Harrison, R., G. Plets and C. Sterling. 2026. Carbon Heritages: Histories, Politics Imaginaries. International Journal of Heritage Studies. Online first. https://doi.org/10.1080/13527258.2026.2723878
Abstract
This essay introduces a themed section of IJHS exploring the political dimensions of heritage and energy. Individual papers consider museological collections connected to extractive industries and petrocultures in Germany, South Korea and Portugal, commemorative practices surrounding the decline of coal in the UK, the emergence of new curatorial perspectives on gas extraction in the Netherlands, and the social and material impact of decarbonisation rhetoric on former industrial heritage sites and landscapes in Germany and Belgium. To help frame these case studies, this introductory essay develops a new framework for research at the intersection of critical heritage studies and energy humanities. By attending to energy as a constitutive agent in heritage-making, it challenges conventional paradigms of varied heritage processes. It advances three key arguments: (1) heritage and carbon modernity are deeply intertwined; (2) conceptual frameworks such as petrocultures and carbon cultures gesture towards divergent carbon and energy relations in heritage; and (3) new approaches to heritage can help to foster a deeper engagement with the politics of decarbonisation across society. Foregrounding carbon cultures and carbon heritages as both methodologies and concepts, it advocates reorienting heritage studies to account for the material, cultural, and socio-political entanglements of carbon-intensive energy systems, which have so far been overlooked.
Colin Sterling 