Men’s Polluted Leisure in the Anthropocene: Place Attachment and Well-Being in an Industrial Coastal Setting

Abstract

PRELUDE: Violence. Dead crabs by the many thousands on the beach. Dead fish too. Ponds full of tires. Bubbles surfacing from broken gas pipes somewhere at the bottom of the river. The wind sweeping through the wreckage of an abandoned steelworks providing an incessant hum that echoes across this coastal ‘wasteland’ of the Anthropocene. Someone fishing sits huddled on a concrete jetty. A surfer, shivering, hurriedly pulls and tugs on a neoprene wetsuit as they dance on the snow. His mates wait for him. A beachcomber hunts for washed up mining tools to turn into art. Relationships with nature—this post-industrial ‘wasteland’ is nature too—in this place may make you feel better. They may not, also. This is polluted leisure in the Anthropocene.