E D d it e e d in b y d u S t s e f t a r n i B a e l r i g s e a r · t S i t o e f n a n i o n M T u w s s o e · n C h t ris ie tia th Deindustrialisation in n - W C ic e Twentieth-Century Europe k n e t u r y The Northwest of Italy and E u the Ruhr Region in Comparison r o p e Edited by Stefan Berger Stefano Musso · Christian Wicke Palgrave Studies in the History of Social Movements Series Editors Stefan Berger, Institute for Social Movements, Ruhr University Bochum, Bochum, Germany Holger Nehring, Contemporary European History, University of Stirling, Stirling, UK Aroundtheworld,socialmovementshavebecomelegitimate,yetcontested, actors in local, national and global politics and civil society, yet we still knowrelativelylittleabouttheirlongerhistoriesandthetrajectoriesoftheir development. This series seeks to promote innovative historical research on the history of social movements in the modern period since around 1750. We bring together conceptually-informed studies that analyse labour movements, new social movements and other forms of protest from early modernitytothepresent.Weconceiveof‘socialmovements’inthebroadest possible sense, encompassing social formations that lie between formal organisations and mere protest events. We also offer a home for studies thatsystematicallyexplorethepolitical,social,economicandculturalcondi- tionsinwhichsocialmovementscanemerge.Weareespeciallyinterestedin transnational and global perspectives on the history of social movements, and in studies that engage critically and creatively with political, social and sociological theories in order to make historically grounded arguments about social movements. This new series seeks to offer innovative historical work on social movements, while also helping to historicise the concept of ‘social movement’. It hopes to revitalise the conversation between histo- rians and historical sociologists in analysing what Charles Tilly has called the ‘dynamics of contention’. Editorial Board John Chalcraft (London School of Economics, UK) Andreas Eckert (Humboldt-University, Germany) Susan Eckstein (Boston University, USA) Felicia Kornbluh (University of Vermont, USA) Jie-Hyun Lim (Research Institute for Comparative History, Hanyang University Seoul, South Korea) Marcel van der Linden (International Institute of Social History, The Netherlands) Rochona Majumdar (University of Chicago, USA) Sean Raymond Scalmer (University of Melbourne, Australia) Alexander Sedlmaier (Bangor University, UK) · · Stefan Berger Stefano Musso Christian Wicke Editors Deindustrialisation in Twentieth-Century Europe The Northwest of Italy and the Ruhr Region in Comparison Editors Stefan Berger Stefano Musso Institute for Social Movements Department of Historical Studies Ruhr University Bochum University of Turin Bochum, Germany Turin, Italy Christian Wicke Department of History and Art History Utrecht University Utrecht, The Netherlands ISSN 2634-6559 ISSN 2634-6567 (electronic) Palgrave Studies in the History of Social Movements ISBN 978-3-030-89630-0 ISBN 978-3-030-89631-7 (eBook) https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-89631-7 © The Editor(s) (if applicable) and The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2022 This work is subject to copyright. All rights are solely and exclusively licensed by the Publisher, whether the whole or part of the material is concerned, specifically the rights of translation, reprinting, reuse of illustrations, recitation, broadcasting, reproduction on microfilms or in any other physical way, and transmission or information storage and retrieval,electronicadaptation,computersoftware,orbysimilarordissimilarmethodology now known or hereafter developed. The use of general descriptive names, registered names, trademarks, service marks, etc. in this publication does not imply, even in the absence of a specific statement, that such namesareexemptfromtherelevantprotectivelawsandregulationsandthereforefreefor general use. Thepublisher,theauthorsandtheeditorsaresafetoassumethattheadviceandinforma- tion in this book are believed to be true and accurate at the date of publication. Neither the publisher nor the authors or the editors give a warranty, expressed or implied, with respecttothematerialcontainedhereinorforanyerrorsoromissionsthatmayhavebeen made.Thepublisherremainsneutralwithregardtojurisdictionalclaimsinpublishedmaps and institutional affiliations. Cover image: Duisburg Landschaftspark © Christian Wicke This Palgrave Macmillan imprint is published by the registered company Springer Nature Switzerland AG The registered company address is: Gewerbestrasse 11, 6330 Cham, Switzerland Series Editors Preface ’ Around the world, social movements have become legitimate, yet contested,actorsinlocal,nationalandglobalpoliticsandcivilsociety,yet we still know relatively little about their longer histories and the trajec- tories of their development. Our series reacts to what can be described as a recent boom in the history of social movements. We can observe a development from the crisis of labor history in the 1980s to the boom in researchonsocialmovementsinthe2000s.Theriseofhistoricalinterests in the development of civil society and the role of strong civil societies as well as non-governmental organizations in stabilizing democratically constituted polities has strengthened the interest in social movements as a constituent element of civil societies. In different parts of the world, social movements continue to have a strong influence on contemporary politics. In Latin America, trade unions, labor parties and various left-of-center civil society organi- zations have succeeded in supporting left-of-center governments. In Europe, peace movements, ecological movements and alliances intent on campaigning against poverty and racial discrimination and discrimi- nation on the basis of gender and sexual orientation have been able to set important political agendas for decades. In other parts of the world, includingAfrica,IndiaandSouthEastAsia,socialmovementshaveplayed asignificantroleinvariousformsofcommunitybuildingandcommunity politics. The contemporary political relevance of social movements has undoubtedly contributed to a growing historical interest in the topic. v vi SERIESEDITORS’PREFACE Contemporary historians are not only beginning to historicize these relativelyrecentpoliticaldevelopments;theyarealsotryingtorelatethem to a longer history of social movements, including traditional labor orga- nizations, such as working-class parties and trade unions. In the longue durée, we recognize that social movements are by no means a recent phenomenon and are not even an exclusively modern phenomenon, although we realize that the onset of modernity emanating from Europe and North America across the wider world from the eighteenth century onward marks an important departure point for the development of civil societies and social movements. In the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, the dominance of national history over all other forms of history writing led to a thorough nation- alisation of the historical sciences. Hence, social movements have been examined traditionally within the framework of the nation state. Only duringthelasttwodecadeshavehistoriansbeguntoquestionthevalidity of such methodological nationalism and to explore the development of social movements in comparative, connective and transnational perspec- tive taking into account processes of transfer, reception and adaptation. Whileourbookseriesdoesnotprecludeworkthatisstillbeingcarriedout within national frameworks (for, clearly, there is a place for such studies, given the historical importance of the nation state in history), it hopes to encourage comparative and transnational histories on social movements. At the same time as historians have begun to research the history of those movements, a range of social theorists, from Jürgen Habermas to PierreBourdieuandfromSlavojŽižektoAlainBadiouaswellasErnesto LaclauandChantalMouffetoMiguelAbensour,tonamebutafew,have attempted to provide philosophical-cum-theoretical frameworks in which toplaceandcontextualizethedevelopmentofsocialmovements.History hasarguablybeenthemostempiricalofallthesocialandhumansciences, but it will be necessary for historians to explore further to what extent these social theories can be helpful in guiding and framing the empir- ical work of the historian in making sense of the historical development of social movements. Hence, the current series is also hoping to make a contribution to the ongoing dialogue between social theory and the history of social movements. This series seeks to promote innovative historical research on the historyofsocialmovementsinthemodernperiodsincearound1750.We bring together conceptually-informed studies that analyze labor move- ments, new social movements and other forms of protest from early SERIESEDITORS’PREFACE vii modernity to the present. With this series, we seek to revive, within the contextofhistoriographicaldevelopmentssincethe1970s,aconversation betweenhistoriansontheonehandandsociologists,anthropologistsand political scientists on the other. Unlikemostoftheconceptsandtheoriesdevelopedbysocialscientists, we do not see social movements as directly linked, a priori, to processes of social and cultural change and therefore do not adhere to a view that distinguishes between old (labor) and new (middle-class) social move- ments. Instead, we want to establish the concept “social movement” as a heuristic device that allows historians of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries to investigate social and political protests in novel settings. Our aim is to historicize notions of social and political activism in order to highlight different notions of political and social protest on both left and right. Hence, we conceive of “social movements” in the broadest possible sense, encompassing social formations that lie between formal organiza- tionsandmereprotestevents.Butwealsoincludeprocessesofsocialand culturalchangemoregenerallyinourunderstandingofsocialmovements: this goes back to nineteenth-century understandings of “social move- ment” as processes of social and cultural change more generally. We also offer a home for studies that systematically explore the political, social, economicandculturalconditionsinwhichsocialmovementscanemerge. We are especially interested in transnational and global perspectives on the history of social movements, and in studies that engage critically and creatively with political, social and sociological theories in order to make historically grounded arguments about social movements. In short, this seriesseekstoofferinnovativehistoricalworkonsocialmovements,while alsohelpingtohistoricizetheconceptof“socialmovement”.Italsohopes torevitalizetheconversationbetweenhistoriansandhistoricalsociologists in analyzing what Charles Tilly has called the “dynamics of contention”. The contributors to this edited collection by Stefan Berger, Stefano Musso and Christian Wicke provide a sustained comparison about the deindustrialization processes in two of Western Europe’s most important industrialregions,theRuhrregionofGermanyandtheindustrialtriangle betweenGenoa,MilanandTurinintheNorth-WestofItaly.Socialmove- ments, trade unions and political parties have played a major role in both regions in shaping the trajectories of deindustrialization from the 1960s to the present day. viii SERIESEDITORS’PREFACE The book is organized in thematic tandem chapters dealing with the same theme for the two regions that are being compared here. As the book is dealing with industrial regions, it is fitting to begin with chapters discussingtowhatextentonecancomparetheself-understandingofboth regions as regions. Here, it emerges clearly that the understanding of the people living in the Ruhr region that they share a common geographical andmentalspaceisfarmoredevelopedthanisthecaseintheNorth–West of Italy, despite the fact that also in the Ruhr the 53 cities and districts that make up the region have a strong separate identity that stands next to and often rivals forms of regional identity. The next tandem of chapters deals with the mental scars that are left by processes of deindustrialization among the workers and their families affected by job losses and changes in their social and cultural environ- ment. Making use of oral history approaches, the book discusses the experiences of the population in the Ruhr and the North–West of Italy with deindustrialization and highlights their resourcefulness in dealing with the changes and the resistance to them which often resulted in their mobilizationinvarioussocialmovements.Thenexttwochaptersturnthe lens from the people to the political and economic elites who managed forms of deindustrialization in both regions highlighting how important political cultures were in determining to what extent the regional forms of governance intervened and attempted to cushion the social conse- quences of deindustrialization. Separate chapters tackle one of the most crucial actors among organizations reacting to deindustrialization: the trade unions who played a vital role in providing the framework for deindustrialization in the Ruhr, whereas they could not exert a similar influence in the North–West of Italy. The urban landscapes in both regions changed significantly under the impact of deindustrialization, and the next tandem of chapters describes the ways in which the industrial past was integrated into those changing landscapes and to what extent that past was overruled and silenced in the construction of new cityscapes signaling a long goodbye from the industrialpastsofbothregions.Thegreeningofregionsoncefamousfor their industrial pollution has been a significant aspect of the remaking of urban industrial landscapes, and the next two chapters discuss to what extent narratives of ecological rejuvenation have contributed to a new self-understanding of both regions. SERIESEDITORS’PREFACE ix Finally, the last tandem of chapters discusses the diverse ways in which industrialworkhasbeenreplacedbyculturalworkinbothregions.Indus- trial heritage features prominently in both regions and is often combined with a thriving culture and leisure industry that produces a variety of different memories of industrial pasts that sustain visions of the future of both regions. They are invariably contested, and once again, social movements have been important actors in providing their own interpre- tations of the past as ground to stand on in the present and from which to develop visions of the future. Overall, as the concluding chapter by one of the leading scholars of deindustrialization studies highlights, the book makes an important contribution to the transnational and comparative study of the transfor- mations of former industrial regions and it looks at various aspects of deindustrializationthathave,insum,contributedtohowthoseindustrial regions have fared in their transition processes from dominant indus- trial landscapes to landscapes in which industry has rarely disappeared completelybutinwhichitplaysafarlessprominentrole.Thebookhigh- lightsthroughouttheroleofsocialmovementsinshapingthosetransition processes of industrial regions. Stefan Berger (Ruhr-Universität Bochum) Holger Nehring (University of Stirling)