Research on post-industrial memory have recently brought to attention the role of workers’ collective memory in deindustrialised landscapes. However, the role of memory in continued and developed industries is a theme largely unexplored. Drawing on tangent research interests in absent-presences, spectrality, and more-than-representational theory, this thesis extends research on post-industrial memory by exploring collective memory in one such continued industry—the transformed and transforming commuter railway Roslagsbanan in Stockholm, Sweden. Through a case-study using autoethnography and mobile in-depth interviews with railway workers, the thesis shows how the past in representational and more-than-representational form provide affective encounters for workers in their everyday lives. Through encounters with remnants of the past, workers’ collective memory provides meaning to the present through materialities, stories, photographs, embodiments, places, and landscapes. However, as the landscape and workplace transform in what workers see as both development and ruination, the opportunity for memory to surface is challenged. With relevance for research on (post)industrial memory, the thesis shows how memory becomes an animating force in everyday work caught up in a liminality between development and ruination. Practiced in a continued industry, memory becomes a way to enliven the present.
| Identifer | oai:union.ndltd.org:UPSALLA1/oai:DiVA.org:su-217688 |
| Date | January 2023 |
| Creators | Aronsson, Viktor |
| Publisher | Stockholms universitet, Kulturgeografiska institutionen |
| Source Sets | DiVA Archive at Upsalla University |
| Language | English |
| Detected Language | English |
| Type | Student thesis, info:eu-repo/semantics/bachelorThesis, text |
| Format | application/pdf |
| Rights | info:eu-repo/semantics/openAccess |
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