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Towards a socio-environmental history of extractivism in Charleroi region

par Declève, Marine ;Grulois, Geoffrey
Editeur scientifique Mercado Jara, Alvaro ;Salgado Cofré, Daniela
Référence On Extractivism: Entanglements from the Global North and South(25/10/2024-30/10/2024: Pontificia Universidad de Valparaiso, Chile)
Publication Publié, 2024-10-24

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Résumé :

The (post)-industrial region of Charleroi epitomized the territories of the so-called former European “fossil crescent” (Magnette, 2023). Once the center of intense process of natural resources extraction and transformation, these territories are facing socio-economic and ecological crisis since the middle of the XXth century. While the urban history of Charleroi has mainly focus on building and infrastructure heritage, in this contribution inspired by the work of William Cronon (1991) we propose to explore how the human - natural resources relations embedded in the extraction and material transformation of wood, coal and iron ore has changed in the course of history. We argue for a renewed approach of the territory of Charleroi based on this grounded understanding of the relations between human and natural resources. In order to highlight these changing relations in time, the research and presentation relies on an atlas gathering cartographic and visual representation of Charleroi territories of material extraction and transformation. Beyond maps, this socio-environmental atlas gathers drawings and pictures that allow for a visual ethnography of the grounded relations between human and natural resources. In the last part of the presentation, we show how the emergence of environmental activism grounded in Charleroi slag heaps since the 1970s can be understood as a way to renew the grounded relation between human and natural resources beyond question of economic growth and productivism.