BOOK REVIEWS

Mah, Alice.
Industrial Ruination, Community and Place: Landscapes and Legacies of Urban
Decline.
Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 2012.
240 pp.
ISBN: 978-1-4426-1357-7
Written for the academic theorist cum dereliction tourist. Industrial Ruination,
Community, and Place brings to life three case studies of industrial decline,
namely Niagara Ealls, Canada/ USA, Newcastle-upon-Tyne, UK, and Ivanovo,
Russia. Integrating ethnography, social theory, and empirical observation, Alice
Mah attempts to contextualize the lived experiences of workers (both former
and current) and residents to demonstrate how industrial decline has differen-
tially affected various groups of people in her case study city-regions, and how
these people in turn act in relation to processes of de-industrialization.
Industrial Ruination, Community and Place is Mah's first self-authored
book, and builds on her early research throughout the first decade of the new
millennium in her case study cities. Her central purpose is to "advance a new
theoretical framework for analyzing the complex relationships between de-
industrialization and industrial ruins: 'industrialization as a lived process.'" To
achieve this end, Mah draws on methodologies and previous research by others
in the fields of community studies (especially research in 'rust belt' cities), a
variety of literature dealing with transitions from industrial to post-industrial,
Eordism to post-Eordism, uneven geographical development (particularly cap-
italist growth and destruction in urban areas) and sociology of landscapes and
legacies of the past. In terms of practical research methods, Mah used archival,
documentary and photographic materials, 'Mobile Methods' (aka walking and
driving tours of areas of urban decline), secondary analysis of statistics and
qualitative interviews with local people in the case study areas.
The ambitious theoretical comparison of such disparate communities that
Mah examines here is intriguing. The contexts of development in each are rad-
ically different from the others. However, despite this apparent disjuncture,
there is ample precedent for this type of extended case study method, especially
within the sub-discipline of industrial geography/ sociology. In order to make
the extended case study method 'work' across widely different cases, the key is
to be able to look for patterns between the cases, determine what these patterns
mean theoretically and then hold these emergent theories in conversation with
the broad set of existing theory that the researcher is already well versed in. Of
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Book Reviews
course, operating within this methodology effectively presupposes an ability to
get 'in' to the cases, to be able to see as effectively as possible the world of people
at the site of research, through the eyes of those people.
Throughout the book, there is no clear delineation of empirical and theor-
etical sections, which caused confusion about whether Mah is writing about
what she saw, or working out how to interpret what she saw. Yes, there are
points when Mah reaches out to the broader theoretical frameworks mentioned
previously but she offers little that is strikingly new or particularly insightful in
terms of understanding deindustrialization. The patterns between Mah's case
studies are already well-documented within geography and sociology: div-
isions based on historical classes, gendered divisions of labour, differing agency
of people (predicated by age, socioeconomic standing, even political power) to
resist or work around the externalities of deindustrialization, gentrification,
etc. But what are the actual insights and new ways to understand, for example,
the cultural role of factories in the Soviet Union? Likewise there must be some
aspect of this cultural attachment to work that can be described and be found
to hold true in Niagara Falls. A vague nostalgia or appreciation of a material
place of employment is a fine starting point for research, but to what extent
does it hold sway over residents' decisions in the face of deindustrialization?
Surely there exists a unique "Russian mentality" when facing industrial decline.
Mah does not examine how Russian workers and factory managers may have
been successful at responding to industrial decline by other means (through
personal, political, even criminal networks for example). There is more to be
learnt about these responses and their (non)existence elsewhere.
Mah does not claim to have spent extensive periods of time in and
amongst her case study locations, and her observations come across as more
cursory than embedded. WTiat may have been more effective is an attempt to
gain longer-term access to the political institutions presiding over industrial
decline (possibly through employment therein). Of further benefit would have
been a view of industrial decline from the vantage of a lower-level decision
maker, who readily interfaces with local workers, pensioners, and private sec-
tor employers.
As a whole. Industrial Ruination, Community, and Place is best treated as
an interesting empirical work shedding light on places we may not normally
associate immediately with deindustrialization. It brings to life the stories of
residents and workers, who readily deserve both a voice and a sympathetic ear.
Nicholas Byrne
M.A. Candidate
Department of Geography
University of British Columbia
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