Mining the Anthropocene

A key feature of the Anthropocene - a proposed epoch marking the global-scale geologic agency of human beings - is the accumulation of ruins produced by carbon capitalism. These include mining infrastructures and the landscapes mining has wrought through excavation, tunnelling, submergence, flooding, exposure and toxification. These transformations have been enabled by, and have also set in train, deep social shifts in household work patterns, the formation and relocation of labour pools and communities, and the production of classed, gendered and raced subjectivities. In Scotland, a substantial coal-mining industry has transformed sites across the country. With the closure of collieries, a pressing question for government, councils, communities, unions, businesses and volunteer groups is: What future do we want for these coalfields? This project addresses the question by focusing on the social and environmental relations that shape mines, and that allow for their future restoration, memorialisation, and repurposing.