Regions losing out in the society of singularities

Abstract

This chapter discusses how mining regions that were first icons of modern industrialisation became icons of left-behind regions. Most regions outside the cities lose out in global competition. They profited from rural industrialisation during the welfare state. These regions lost much of their production of industrial goods in the global race to the bottom to faraway areas with lower wages. This chapter focuses on how the resistance from peripheral regions against the peripheralisation of their region in the society of singularities strengthened their parochial identity discourses and their devaluation of the values prominent in cosmopolitan identity discourses. It analyses how the mining communities in Yorkshire cultivated working-class identity discourses. The mine closures and the failure to adapt to the society of singularities resulted in the cultivation of a regional parochial identity discourse. This chapter ends with analysing similar processes in two other mining regions in Belgium and the Netherlands. These mining communities show many similarities in the growing importance of parochial identity discourses in reaction to the transition from industrial to late modernity. These parochial identity discourses vary based on the different historical and spatial contexts and the degree to which parochialists are politically successful.