ABSTRACT
In this chapter an attempt is made to link theories on social memory to the post-industrial coal landscapes of Dutch and Belgian Limburg. The focus is on the interface between the ideas about remembering and forgetting on the one hand, and the specific case studies of the mining districts on the other. The first section of this chapter describes the notion of ‘formative forgetting’, which appears to be very useful for the study of mining heritage. After describing the diverging nature and extent of mining heritage preservation, it is stated that we need to consider a new factor, the so-called ‘evolution’ of memory, when we discuss heritage.
