Gray, ‘This Changes Everything: Capitalism vs the Climate review – Naomi Klein’s powerful and urgent polemic’, The Observer, 22 September 2014. 24 Orwell, The Road to Wigan Pier, 136. 25 Ibid.

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Nor does anybody think much about the specifics of how their routine contributes to the extinction of trees in Wyoming. And this sort of mindlessness reflects Camus’ point about people getting into the habit of living before acquiring the habit of thinking, which is to say that damage is a matter of acquiescence rather than intent. When Camus says that society is organised for liquidation, he is pointing-out that a good, clean life is built on an implicit acceptance of damage. So there are no good arguments to be made about whether complicity can be accepted or rejected, as most people have little choice but to acquiesce. Or as Thatcher would say, ‘there is no alternative’ 8.4.2 Us/Them Contemporary environmental discourse does not understand complicity. Instead it asserts that damage is caused by either ‘us’ or ‘them’: 1/ Us In an essay called ‘Confessions of a Recovering Environmentalist’, Paul Kingsnorth insists that environment is a victim of ‘the empire of Homo sapiens sapiens’.26 He also says that human life is morally responsible for the damage caused by civilisation. Or, as he poetically puts it, ‘We are it; we are in it and of it, we make it and live it, we are fruit and soil and tree, and the things done to the roots and the leaves come back to us’.27 2/ Them In This Changes Everything: Capitalism v. The Climate, Naomi Klein says, ‘the main enemy’ is a cohort of politicians, corporate elites, and

26 Paul Kingsnorth, ‘Confessions of a Recovering Environmentalist’, Orion Magazine. 27 Ibid.

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technocrats who serve monied interests.28 And she says that this nameless, cabal-like lot is fully responsible for almost all environmental damage. Klein believes that the main enemy’s decisions and machinations enriches ‘the structure’, which is based on ‘indiscriminate growth [that] inevitably leads to greater consumption and to greater CO2 emissions’.29 And this means ‘We are stuck because the actions that would give us the best chance of averting catastrophe – and would benefit the vast majority – are extremely threatening to an elite minority that has a stranglehold over our economy, our political process, and most of our major media outlets’.30 *** There are two fundamental problems with assigning blame for damage on either us or them: a/ Most people will never take full personal responsibility for the damage they have done. Except for the truly deranged, nobody wakes-up in the morning and maliciously sets-out to destroy the world. It is a fact that people, by going about their everyday lives, contribute to environmental damage. But the actions of individuals did not directly or intentionally contribute to every event that may lead to the Anthropocene’s sudden onset. Kingsnorth, by emulating the rantings of Nietzsche’s Madman, turns damage into a joint venture wherein he all but concedes to being

28 Klaus Brinkbaumer, ‘SPIEGEL Interview with Naomi Klein: The Economic System We Have Created Global Warming’, SPIEGEL, 25 February 2015. 29 Ibid. 30 Ibid.

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Thatcher’s ‘enemy within’.31 Plus he fails to even follow-up his bold statements about being responsible for damage with any questions that Nietzsche says the Madman asks, some of which are: But how did we do this? How could we drink up the sea? Who gave us the sponge to wipe away the entire horizon? 32

What were we doing when we unchained this earth from its sun?

And this lack of follow-up shows that he is more interested in assigning blame than finding an alternative course of action. Simply put, it is not possible to go beyond spectacle or surface effects if there is no deeper awareness of ground truth, b/ It is impossible that an elite minority are in direct control of everything, everywhere. Recent economic crises have shown that corporate executives and ‘elites’, whoever they may be, have no real knowledge of how their ‘system’ works. In fact, they rarely even understand the day-to-day workings of their companies and personal holdings. For instance, the CEO of General Motors explained during a hearing with a committee of the US Senate that, ‘in a vast corporate structure with numerous rank-and-file employees and midlevel managers simply doing their job, it’s hard to pinpoint where responsibility lays’.33 Putting faith in management is irresponsible – even if the reason for doing so is to point-out fault. As the narrator says in Layer Cake,

31 Margaret Thatcher, ‘Speech to the 1922 Committee’, 19 July 1984. 32 Friedrich Nietzsche, The Gay Science, trans. Josefine Nauckhoff (Cambridge, England: University of Cambridge Press, 2003), 119-120. 33 Bill Vlasic and Matthew Wald, ‘GM Chief Faces Ire of Senators in Hearing’, The New York Times, 2 April 2014.

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‘They don’t mean to fuck up. They just do’.34 Likewise, the general inability of decision-makers to simply do their job is the reason the Ridley Report calls managers and leadership ‘hopeless’.35 By faulting monied interests that are, in reality, little more than forms filed-away in a cabinet somewhere in Panama City, Klein fails to properly detail the inner-workings of ‘business-as-usual’.36 It is a tactical fault that causes her to stop well short of providing deep insight into how this organisation affects everyday life. And this is a missed opportunity because, if she can name names, it is possible to develop particular tactics for improving the current state of affairs.

8.5 S OLIDARITY There is no point in trying to fault us or them for being the sole source of damage. As this text has shown multiple times, the real driver is much larger, comprehensive and institutional than any one person or group.37 Damage is a byproduct of modern convenience more than it is an intentional act of sabotage. And this is a significant revelation because it implies that people are only too happy to go along with whatever does damage, so long as it does not significantly diminish their quality of life. So there are few alternatives for putting an end to damage. Complicity cannot be easily corrected. People cannot go feral or disavow themselves of modern life because, as Orwell says, ‘The machine-civilisation is here… [and] all of us are inside it’.38 But it is

34 Layer Cake, directed by Matthew Vaughn (2004; London, England: Sony Pictures Classics). 35 Economic Reconstruction Group. 36 Naomi Klein, This Changes Everything (Toronto: Alfred K. Knopf, 2014), 184. 37 For more on indifference, see Appendix entry 20. 38 Orwell, The Road to Wigan Pier, 181.

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also true that everyday life cannot carry-on if environment is torn asunder. In Men In Dark Times, Hannah Arendt calls the inescapable bind of everyday life a ‘negative solidarity’.39 As she puts it, complicity and damage, as well as ‘the fear of global destruction’, has created an equality of condition that levels conventional notions of class, race or nation.40 Plus she says that this common condition, or ‘community-insinfulness’ in which ‘each belongs to everyone’, can result in ‘a sudden turn in an individual’s attitude toward his environment’.41 So the coexistence of people in their community goes from ‘being inevitable and matter of course to being freely chosen and replete with obligations’.42 Arendt insists that any attempt to remediate the ‘unbearable burden’ of modern life must be ‘based on something more solid than the justified fear of man’s demonic capabilities'. Likewise, it has to be more promising than a ‘universal irritability of everybody against everybody else’.43 And this means that a community built on anything more than fear of apocalypse must come together and change the ways by which people relate to each other and environment as a whole. 8.5.1 Common Need Solidarity is not an everyday word in environmental discourse. In common use, it is little more than a hep affectation that is meant to signify a refusal to give up the ghost of Marxism’s most halcyon moments. Yet, as this text’s observations about Sheffield have

39 Hannah Arendt, Men in Dark Times (New York: A Harvest Book, 1968), 83. 40 Ibid. 41 Hannah Arendt, Love and Saint Augustine (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1996), 102-103. 42 Ibid., 102. 43 Arendt, Men in Dark Times, 87.

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revealed, there was a time when solidarity was a real a way of life that was based on mutual understanding, obligation and common betterment. And, though it fell out of favour when the industrial environment was demolished, the fact it was ordinary also means that it can, once again, have a place in the life of a community. In Culture and Society, Raymond Williams says that solidarity is, in practise, a mutual obligation to put an end to all forms of damage. As he explains: We can in retrospect see the dominative mood as one of the mainsprings of industry: the theory and practice of man’s mastering and controlling his natural environment. We are still rephrasing this, from experience, as we learn the folly of exploiting any part of this environment in isolation. We are learning, slowly, to attend to our environment as a whole, and not from its fragmented parts, 44

where a quick success can bring a long waste.

Accordingly, the value solidarity places on dutifulness and mutual betterment can profoundly affect the routines and habits of day-to-day life. So by changing how people relate to each other and their environment, solidarity can piece back together social ecologies that have been fragmented by what Williams calls ‘the dominative mood’ that leaves communities ‘isolated and exploited’. Solidarity is about common purpose – hence the emphasis on mutual obligation and betterment. But, if it is to be anything more than a well-meaning bromide, people have to work together in a way that immediately and directly remediates damage.45 8.5.2 Solidarity of the Commons In the history of many locales around the world, the Commons was a field, wood, resource, or asset shared by a community. More

44 Williams, Culture & Society, 357. 45 For a personal parable about care of community, see Appendix entry 21.

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specifically, they were places where bounty was accessible to all, with no one person paying rent or holding title. But, as the apparatus of modernity built-up in Europe and many of the colonised lands around the world, the Commons were seized, enclosed, and fragmented. Then whatever material that was found to be of value was privatised and extracted. Enclosure of the Commons is a tragedy. It displaced communities and laid waste to countless ecologies. Yet, as noted earlier, what is tragedy is also hope because, as Billy Bragg explains, even after being ‘dispossessed, still the vision lingers on’. And this Digger spirit, which has lay dormant for centuries, can now be seen at community gardens that have been planted in wastes and brownsites. Plus, as was the case in the pit towns around Sheffield, people will find a way to take care of each other. Appropriately, solidarity’s principled insistence on ‘lending a hand’ is a bond that can hold together political, social and cultural elements that give substance to a new, everyday Commons, which are: 1/ Common Condition Environmental damage is a far-reaching byproduct of modern life. It is uneven, discontinuous, contradictory, and capable of tearing-apart any community at any time. Therefore, in order to keep what is left of the Commons from fragmenting any further, a solidarity of common condition must work to improve the lives of others – especially those whose lives have been made wretched by damage. The toxic fumes of civilisation are, often, not worth the harm done to communities. So, if the benefits of extracting or using a resource cannot be equally disbursed, so as to assure an equality of condition, then the resource must be kept in the ground. However, if damage is unavoidable, then the bounty and hardship it begets must be shared by all. Otherwise, there will be no change in anybody’s condition because, as F. Scott Fitzgerald explains, ‘careless people’ who profit from damage will retreat ‘back into their money or their vast carelessness or

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whatever it was that kept them together, and let other people clean up the mess’.46 2/ Common Culture According to Raymond Williams’ definition, culture is ‘ordinary’ and filled with any number of meanings that are the product of personal and social experiences.47 And this means that it is made up of a multitude of concurrent and contradictory perspectives that find expression in any number of ways. Williams also says that culture’s ‘many versions’ are an ‘inheritance’ that allows ordinary people to express themselves or find common cause in their community and neighbourhood.48 Therefore, it provides a forum where different voices can speak for themselves and seek amends according to their own customs and ways. Plus it gives rise to a reciprocal bond wherein a community works to find courses of action that accommodate its many, overlapping points of view. 3/ Common Cause Common cause is not charity. It is not a form of alm-giving wherein someone can benevolently share some of their bounty without attending to iniquity. In many ways, because it is a helping hand instead of a hand-out, common cause is rarer and more valuable than any act of generosity. Consequently, it is a burning humility that gives members of a community reason to work together and improve the lives of others. And it does this by working to make sure a community’s needs are met.

46 F. Scott Fitzgerald, The Great Gatsby (London, England: Scribner, 2004), 179. 47 Raymond Williams, Resources of Hope (London, England: Verso, 1989), 4. 48 Ibid., 8.

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As Orwell says in The Road to Wigan Pier, ‘there is no use to clapping a proletarian on the back and telling him that he is as good a man as I am; if I want real contact with him, I have got to make an effort’.49 Therefore, those who live in a climate of plenty or have the least to lose, since their routines and habits are a source of suffering for others, have to change how they go about everyday life.50

49 Orwell, The Road to Wigan Pier, 137. 50 For more on common cause and the end of snobbery, see Appendix entry 22.

9 Conclusion

At the end of this text’s case study on field researchers in Wyoming, there was a mention of the need for scholars to show their work. Accordingly, this has also been one of this text’s guiding principles, because it has, literally and figuratively, gone to great lengths to show the many ways by which environment precedes everyday life. Plus a lot of effort has gone into making this text’s analyses as transparent and applicable as possible. By showing its work, this text has covered a lot of territory and material. But every step of the way, it has provided small details that add-up to a more complete picture of how environment and everyday life relate. And this mosaic form of documentation and analysis has made two unique and original contributions to the field of sociology, which are. 1/ It has introduced new methods of observation, documentation, and analysis This text has given form to two original sociologic methods – one being its best practises for immersive observation and documentation, and the other is image ecology – that make it possible to see the forest for the trees. Or put less poetically, these two methods are unique because they focus on gathering and analysing small details in a way that is always aware of larger, environmental issues and matters of concern. Also, this text has field tested these methods and proven them

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capable of connecting the particular with the universal, and able to handle shifting circumstances and the many idiosyncrasies of everyday life. 2/ It has added several original terms to the vernacular of sociologic analysis The terms outlined in this text’s lexicon are meant to change the way that sociologists think about environmental issues. More specifically, the intent is to move sociology away from habituated modes of thought that are being proven to be shortsighted in the face of catastrophe. Likewise, the terms discussed in this text are meant to allow for the emergence of a broader, more environmental imaginary that can change ways by which sociologists do work in the field. And, as such, this will make it possible for sociologists to not think about sociology sociologically and give more consideration to the strange multiplicity of non-human ecologies and interactions that are a significant part of everyday life. *** Finally, this text has provided plenty of evidence that supports several terms that have, so far, been neglected or relatively unused in sociology. And the most impactful terms are: a/ Staging As stated in this text’s interpretive lexicon entry for stroboscopy, everything happens two ways: Gradually and suddenly. Also, as this concept was further elaborated in the entry for staging, all events and happenings are preceded by a multitude of other occurrences in which matériel has been put in place, and conditions have been primed for a particular purpose. And this concept of staging is important, in that it allows sociologic analysis to be better able to look for the root causes of matters of concern, and it allows future analyses to adopt a

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perspective that takes note of the many material and social ecologies that give form to everyday life. b/ Fragmentation As was documented in this text’s Sheffield case study and was also discussed in its interpretive lexicon, fragmentation is a very real and premeditated phenomena. Yet fragmentation is a rare topic in sociologic analyses; and this is unfortunate because it is a major driver of damage to environment and everyday life. Likewise, a proper understanding of fragmentation allows for a better appreciation of how damage is self-perpetuating, difficult to remediate, and capable of tearing-down long-established ways of life. c/ Complicity There is no denying that environmental damage is a byproduct of everyday life. Not only does scientific research confirm this assertion, but it also shows that Orwell is right when he says that society’s high standard of living depends on the perpetuation of damage. And, as this text’s case studies have shown, there is not much that can be done without significant changes to everyday life and business-as-usual. Then again, acknowledging complicity is a first step towards doing what must be done and reorganising everyday life in a way that fosters solidarity and a common culture that, as Raymond Williams says, ensures the means of life and means of community. And this is a beginning.

Appendix

This text minimised anecdotes, asides, digressions, miscellany and trivia. And this was made possible by editing and paring the text until it was lean and efficient. But quality material had to be cut. So what follows are some notes that are useful, yet not essential enough to have a permanent place in the main body. Some of these entries will clarify specific terms and ideas. Others will provide context or expand on concepts or tangents that were passed-over. Plus a few will explain or rationalise certain thoughtprocesses. Therefore, when read as a whole, will form an additional lexicon or counter-text that annotates, supplements and supports the main text. 1 The Pastoral The Pastoral is a verdant imagining of a simpler, more authentic form of everyday life. According to Leo Marx, it is supposed to bring to mind ‘an image of a natural landscape, either unspoiled or, if cultivated, rural’.1 Thus it embodies a turn away from a modern world that is seen as being artificial and repressive.

1

Leo Marx, The Machine in the Garden (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2000), 9.

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In ‘The Machine in the Garden’, Marx calls the Pastoral ‘an inchoate longing for a more “natural” environment’.2 He says it represents a nostalgia for a ‘undefiled, green republic’ where life is ‘closer to nature’ and free from the grip of an external world.3 The Pastoral is ever-present in most environmentalists’ criticism of everyday life. More specifically, they believe that a return to the Pastoral will allow humanity to survive a coming economic and ecologic collapse.4 So, when activists like Paul Kingsnorth writes about ‘uncivilisation’, they are promoting an idea that environment will purify humanity of its excesses and allow the world to return to a natural state that is more sustainable than what already exists. By seeking freedom from everyday life, environmentalists have fetishised the Pastoral. As Kingsnorth explains: We tried ruling the world; we tried acting as God’s steward, then we tried ushering in the human revolution, the age of reason and isolation. We failed in all of it, and our failure destroyed more than we were even aware of. The time for civilisation is past. Uncivilisation, which knows its flaws because it has participated in them; which sees unflinchingly and bites down hard as it records 5

– this is the project we must embark on now.

But as environmentalists devote themselves to making the Pastoral real, they are going to find some authentically grim realities.6 They may find that the state of nature really is solitary, poor, nasty, brutish,

2

Marx, 5.

3

Ibid., 6.

4

Paul Kingsnorth and Douglas Hine, Uncivilisation: The Dark Mountain Manifesto ( London: The Dark Mountain Project, 2009).

5 6

Ibid. See also, Clive Martin, ‘London Is Tearing Itself Apart Because of Coffee Shop Sidewalk Signs’, Vice UK, 11 November 2015.

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and short. And it is probable that every environment is as strange and unadorned as it is beautiful and transcendent.7 The Pastoral is what John Ruskin calls a ‘pathetic fallacy’. Or put simply, by embodying an ideal of the state of nature, the Pastoral strips environment of its complexities and vices. Hence it is ‘a wilful fancy’ that is no different than any other attempt to remake the world in the image of human needs, desires and passions.8 2 Umwelt In German, Umwelt translates to ‘surrounding world’. In On the Origin of Language, Johann Herder compares Umwelt to a sphere that surrounds all elements of existence.9 And within the sphere, there is life and matter, morphology and substance. So nothing is isolated or separate from its surroundings. In his article, ‘The Theory of Meaning’, Jakob von Uexküll expands on Herder’s notion of environment-as-sphere. As he puts it, within an Umwelt, every organism is, in a functional sense, related to all other organisms. He also says that ‘Even the simple blink-reflex, caused by the eye being approached by a foreign body, does not consist of a mere sequence of physical causes and effects, but of a simplified functional circle, beginning with perception and ending with effect’.10 And this means Umwelt is relational as much as it is material.

7

See also, Bill Buford, ‘Editorial: Dirty Realism’, Granta Magazine, Summer 1983.

8

John Ruskin, ‘Of the Natural Ideal’, in The Genius of John Ruskin, ed. John D. Rosenberg (London: University of Virginia Press, 1998), 64.

9

Johann Gottfried Herder, ‘Treatise on the Origin of Language’, Johann Gottfried von Herder: Philosophical Writings, ed. Michael N. Forster (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2002), 78.

10 Jakob von Uexküll, A Foray Into The Worlds of Animals and Humans; with, A Theory of Meaning, trans. Joseph D. O’Neil (Minneapolis, Minnesota: University of Minnesota Press, 2010), 147.

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3 Milieu In French, milieu literally means ‘mid-place’ or ‘between two centres’. In The Course of Positive Philosophy, Auguste Comte says milieu is more than a domain or macrocosm that exists within a clearly defined boundary. He even calls it a ‘fluid in which a body is immersed’. And he says it is the ‘sum total of outside circumstances necessary to the existence of each organism’, which implies that it is a medium of circulation and causation where organic and inorganic elements come together.11 Or as Louis Roule explains in The Life of Rivers, ‘Fish don’t lead their lives themselves, it is the river that makes them lead it’.12 In ‘The Living and Its Milieu’, Georges Canguilhem says milieu is a complex of relations. In his words, milieu is an ‘intersection of influences’ that ‘provokes the organism to orient its own development’.13 Plus he is emphatic that it is ‘the state in which nature placed us; we are floating on a vast milieu; man is in proportion with the parts of the world; he relates to all that he knows’.14 4 The Overuse of the First Person in Academic Writing The use of the first person in academic writing is distracting. According to almost every style-guide and method of textual analysis, it is presumed that a text is, for all intents and purposes, an author’s subjective interpretation of certain matters of concern. Therefore, unless a text is a first-hand account, an auto-ethnography or delib-

11 Auguste Comte, The Positivist Philosophy of Auguste Comte, vol. 2, trans. Harriet Martineau (New York: D. Appleton, 1853), 439. 12 Louis Roule, La Vie des Rivières (Paris: Stock, 1930), 61. 13 Georges Canguilhem, ‘The Living and Its Milieu’, trans. John Savage, Grey Room, no. 3 (Spring 2001), 23 and 27. 14 Ibid., 25.

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erately pushing the limits of style and form, the use of the first person is unnecessary. More often than not, the use of the first person in an academic text is little more than a stylish form of editorialising. It introduces a second voice that, more often than not, harangues the reader or secondguesses their reading comprehension. Plus it adds a subjective element that needlessly personalises and demeans facts and observations that the text is reporting. Or, worse, it reveals that the author is not confident about what they have to say. Thus it takes away more than it adds to a text. Examples of the use of the first person includes phrases like, ‘I will explain’, ‘I show’ or ‘I interpret’, which are all common in academic texts. And all of these phrases are passive constructions that do not significantly improve the text. 5 Narrative Narrative tells a good story. Ira Glass, who is a well-known journalist, says that narrative writing ‘is basically a machine that’s raising questions and answering them’.15 Likewise, another journalist, Anne Fadiman, says it has ‘a way of ordering events and thoughts in a coherent sequence that makes them interesting’.16 Narrative is artful. It makes facts and figures readable. As Brian Gruley explains, it takes a ‘step back and explain[s] what’s going on, what something technical or complicated means, and why a minimal context is important in a broader sense’.17 And it does this by using literary techniques – such as action, scene, or thematic development – to make sense of a complex story.

15 Ira Glass, ‘Creative Voice’ (presentation, Gel Conference, New York, 2525 April 2007). 16 Chip Scanlon, ‘What is Narrative Anyway’, Pointer Institute, 29 September 2003. 17 Ibid.

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An intriguing, environment-related example of narrative is the Smiths song ‘Ask’, wherein it is said that ‘Nature is a language’.18 ‘Ask’ is about a larger discussion of ‘coyness’ and the unseen signs of affection. It explores the complexities of relationship by relying on narrative rather than a direct confession or the use of overwrought or contrived metaphors. So the line ‘Shyness can stop you from doing all the things in life you’d like to’ is, simultaneously, a narrative reference to a particular relationship and an observation about relations in general.19 Therefore, a well constructed narrative, by being able to piece together a narrative that fits small revelations into a larger story, explains how the particular, unrequited affections relate to larger and more universal complexities of relationships. 6 McLuhan’s Anti-Environment and Plato’s Cave In Plato’s allegory of the Cave, there are two realms. The first realm is below ground, in the darkness of a cave that is dimly lit by a single fire. And the other realm exists above ground in a world bathed in the light of day. According to Plato, the two realms are not alike. So each has its own way of life. And, therefore, each has its own ecologies. At a glance, McLuhan’s anti-environment appears to have a lot of similarities to Plato’s Cave. For instance, beyond the surface discussion of the existence of antinomies, both are meant to annotate the ways by which the visible world is much more complex than what meets the eye. However, unlike the Cave, anti-environment is not separate or distinct from the environment it illuminates. Instead, it is a single realm. Or, more properly, they are the same environment. Environment and anti-environment are a matter of perspective. They contain the same material and have the same ecologies. But they are distinct because some elements that exist within an environment

18 The Smiths, ‘Ask’, Rank ( 1986, Rough Trade). 19 Ibid.

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can be so indispensable or mundane that they are rarely thought about and taken for granted. And it is only when exposed to an antienvironment that these elements become visible. 7 A House Can Exist in the Middle of the Street In the Madness song ‘Our House’, life on the terrace is said to be lived ‘in the middle of our street’.20 It is a line that sounds to be hyperbole or an example of poetic licence. But, in reality, it is real, and was a way of life for well over a century. Terraces were tightly-packed with people. An ordinary street may have as many as thirty houses. And each house was, usually, occupied a family, and maybe a few relatives or boarders. So it was possible that hundreds of people lived on a terrace row that had maybe thirty or forty houses. Likewise, the construction of terrace houses, where the lounge door opened directly onto pavement, made for a type of life where there was little separation between public and private. And this mix of open home design and dense living conditions, made for a community life where, literally, everything spilled into ‘the middle of the street’. The lack of separation between the household and the middle of the street is a reason literary and ethnographic descriptions of terrace life emphasise the household struggle to keep industry’s dust and soot from coming through the door. More specifically, it symbolises the tenuous relationship between work and home, public and private. 8 The Noise of Industry In The Village Labourer, the Hammonds note that working class houses do not have clocks.21 They say this it because workers could tell time according to the rhythm and cadence of industrial noise.

20 Madness, ‘Our House’, Rise & Fall (1982, Stiff). 21 Hoggart, Uses of Literacy, 13.

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According to many reports, during the height of industrialisation in England, people woke up to the sound of factory turbines firing. Then they started work or kept a schedule with the sound of a workshop’s whistle. And they ended their day when the turbine stopped its whir. Orwell also reports a similar phenomenon. In The Road to Wigan Pier, he says that ‘The first sound in the mornings was the clumping of the mill-girls down the cobbled street’. And he assumes that their march to the mill was preceded by factory whistles, but he admits that ‘I was never awake to hear that’.22 9 The Means of Production and the Meaning of ‘Made in Sheffield’ All metal products fabricated in Sheffield feature an etch that says, ‘Made in Sheffield’. It a matter of local pride, as well as a statement about the place of origin. Plus it is a signifier for the diffuse mode of production that was unique to the city, wherein matériel in different states of assembly circulated between various works that existed ‘cheek by jowl’ throughout the city and among the terraces.23 So ‘Made in Sheffield’, which is etched in all metal fabricated in the city, is a signifier for a mode of production as much it is a statement about the place of origin. 10 Pit Villages and Workwear In English folk songs, a miners’ workwear is a signifier of working class identity. For example, in the song ‘Schooldays Over, Luke Kelly sings: Schooldays over, come on then John Time to be getting your pit boots on

22 Orwell, The Road to Wigan Pier, 2. 23 Humphries.

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On with your sark and moleskin trousers It’s time you were on your way Time you were learning the pit man’s job And earning the pit man’s pay24

Then, as the song carries on, Kelly explains that boots, because they reduce wear and tear on the body and make it possible to walk to the coalface, are as essential to life in a pit as a ‘pick and shovel’. In the song ‘With Me Pit Boots On’, AL Lloyd sets-up a story about a ‘collier lad’ who left his shift to spend the night with his ‘true love’.25 As it is told, the lad tip-toes into his love’s house, so as to not wake her family. But, as he reaches her door, she calls out to him, saying that she knows he’s there, because the sound of his pit boots have announced his presence. Yet the lad says nothing; he simply climbs into bed ‘with me pit boots on’. Then, after a night in which the couple ‘fought and tumbled until the break of day’, the lad’s true love frets about their future. ‘Oh what have I done’, she says. ‘For the baby will come with his pit boots on’.26 11 The Soul at Work In the Preface to Franco Berardi’s The Soul at Work, Jason Smith calls the soul ‘the clinamen of the body’.27 As he explains, the soul does not exist under the skin. And this unique definition leads him to insist that, in being an external force, the soul is akin to an ‘affinity’ that spaces or brings bodies together. As such, it is ‘a web of attachments and tastes, attractions and inclinations’ that weave the world together.28

24 Luke Kelly, ‘Schooldays Over’, Working Class Hero (2007, Celtic Airs). 25 AL Lloyd, ‘With Me Pit Boots On’. 26 Ibid. 27 Smith, 9. 28 Ibid., 9 and 10.

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Whilst it is unconventional, Smith’s definition of soul helps make sense of what Thatcher means when she says that ‘Economics are the method; the object is to change the soul’.29 More specifically, if the soul exists under the skin, Thatcher is talking about literally creating a New Man or Homo Economicus. But the method she proposes, Economics, is not a science of the body and does not have the capacity to physically rebuild, cell-by-cell, as well as neuron-by-neuron, the heart and mind. So it must be assumed that Thatcher is in agreement with Smith about the soul being a type of relation. Plus Thatcher must also believe that the soul can be remade through changes in ‘the affective and libidinal forces’.30 Thatcher’s desire to put the soul to work is also a belief that all human relationships, as well as everything that people have in common, are up for sale. But, in order to make this happen, she has to commodify every element of everyday life. So her new New Man is always on the clock. 12 Grit and Fashion in Edmonton Grit is fashionable in Edmonton. In the same way pinstripes and polished shoes are a fashion statement for the boardroom set, labourers in Edmonton flaunt their boilersuits and boots as a way of signifying that they are productive members of the economy. Or, as they say in the fashion world, industrial chic is in-style and ready-to-wear. In Edmonton, somebody is just as likely to see people wearing high visibility vests in a queue at a place like Starbucks as it is to see someone in a suit or athleisure wear. Plus it is not uncommon to walk past someone on the high street who is wearing a hardhat or safety glasses or heavy-duty work gloves.

29

Butt.

30

Smith, 9.

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Workwear is such a part of everyday life in Edmonton that many bars and restaurants keep buffers near the door so people can knock the grit from the lugs of their boots. 13 On the Importance of Edmonton and the Tar Sands to the Global Economy Edmonton and the Tar Sands fuel the Canadian Economy. This is evident in the staging of matériel in Edmonton. And it is reflected in the number of jobs dedicated to supporting the oil industry that exist throughout the city. Yet the exact financial details about the role of Alberta’s oil industry in the Canadian economy are less than evident and somewhat difficult to parse. According to oil industry, their product accounts for roughly twenty percent of Canada’s GDP, about a hundred billion dollars in capital expenditures, and almost two million jobs. Environmental activists say the oil companies are exaggerating their status as an economic powerhouse. They say that the corporate numbers are estimates that include investments and jobs, such as transport or insurance work, that are not directly involved in oil production. Plus the activists insist that the numbers are based on overoptimistic projections that include assumptions about favourable markets and unsustainable business practises. Or, worse, the numbers are delusions scribbled on the backs of envelopes. A better way to understand the place of oil in Alberta is to take note of how much the Canadian economy fluctuates with the rise and fall of oil prices. For example, the downturn in oil markets that began in two thousand fourteen, in which the price of a barrel of oil dropped from a hundred to thirty-two dollars, caused the Canadian gross domestic product to drop by three percent. Furthermore, the value of the Canadian dollar against the American dollar fell by almost a quarter. And the national unemployment rate fell from five to seven percent.

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14 Company Names and Their Function in Industry In order to keep modern life fully fuelled, the oil industry has to keep a lot of moving parts in motion. It is how they do business. So, for the oil industry, it is not as easy as selling petrol for a significant mark-up. There is infrastructure to be taken into account. There are logistics that have to be administrated and coordinated. And then there are forms to be filled, risks to be managed, hedges to be made, regulatory bureaucracy to be handled, and environmental assessments to be outsourced. The tenant directory at Edmonton city centre’s 101st Street Tower reveals firms with peculiar names, like SNC-Lavalin, MNP and FE Advisory Group – all of which are subsidiaries and consultancies that are basic to the extraction industry’s day-to-day operations. In terms of what these abbreviated names and initials represent, SNC-Lavalin is an engineering firm that builds facilities and supervises projects for oil companies, MNP says in vague terms that it provides ‘customized advice, services and strategies’, and FE is a risk management agency that insure industry investments. And these numerous, almost anonymous subsidiaries are vague in name and what they do because they only exist to keep the oil flowing. Or put another way, oil is so good for business that there is no need to advertise or be flash. However, anonymity is not secrecy. Despite their efforts to not be too conspicuous, the oil companies and their subsidiaries do sometimes make their presence known. In particular, they like to put company names on their service rigs. It is, in part, tradition in the industry, as it allows landowners and land managers to see who is working in their property. Plus it shows the competition who is on the job. A perk of having a job in oil industry, especially for managers and supervisors, is a company truck. So there are a lot of ruggedised service rigs, or ‘brodozers’, as the locals call them, parked in the neighbourhoods like Old Strathcona, and almost all of them flash a company name on their side panels. And this is important because it

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shows the extent to which oil companies are a part of everyday life in Edmonton. 15 The Burden of the Burden of Proof In ‘The Death of Environmentalism’, Ted Nordhaus and Michael Shellenberger say environmental activists have trouble expressing themselves because they have to always have incontrovertible scientific evidence in hand. It means they are stuck with an extreme burden of proof that has caused environmental analysis to become uncritical and fixated on surface effects, eye-catching data points, and dramatic imagery that paint a picture of the world that is not worth saving. And this flair for the apocalyptic, in that it implies that there is nothing left to do, has led to a general reluctance to search for better words and imagery or go beyond old identities, categories, and assumptions. Nordhaus and Shellenberger have a word for environmental thought’s aversion to the noise of opposition rancor: ‘Literal-sclerosis’. It means environmental analysis over-values quantifiable ‘symptoms’ at the expense of any knowledge of ‘root causes’.31 Or, put another way, if a matter of concern is not categorically environmental, analysis will defer to sums and reframe its observations in the most narrow terms possible. The burden of proof is not necessarily a problem. There is nothing wrong with being right and having evidence that proves the point. However, the fault in being burdened with the burden of proof is that the other parties do not have the same responsibility to support their assertions. And this turns what should be a rational conversation into an adversarial inquisition or trial. Short of procedural trickery – like reversing the line of questioning, challenging the basis of every assumption or putting the inquisition

31 Michael Shellenberger and Ted Nordhaus, ‘The Death of Environmentalism’ (Oakland, California: Breakthrough Institute, 2004), 13 and 14.

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itself on trial – there is not much environmentalists can do about having to bear the burden of proof. Therefore, it is best that they allow their burden to be a mark of pride. Likewise, they should hold their detractors to the same standards of integrity and transparency. 16 Heidegger and the Specifics of Staging Heidegger says environment must be enframed before it is rendered and everyday life built-up. And he gives three examples of environmental enframing: a/ Coal districts that mine and stockpile coal for industrial use. b/ Dams that supply water that turns hydroelectric turbines. c/ Mechanised agricultural production that relies on massive supply chains and the generous use of chemical-enriched pesticides and fertilisers.32 And to illustrate how enframing gives form to standing reserve, Heidegger creates a list of the ways by which coal supplies day-to-day industrial operations: The coal that has been hauled out in some mining district has not been supplied in order that it may simply be present somewhere or other. It is stockpiled; that is, it is on call, ready to deliver the sun’s warmth that is stored in it. The sun’s warmth is challenged forth for heat, which in turn is ordered to deliver steam whose pressure turns the wheels that keep a factory running.33

32 Heidegger, ‘The Question Concerning Technology’, 16. 33 Ibid., 21.

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17 Stroboscopy and Loud Places Stroboscopy is a constant in everyday life. To borrow a line from Jamie XX, stroboscopy is a part of a scene that constantly plays-out in any number of ‘loud places’ on most any given day and most anywhere in the world.34 In the Jamie XX song ‘Loud Places’, it is said that some people go to certain places for any number of conflicting reasons. The song’s narrator goes to ‘loud places to search for someone to be quiet with’. And the You that the narrator references goes ‘to loud places to find someone who will take you higher than I took you’.35 ‘Loud Places’ is an example of stroboscopy because it shows how there is no continuity, unity or resolution within an environment that consists of any number of overlapping contexts. So, beyond being a song where someone tries to reconcile nostalgia with lost love, the narrative gives clarity to the sense of confusion that comes with life within the confines of the discotheque. Hence the stanza, I go to those places where we used to go They seem so quiet now I’m here, all alone You go to new places with I don’t know who And I don’t know how to follow you.36

Or the lament of the second refrain, I feel music in your heights I have never reached such heights.37

34 Jamie XX, ‘Loud Places’, In Colour (2015, Young Turks). 35 Ibid. 36 Ibid. 37 Ibid.

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And this shows that an environment is, simultaneously, the gradual and sudden coming together, mixing, and falling-apart of multiple ecologies and contexts. 18 Stealth and Fragmentation In his Report, Ridley places great emphasis on the need to be ‘stealthy’. He is concerned that fragmentation policies cannot take hold if they are advertised, acknowledged or allowed to see the light of day. And this explains his policy of preparation for preparation, which requires every element to be in place and ready for implementation before a decision is made. Stealth, for Ridley, is a matter of controlling an environment. He fears that, without a policy of preparation for preparation, environment will turn hostile, and the damage done will either be quickly remediated or rapidly fragment to the point that the situation is unmanageable. And these fears give him cause to be meticulous about every detail. The key to Ridley’s stealth is his understanding that environment precedes everyday life. He knows that any attempt to reform society, openly, through legislation and traditional methods of administration would be met with resistance from ‘our enemies’ and ‘communist disruptors’.38 Plus he anticipates the Opposition’s use of procedure to stop Thatcher. So he makes it clear that stealth is the best means to make it difficult ‘for them to break it’. And he does this by tearingdown the political and economic environment in a way that weakens the Opposition. Ridley is so meticulous that his policy of preparation for preparation has become second-nature. And he did this by drafting contingency plans that anticipated policy failure or opposition chaos. Or as he puts it, ‘we must be prepared for these strategies to fail… and

38 Economic Reconstruction Group.

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we must take every precaution possible to strengthen our defences against all out attack…’ 19 Alternatives for Future Infrastructure If there is a genuine public interest in averting catastrophe, significant gains can be made by changing the construction and layout of infrastructure. In its current form, infrastructure is incapable of handling any change in environment. For example, fluctuations in precipitation drastically affect the efficiency of hydro-electric power stations. Then again, in some places, decreased precipitation is causing erosion, which exposes pipelines and significantly increases the odds of rupture. In order to better handle a changing environment, infrastructure has to be more resilient and adaptable. But this can only be done by designing future utilities and mains that are not built on a massive scale. Decentralised or distributed infrastructure is necessary because it minimises damage and mitigates grid disturbances that, generally, lead to system-wide failures. For example, local generation of power that is closer to sites of demand reduces transmission losses, which also lowers carbon emissions. Plus it secures supply, as the mains is not reliant on a limited number of remote power stations or a lengthy and complex system of transmission lines. Decentralisation may also reduce the intensity and scale of extraction projects, like Tar Sands. More specifically, a shift to a more localised energy supply and production – especially if it involves alternative technologies, like solar or geo-thermal generation – should lessen reliance on sources that require massive, energy-intensive infrastructure and transport networks.

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Examples of resilient, decentralised infrastructure include: – Distributed generation, which combines power from multiple – alternative energy sources – Microgrids that exist within a small radius and are powered by a number of sources – Energy-efficient, Passivhaus-style home designs that severely reduce reliance on external power sources – Household energy storage units, which are meant to reduce reliance on a constant energy supply – Cogeneration or hybrid power sources that turn generation waste into energy 20 An Indifferent Universe In the television series Mad Men, Don Draper says that ‘there is no big lie. There is no system. The universe is indifferent’.39 Draper was responding to a criticism of his work in advertising. He had been told that he is ‘for them’ and has ‘invented want’.40 And it is a fair critique of his work. Yet his philosophic response is interesting because it points-out that assigning responsibility to Us/Them is arbitrary and absurd. Us/Them reduces a public to a passive mass that is incapable of thought or deed. Plus its rhetorical simplicity understates the complexity of environment and its many ecologies. So it denies the many elements and relations that give a community life. There is no big lie or system because, to borrow a line from the book Layer Cake, ‘It doesn’t work like that’.41 The ecologies of everyday life are complex, and people have any number of reasons for

39 ‘The Hobo Code’, Mad Men, dir. Phil Abraham (Lionsgate Television, 2007). 40 Ibid. 41 Layer Cake.

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why they have certain loyalties and affections. Plus there are multiple, complex and intersecting environmental factors to consider. Or, as Layer Cake’s narrator puts it, ‘Think about it, you got legality, rarity, quality, quantity, availability, seasonal adjustments, currency fluctuations, adverse publicity, police activity…’42 It is possible that people can be manipulated. History tells us that it has happened before. And it will happen again. But history also shows that the manipulation of populations was more often the consequence of environments being transformed rather than the masses being twisted round like puppets, especially since there would be so many strings to pull. Draper’s statement about the universe being indifferent is important because it is premised on the idea that nothing or nobody is in control. It is a statement that is meant to be an existentialist-like reference to the universe not being guided by an invisible hand. Yet the statement’s sentiment is consistent with this text’s notion of complicity. More specifically, indifference and acquiescence, by allowing damage to compound, allows environment to become ever more finite which, in turn, causes everyday life to be deformed to the point that it is easily malleable. 21 Parables of Solidarity and Care of Community When I was a teenager, my father passed away, and my mother and I struggled with adjusting to life without his presence. One of the places where our struggles were most visible was at home, where the yard work that is an essential pride of suburban America was, at best, neglected. Like many stories that involves the suburbs, we had neighbours who were house-proud and preoccupied with status. So they gossiped and complained. They even said that we damaged their property

42 Layer Cake.

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values. Yet, for all of the noise they made, they never offered to give a family in crisis a helping hand. One day at school, I was confronted by the boyfriend of a neighbour’s daughter. ‘Your house is a mess’, he said, ‘clean it up’. And I remember inarticulately stuttering, ‘If it bothers you, help’. But he just turned his back and walked away. Along similar lines as my own encounter with the limits of community, a friend tells a story about his research on an indigenous tribe’s treaty claims in Hawaii. According to his version of events, he was asked to help lead public meetings and deliberations about the strategies the tribe could take to get people to take notice of their legal claims. And my friend says he politely declined because he believed that, as a non-indigenous ally, he would deny members of the tribe the opportunity to speak for themselves. Years after having no contact with tribal leaders, my friend returned to tribal lands, where he found the community still struggling with significant political and social issues. When he asked a tribal elder what had happened, he was told that their treaty claims had been dismissed in court, and that the decision had led to a political fracture wherein decisions about the community’s future were a source of deadlock and rancour. So, concerned with the dispiriting news, my friend asked if there was anything he could do to help, to which the elder responded with a rhetorical question, ‘Where were you?’ These parables are not meant to personalise my ideal of solidarity or care of community. Rather, I retell them because they have helped me think through Foucault’s notion of ‘care of self’ and Wittgenstein’s belief that ‘whereof one cannot speak, thereof one must be silent’. I have been told by other scholars that Foucault’s care of self is expressed in an ethics of ‘you take care of your backyard, and I’ll take care of mine’. But, according to personal experience, this is not right because taking care of their own backyard was not enough for my neighbours. Thus they had eyes on my yard, as well as a lot to say about it. Yet they expressed no willingness to help change the situation. And this lack of a helping hand is unethical because they will

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not take an action that is consistent with their stated opinion. So their talk, according to Foucault, is a self-righteous and insincere gesture because it involves no courage, self-reflection or duty to take action. Further, my friend’s parable serves as an example of the importance of solidarity. To some extent, my friend was right to understand that there was indignity in his speaking for others. But he failed to fully appreciate the tribe’s request for assistance because, as they saw it, he had the opportunity to take action and help give them voice. Therefore, from their perspective, it was important that he be present and have his say. Finally, solidarity and action are the opposite of quietism. If someone has something to say about a given situation, they are also obligated to take action and lend a helping hand in a way that is consistent with their words. Otherwise, if they are not willing to take action, then it is best that they remain silent. Yet this does not mean that those who should not speak are free of burden. Rather, it means that they need to listen, take-in what others say, and come to an understanding of what is being said. And, hopefully, if they truly get what is going on, they will lend a helping hand. 22 Common Cause and the End of Snobbery Solidarity of common cause means people find a way to work together and do what it takes to put an end to damage. And common cause’s first reasonable step should be helping people change their most destructive habits and routines. However, many people are not ready to make a change. They fear that any alteration in the way they go about everyday life will take away what defines them as a person. But this attitude is snobbery, pure and simple, as other people have never had the luxury of being able to cultivate and curate their own lifestyle to the point that their identity is interchangeable with their routines. In the Pulp song ‘Common People’, there is a reference to the inability of those who live a life of luxury to ‘understand how it feels

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to live your life with no meaning or control’.43 As the song explains, this ignorance about the lives of others is compounded by the fact that the well-off have resources that allow them to pretend they ’got no money’ without having to ‘fail like common people’.44 Then again, damage is inescapable. People may think that they can seclude themselves from the grim realities of everyday life. But, when it comes to environment, exotic locales that make for picturesque holiday photographs are up against a toxic threat that does not appreciate the difference between bucolic scenes and industrial wastes. So, as Camus says, with a threat that ‘the world may burst into fragments... hanging over our heads’, everybody will have to come to terms with damage.45 Camus is right when he calls damage ‘a lesson of truth’. As damage spreads, snobbish ‘hierarchies, titles, honors are reduced to what they are in reality: a passing puff of smoke’. Thus the only certainty left ‘is that of naked suffering, common to all, intermingling its roots with those of stubborn hope’.46 Accordingly, as Pulp explains in ‘Last Day of the Miners’ Strike’, a willingness to ‘get together’ and ‘get it on’ is the only appropriate response to common condition.47 Otherwise, if snobbishness – or what Pulp calls ‘socialising’ – prevails over solidarity, nobody will be there ‘to dig me out and set me free’.

43 Pulp, ‘Common People’, Different Class (1995, Island). 44 Ibid. 45 Albert Camus, ‘The Wager of Our Generation’, in Resistance, Rebellion, and Death, translated by Justin O’Brien (New York: Vintage International, 1995), 239-240. 46 Ibid. 47 Pulp, ‘Last Day of the Miners’ Strike’.

Confidential Annex

In all likelihood, this text’s new vocabulary of environment will never take hold. This is to be expected. To ask people to change the way they talk about environment, let alone think about it, is meddlesome. But it is still important because it is a small, but significant, step towards changing the most destructive ecologies of everyday life. On the off chance that a reader has strayed this far and still wants more, here is a set of strategies that can help remediate environmental damage and improve everyday life: 1/ Act in the knowledge that environment precedes everyday life 2/ Understand that future events are gradually and suddenly coming together 3/ Find solidarity and common cause And the tactics for applying these strategies in everyday life are: 1/ Do not wait for the apocalypse It is easy to say environment will descend into apocalypse. But it is near impossible to predict when it will come, and it is just as hard to predict how it will happen. Yet it is predictable that there will be damage. And it is more likely than not that it will all go down in a way that nobody saw coming. So there is no point in waiting for apocalypse. In fact, to wait it out is an act acquiescence that is no

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different than the passive, habit-forming nihilism that has, so far, allowed the environment to come ever-closer to ruin. Consequently, there has to be action. It does not matter if the action appears to be insignificant. What is important is the decision to not remain aloof, because it is only through the act of going outside of one’s immediate environment that it is possible to find solidarity. Most importantly, when people find common cause, their actions become more concerted and more capable of changing the world around them. Therefore, it is only through action that the current situation can improve. 2/ Be mindful of ecologies Action does not have to be decisive, definitive or spectacular. Indeed, actions that come together gradually can be as significant as those that suddenly happen. It is just as likely that an act that appears unimportant will have as much of an impact on everyday life as one that gets a lot of attention. So there is no reason to think that any act is insignificant. But if one wants their actions to be meaningful, it is important that they try to hold together or strengthen the ecologies of everyday life. Do not let communities fragment. An environment where ecologies are mutual and self-supporting is better able to keep itself together than one that is broken and fragmented. When times get tough, the communities that survive intact are the ones that are capable of coming together to support the means of life. Simple examples of actions that hold together the ecologies of everyday life include: Organise community gardens; assist community members who are in need; participate in planning meetings and other community events; support public transport and other public services; and do what it takes to hinder the fragmentation of environment. 3/ Work to a few golden rules: One. Play the long game.

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Steady yourself. Do what must be done. Make plans that have some scope and, if need be, allow some concessions. But, all the while, gradually piece together the resources, political alliances and social networks that will lay the groundwork for long-term success. An exception to this rule is imminent or on-going damage. If there is damage, make sure it is immediately remediated. Also, lessen the hardship of those who have been most affected by damage. Two. Do not be flash. Do not talk about apocalypse. Talk of doom contradicts any reason for taking action. Be in the community. Knock on doors and participate in social and political events. Even organise goings-on if it is necessary. But do not draw the attention or ire of the opposition. Three. Do not suffer fools gladly. Avoid people who seek attention or glory. Likewise, stay clear of those who are too single-minded about a cause. These people will fuck up. And their individual failings all too often become a collective problem. Four. Play to strengths. Know your abilities. Learn your environment. And use your resources deliberately. There are ideals and matters of concern that are reason for common cause. These are strengths. Let them be a source of hope and a cause of action. Five. Prepare for an opposition attack on points of weakness. The opposition will take every advantage of vulnerability. Know the opposition. Understand how it makes decisions. And be ready for two courses of action: The most common and the most dangerous. Six. Be prepared to fail. At one point or another, there will be failure. When it all goes wrong, consider the options. Be cautious. Find a way to develop alternatives. Then push back. Seven.

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Edward Abbey gets the last word: Be as I am – a reluctant enthusiast… a part-time crusader, a half-hearted fanatic. Save the other half of yourselves and your lives for pleasure and adventure. It is not enough to fight for the land; it is even more important to enjoy it. While you can. While it’s still here. So get out there and hunt and fish and mess around with your friends, ramble out yonder and explore the forests, climb the mountains, bag the peaks, run the rivers, breathe deep of that yet sweet and lucid air, sit quietly for a while and contemplate the precious stillness, the lovely, mysterious, and awesome space. Enjoy yourselves, keep your brain in your head and your head firmly attached to the body, the body active and alive, and I promise you this much; I promise you this one sweet victory over our enemies, over those desk-bound men and women with their hearts in a safe deposit box, and their eyes hypnotized by desk calculators. I promise you this; You will outlive the bastards.

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