Heritage-making in the capitalocene: deconstructing fishing heritage and regeneration in an English fishing port

ABSTRACT This paper investigates how heritage-led regeneration has mediated the reconfiguration of North Shields Fish Quay. North Shields is a town in the North East of England, once home to among Britain’s largest deep-sea trawling fleets. Following the collapse of the trawling industry in the late twentieth century, ongoing fisheries crisis, and undelivered Brexit promises, fishing heritage has become valued as a tool for social and economic development. However, this deployment of heritage generates both opportunities and threats. Situated between contemporary archaeology and critical heritage studies, this paper employs archaeological ethnography and critical discourse analysis to examine the material and discursive unfolding of heritage-led regeneration at North Shields Fish Quay. I situate heritage-making in the Capitalocene and argue that heritage-led regeneration represents a capitalist response to capitalism-induced crisis. By foregrounding the long-term exploitation and alienation of fishing communities, and their physical and social separation from the landscape, this paper demonstrates that heritage-led regeneration profits from, perpetuates and obscures these abuses.


Introduction
Amidst the decline of the UK fishing industry, heritage represents a dominant force for transformation. Where heritage is defined 'as a cultural and social process, which engages with acts of remembering that work to create ways to understand and engage with the present', fishing heritage is represented by fishing boats, buildings, and gear, as well as the skills and knowledge attached to the catching, preparation and cooking of fish (Smith 2006, 2;Urquhart and Acott 2013). Against the backdrop of unemployment, stagnation and depopulation, heritage-led regeneration transforms deindustrialised fishing quarters, stimulates investment, and instils pride in the community (Lazenby and Starkey 2000;Day and Lunn 2003;Byrne 2015, 819).
However, the reconfiguration of fishing ports through heritage is not without challenges. In Bait, a 2019 British drama film chronicling tensions between residents of a touristic Cornish fishing village, heritage materialises differently depending on characters' identities (Jenkin 2019). Martin, a fisherman down on his luck, mourns the decline of the fishing industry while transmitting his skills and knowledge to his nephew. Martin is hostile towards the Leigh family who purchased the 'Skipper's Lodge' on the harbour as a second home. Their interior décor (fishing nets, chains, and a porthole mirror), and restoration of a fisherman's net loft into a holiday let, reproduce a fishing heritage identity that threatens Martin's presence in the village. North Shields Fish Quay is a former trawling port in North East England. The deployment of fishing heritage through regeneration projects has similarly left members of the community feeling alienated and marginalised. Tackling dereliction, heritage-led regeneration has transformed the landscape into an up-and-coming commercial and residential district (Brookfield, Gray, and Hatchard 2005, 78). However, the palpable legacies of working-class exploitation mean many residents are unable to access the new waterside apartments, restaurants, and leisure facilities, thereby excluding them from cultural and economic life (Herzfeld 2010;De Cesari and Dimova 2019).
To confront the tensions exacerbated by fishing heritage, I situate heritage-making in the Capitalocene; a distinct geological epoch where commitment to 'endless accumulation' has penetrated all biological, social, and geological formations (Moore 2016, 93). The Capitalocene provides a lens through which to view and analyse the role of heritage-led regeneration in capitalising upon, extending and obscuring generations of capitalist violence and inequality. Following a review of fishing heritage, focusing on the British context, the Capitalocene is introduced alongside the history of North Shields Fish Quay and the emergence fishing heritage. The methodology and results sections deploy critical discourse analysis and archaeological ethnography to apprehend the discourses and materiality of heritage-led regeneration. In the discussion, these observations are brought into dialogue with the Capitalocene, aided by the concept of disaster capitalism.

Fishing heritage
The decline of traditional industries has forced English coastal towns to diversify their economic base. Fishing heritage is a desirable stimulus, mobilised in the landscape, through regeneration, and museums ( Figure 1). This, and the disparity between the opportunities and threats generated, represent key stimuli for research. Despite this, fishing heritage remains overlooked, and Nadel- Klein's (2003) Scottish monography 'Fishing for Heritage' remains one of the most comprehensive accounts.
Rather than offering a detailed overview, I convey my observations of (largely British) fishing heritage literature, with reference to a select portion of studies, to exact a precise critique of the field. Namely, that studies show repetition in their conceptual foundations and lack historical depth. Subsequently, they draw conclusions which fall short of grasping the challenges that emerged from heritage-led regeneration at North Shields Fish Quay.
In their efforts to resolve tensions surrounding fishing heritage, many studies reproduce ideas central to critical heritage studies. These scholars recognise that the integrity and authenticity of fishing heritage may be threatened by heritage professionals, local authorities, tourists, and capitalism. Selective and sanitised accounts of fishing history deployed by 'outsiders' clash with heterogenous, individualised local discourses which emphasise the hardships faced by fishing communities (Atkinson, Cooke, and Spooner 2002;Nadel-Klein 2003, 171;Byrne 2015). The popular image of precarity may be fishermen/fishers risking their lives at sea. 1 However, women faced distinct hardships. For example, in their role managing households and coping with tragedy; or because of their participation in the fishing industry, whether this was 'rendered invisible' or they were stigmatised for their 'anomalous gender behaviour' (Nadel- Klein 2003, 52;Lavery 2015;Antonova and Rieser 2019, 108). The tension between external and local discourses accords with Smith's (2006) concept of an authorised heritage discourse (AHD), denoting hegemonic narratives constructed by elites. Resonating with the concept of dissonant heritage, studies note how fishing heritage may be manipulated to promote tourism and gentrification at the expense of local livelihoods (Tunbridge and Ashworth 1996;Martindale 2014;Antonova and Rieser 2019). Rather than problematising the category of fishing heritage (except Martindale 2014), scholars propose to moderate these tensions through reflexivity and community engagement (Nadel- Klein 2003, 211;Antonova and Rieser 2019, 112). They strive to democratise heritage (Waterton and Smith 2010).
Existing work on fishing heritage therefore locates challenges and resolutions in the present. The precarious experience of fishing communities through history and the recent collapse of the industry are mentioned merely for context, if at all. Only Nadel- Klein (2003, 1), recognising that the fishing industry exemplifies how 'capitalism can create and then dismiss a way of life', considers these legacies in terms of the contentious interactions between fishers and heritage professionals. Given that the fishing industry remains subject to the violence of capitalist logics, the weight of capitalist systems of exploitation and accumulation on heritage-led regeneration warrants closer attention (McCall Howard 2017). Furthermore, just as deindustrialisation is a powerful concept for understanding the transformation of urban Britain in the twentieth to twenty-first centuries, the closure of fisheries determined the value that fishing heritage assumed (Tomlinson 2020;Lawson 2020). The decline of the fishing industry induced the emergence of a service-based economy and necessitated the implementation of heritage-led regeneration to revitalise the landscape.
Situating fishing heritage in the Capitalocene enters novel conceptual territory and foregrounds the historical depth of heritage-making at North Shields Fish Quay. Unlike the Anthropocene, which attributes responsibility for contemporary ecological, economic, and social crises to undifferentiated humankind, the Capitalocene finds its origins in the systems of organising human and extra-human nature which emerged in the 'long sixteenth century' (Crutzen 2002;Moore 2015, 184). This is encapsulated by the logic of cheap nature. Capitalism separates nature and society and frames the former as a source of food, energy, raw materials and labour. They are 'cheap' in the sense that capital, science and empire are reorganised to appropriate them for free. This endless search for cheap nature underpins the Capitalocene and represents a strategy to resolve the crises that capitalism enters cyclically due to its inherent contradictions (Marx 1973). However, we are at the end of cheap nature. The Earth is overexploited as a source and sink. The accumulation of waste also incurs the production of 'negative-value' such as global warming which further degrades cheap nature (Moore 2015, 213). With the Capitalocene, I connect the boom-and-bust cycles of the fishing industry with the emergence of heritage-led regeneration. In doing so, I interrogate the continuity of capitalist logics, and question whether fishing heritage really represents a tool for sustainable social and economic development.

Economic reconfiguration
Fishing was central to the cultural and economic making of North Shields Fish Quay. The earliest fishing settlement was recorded in 1225, established to provision the nearby priory (Garson 1926, 5). Witnessing modest expansion over the first 500 years, the fishing industry supplied local subsistence (Newcastle City Council 2004). This changed with the industrialisation of the North East and the advent of steam shipping in the nineteenth century. By 1890 North Shields possessed the largest steam trawling fleet in the world; fish powered the North East's expanding coalfields and tinned 'Tyne Brand' herring was exported worldwide (Robinson 1996, 93).
Today, the service-sector dominates. In 2023, North Shield Fish Quay's website proudly notes the location of eateries and riverside apartments in this 'genuine, rugged hard working area' (Figure 2). However, the operations of the fishing industry are significantly reduced (Christy, de Jong, and Knippenberg 2021. To reconcile these disparate economies, I employ a selective history of North Shields Fish Quay. Paralleling the trajectory of the English fishing industry, the historical development of North Shields Fish Quay oscillated between triumph and crisis. When facing collapse, due to the decline in fish stocks or international competition, restructuring provided a 'fix' to continue appropriating labour and extracting fish at low cost (Harvey 1989). Like industrial agriculture, the pursuit of cheap nature pervades the development of the modern fishing industry (Moore 2015). When English fishers were struggling to compete with foreign rivals at the turn of the nineteenth century, the acquisition of curing stimulated a boom. Herring, a highly perishable fish, could be exported widely (Smylie 2004). Future rounds of restructuring included industrialisation, technological innovation and apprenticeship systems (Starkey, Reid, and Ashcroft 2000). More recently, neoliberal policies, including the privatisation and commodification of fishing rights, and Brexit have promised to restore the strength and sovereignty of UK fisheries (Korda, Gray, and Stead (2021, 140). However, fishers bear the brunt of crisis and the precarious effects of restructuring such as decommissioning trawlers, inflexible fishing quotas, and heightened restrictions surrounding trade with Europe (McCall Howard 2017; Symes and Phillipson 2019).
Indeed, the precarity of North Shields Fish Quay's residents is a consistent theme. Before the industrialisation of the fishing industry, the economic organisation of North Shields Fish Quay was characterised by landed dominance and the subordination of the community. Fishers exchanged fish for their right to reside on the land. Control over their labour passed from the Prior of Tynemouth to the Earl of Northumberland and then to capitalised joint-stock companies which commanded trawling fleets in the twentieth century (Robinson Starkey 1996;Newcastle City Council 2004). The wealth was not distributed among the community. The alienation of fishers only increased with time; the deep-sea trawling industry benefited from indentured labour and the absence of safety regulations and unionisation (Capes and Robinson 2008;Wilcox 2015). Trawlermen were nicknamed 'three-day millionaires', describing their extravagant spending during their time ashore (Byrne 2016, 247). This communicates their sense of disposability; there was little incentive to save money when each trip home might be their last. By the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, the area was packed with factories, warehouses, and slums (Garson 1926, 21) Its reputation was of drunkenness, prostitution, and crime. Death and mortality rates were high. When this reached a breaking point in the 1930s, slums were cleared and residents transferred to housing estates such as Meadow Well elsewhere in North Shields (North Tyneside CDP 1978b, 1978a. The slow erosion of the residential population paralleled the downturn of the fishing industry. Fish stocks showed signs of depletion from the 1930s, but a critical point was reached in the 1980s with overfishing, international competition, Common Fisheries Policy regulations and the loss of Icelandic fishing grounds (C. Reid 1998;Thurstan, Brockington, and Roberts 2010). Undelivered neoliberal and Brexit promises, and rapid degradation of marine ecosystems through pollution and global warming, indicate that the end of cheap nature draws close (Angus 2016;Korda, Gray, and Stead 2021). Awash with dereliction by the 1990s, the Fish Quay's landscape told the same story.
Regeneration schemes initiated by local authorities incorporated heritage to envision a 'new future set in the Information Age' (EDAW 2001, 10;Pendlebury 2015, 436). Through workshops and consultations, the community were invited to help identify their heritage. The focus of these schemes was on the built environment and community participation contingent on taking a 'positive approach'; they could not advise against development, only suggest where and how it take place (Cowie et al. 2015, 67). By 2011, the local council reported that £20 million had been spent on regeneration. 2 This figure continues to rise.
However, community-engaged heritage-led regeneration has offered little more than superficial transformation. 43% of the surrounding population lived in a neighbourhood that was among the 10% most deprived in England in 2019. 3 By its very nature, the service-sector increases inequality, and disproportionately generates precarity among low-income populations (Goos and Manning 2007;Standing 2012). Furthermore, the promotion of heritage combined with the abundance of cheap, disused space are the perfect storm for gentrification (Glass 1964;Zukin 1991). In its housing stock and restaurants, North Shields Fish Quay is a landscape for middle-classes.
Rather than analysing the limitations of 'community heritage' (a well-researched topic, see Waterton and Smith 2010), this paper challenges the notion that heritage-led regeneration offers a break or antidote to the pursuit of cheap nature. Scholars acknowledge that 'extractive and service industries' may converge in fishing ports (Chiang 2008, 10; Borsay and Walton 2011. However, I draw attention to the foundations of fishing heritage in an extractive economy and explore its role in extending this trajectory.

Emergence of heritage
In 'The Heritage Machine', Alonso González (2019) identifies heritage as an intrinsic feature of capitalist modernity which functions to reproduce fetishistic social relations. The threat, he argues, is not the manipulation and commodification of heritage by elites (Hewison 1987;Smith 2006). Rather, heritage is tied to labour, power relations and systems of governance. His 'categorical' critique of heritage finds that community engagement is not hopeful but extends capitalist systems of domination into new terrain, thereby further silencing and disempowering communities.
Though his research centres on the heritage industry in MaragaterÍa, a rural Spanish region, he argues that the logic of heritage affects marginalised communities across the world (Alonso González 2019, 214). It presents a three-fold trajectory, which can be mapped onto North Shields Fish Quay.
The first stage involves the separation of the community from mainstream society. '(D)iscourses of difference' construct the community as abnormal, primitive, and backwards, as opposed to normal, civilised, and modern (Alonso González 2019, 214). This is accompanied by the destruction of their alterity through forced state interventions in the economy and social structure. Historical sources attest to the stigmatisation of fishing communities across Europe and Asia (Nadel- Klein 2003, 43-46). Over the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, North Shields Fish Quay was denounced by the media and authorities as a place of violence and misbehaviour (Garson 1926;North Tyneside CDP 1978a. This stigma was perpetuated by de-humanising and essentialising descriptions of residents living in unsanitary and overcrowded slums (D. B. Reid 1845; Garson 1926, 21). When residents moved to housing estates such as Meadow Well after slum clearances in the 1930s, negative perceptions endured. During relocation, residents were forcibly bathed, and their belongings fumigated. This has been described as a 'degradation ritual'; social motivations are indicated by the fact the process was pushed for by councillors, not the Medical Officer (North Tyneside CDP 1978a, 85). The stigma surrounding Meadow Well persisted for decades, and its problemed image was reinforced and nationalised with the 1991 Meadow Well riots (Hastings 2004, 243).
Having othered the community, the second stage identified by Alonso González (2019) involves their objectification through scientific, literary, and artistic media. Despite, or more likely connected to, this stigma, the fishing community in North Shields elicited fascination throughout history. In the nineteenth century, artistic and literary representations of fisherfolk in Britain became popular (Dolman 1905;Gerdts 1977). Many paintings were produced of North Shields Fish Quay including by, most notably, Charles Napier Hemy and Robert Jobling (FISH 2006). This trend continued in the form of photography; a search online, or within local archives, reveals hundreds of images taken by amateur and professional photographs over the past 100 years. The seascape, boats, and people became stimuli for inspiration and entertainment.
With the process of othering underway, and fascination elicited, the final stage in the emergence of heritage is the physical and social separation of the community from their collective symbolic capital (Alonso González 2019). Anything from customs to architecture is commodified and circulated for consumption within service industries. The profit is absorbed by a minority of elite actors, and the community are denied access to their identity, practices, and social spaces. In North Shields Fish Quay, this process was initiated by slum clearances. Five staircases, which connect North Shields Fish Quay with the 'High Town', bear 'traces' of 'overlooked people, places, and processes' (Figure 3) (Edensor 2005, 834). Once providing access to the bankside slums, the current regeneration strategy intends them to be replaced by a plateaued garden with interconnecting ramps. The long-term impact of slum clearance was not to improve living conditions (North Tyneside CDP 1978a, 85-88). Rather, it displaced problems elsewhere and freed the landscape and heritage for appropriation by external actors. Descendants of the working-class communities who occupied North Shields Fish Quay for centuries are undermined as caretakers of their given heritage.
Alonso González's categorical critique illuminates how the emergence of heritage is dependent on the long-term physical and social separation of the community from their social spaces, networks, identity and practices. Just as the Fish Quay's heritage is intimately tied to the fishing industry, it is contingent on the marginalisation, exploitation, alienation and dispossession of the resident.

Methodology
Having established that fishing heritage emerged from the extraction of labour and culture, my task was to explore whether heritage-led regeneration reproduces this trajectory. To do so, I deployed critical discourse analysis (CDA) and archaeological ethnography to access the discursive and material dimensions of heritage-led regeneration. Fairclough's (2003) dialectical-relational approach to CDA was adopted (Waterton, Smith, and Campbell 2006). This perceives discourse as constituting, sustaining, reproducing, and transforming all elements of social life. Having identified a pervasive social problem, the role of CDA is to uncover the power relations and ideologies that make the problem inevitable through their realisation in language. I examined five documents: three regeneration strategies and two supplementary planning documents. Authorship varied from the council to planning agencies, and community groups, but documents were united in their support for heritage-led regeneration. My analysis was structured around two problems: deprivation in the housing estates built for former residents of North Shields Fish Quay in the twentieth century, and the physical and social separation of these groups from the landscape.
Contemporary archaeology is well positioned to apprehend the material residues of fishing heritage and give voice to marginalised (Harrison and Schofield 2009;González-Ruibal 2019). The role of archaeological ethnography was to capture how the regenerated landscape has realised, transformed, and extended the ideologies and power relations identified through CDA (Hamilakis and Anagnostopoulos 2009). Ethnographic fieldwork was carried out at North Shields Fish Quay for 15-days across three months. This followed six months of lower intensity observation, including consulting historic and contemporary maps and photographs, and browsing social media forums to gage community opinions. I adopted a sensory and spatially embodied approach to fieldwork and took photographs to tease out visual cues and textures and record my original encounters (Pétursdóttir and Olsen 2014;Hamilakis 2017). 16 semi-structured interviews were conducted. Interviewees included residents, heritage professionals, retired fishers, local councillors, and fishing industry representatives. Except for two phone interviews, these were held in North Shields, either in the heritage centre, quayside, or a community centre in Meadow Well.

Apprehending an authorised heritage discourse
On my first visit to the area, I was drawn to the waterfront, home to North Shields Fish Quay Company which oversee fishing activities. Nestled in the harbour, known as the 'Gut', are several boats; the concrete surroundings are packed chaotically with brightly coloured nets and pallet boxes. Despite the occasional slamming of delivery van doors, this area is relatively still. The heart of North Shields Fish Quay is elsewhere, on the main commercial street running parallel to the Quay (Figure 4). Lined with food and drink establishments, the pavements fill with al fresco diners and queues for the 'chippy'. Fish Quay Sands lies to the east, a favourite spot for dog walkers, children, and an ice-cream van. Little over 20 years ago, this beach was contaminated. Pockets of dereliction remain. However, the area's newly established identity as a leisure destination dominates.
The eclectic mix of industrial premises and fishing activity gives the area a distinctive allure, recognisable in industrial-come-gentrified towns and cities (Zukin 1991;Hodson 2019). Most buildings that occupy the landscape were built in the twentieth and twenty-first centuries but mirror characteristics of those demolished to clear the way. Older buildings lack a discernible patina of wear due to regeneration. Regeneration strategies and supplementary planning documents focus on cultivating the unique, historic, built environment. They provide specific recommendations on the desired style and form of buildings. This includes angular and blocky shapes, pitched roofs, warm-toned polychrome brickwork, and timber cladding (NSFQ NPG 2013, 23-24). Documents make frequent warnings about what would be considered unsuitable. For example, 'the townscape is significantly undermined by examples of poor maintenance and unsympathetic adaptations' and 'its very special character would be destroyed by inappropriate development' (EDAW 2001, 55;FISH 2006, 1). These statements define the value of built heritage in terms of its aesthetic appeal. Moreover, regeneration strategies frequently deploy phrases that show high instances of modality. Modality refers to the level of certainty implied by language. For example, the pairing of words 'is' and 'must' with assertive verbs such as 'destroyed' and 'undermined' demonstrate strong commitment to a fact. This reflects high modality (Fairclough 2003, 165-67). These stringent guidelines, combined with definitions of heritage as tangible, indicate the operation of an AHD (Waterton, Smith, and Campbell 2006).
My identification of an AHD is supported by the fact that heritage is portrayed as a self-evident category, founded upon expert evaluation (Smith 2006). In interviews, council representatives and heritage professionals frequently referenced Clifford's Fort, a seventeenth century defensive gun battery built during the Anglo-Dutch wars. Today it contains a carpark, offices, wet-fish shops, and the heritage centre. The fort has no symbolic or cultural relevance to the everyday lives of residents. Despite this, authorities and experts have restored this alleged hidden gem promote its historical relevance. Their authority over heritage is reproduced in regeneration documents through legitimising techniques. Words such as 'protect', 'safeguard', 'responsible' and 'duty' authorise their actions and provide moral evaluation. Their hegemony is reinforced through impersonal language and frequent intertextual references to national planning policy and heritage guidelines (Fairclough 2003, 39, 98).
By extension, the community are reduced to recipients, whom the council will 'educate', 'tell' and 'provide' through heritage-led regeneration. Transitive verbs such as these define the asymmetrical relationship between the community, on one hand, and the council and heritage practitioners on the other (Waterton 2010, 30). The community group FISH (Folk Interested in Shields Harbour) have consistently engaged with heritage-led regeneration projects (FISH 2006). However, their members are either business owners with a vested interest in the productivity of the landscape, or middle-aged, middle-class residents, which represent the typical audience for heritage tourism (Prentice 2005, 249;Cowie et al. 2015, 70). By contrast, the retired fishers who I interviewed were largely disengaged from the landscape. They have resorted to creating new spaces for memorialising the fishing industry, which I detail below.

Heritage-led regeneration and neoliberalism
The alienation of the retired fishers from North Shields Fish Quay is perpetuated by their exclusion from the social spaces they previously inhabited. The walls of Clifford's Fort have no practical use, other than to be promoted as a heritage symbol. However, the buildings and infrastructure that were attached to the fishing industry can be profitably repurposed in ways that prevent retired fishers from reproducing their identity and social networks (Williams 2014).
There are grounds to argue that the aforementioned AHD is structured by a neoliberal discourse (Herzfeld 2010;McIvor 2019). For the purposes of this paper, neoliberalism is recognised as an ideology that advocates for the promotion of market mechanisms and the erosion of the welfare state through deregulation, austerity, privatisation, and free trade. Features of neoliberal discourse were identified in all documents examined (Fairclough 2000). I will summarise these features, in conjunction with the role of materiality in reproducing neoliberalism.
The first effect of neoliberal discourse is to construct fishing heritage as a commodity. Commodification by the extension of markets is a key neoliberal strategy where 'natural' resources are depleted, the commodification of cultural products prompts new rounds of capitalisation (Harvey 2006;Moore 2015). Regeneration strategies describe heritage as an 'asset', 'brand' and 'promotional vehicle', to which businesses should 'tie their products and services' (EDAW 2001, 70). This is materialised in the landscape as a distinctive fish theme, which runs from street furniture to business' names and interior design ( Figure 5). The brand is authenticated by the presence of an active fishing industry (EDAW 2001; Ounanian 2019). However, there are hints that heritage is becoming alienated from the fishing industry. One planning document suggests that heritage is communicated through motifs and symbols such as disused mooring bollards and fishpatterned tiles (FISH 2006). Certainly, other coastal towns have maintained tourism founded upon fishing heritage despite the collapse of the industry (Nadel-Klein 2003; Gray 2011). The sustainability of this trajectory is questionable given the contradictions of capitalism. Capitalisation cannot increase endlessly. It generates 'short-and medium-run windfalls', in its 'honeymoon' period, while undermining conditions of accumulation in the long-run (Moore 2015, 127-128).
Secondly, the discourse employed by regeneration projects obscures the goals and threats of neoliberalism. Firstly, neoliberal discourse pursues profit and privatisation under the guise of progress and emancipation. Each of the analysed documents commit to a set of values, which define desirable and undesirable outcomes of regeneration. Desirable outcomes include highquality built landscape, long-term investment, productive use of buildings, and community empowerment. Scholars recognise that phrases such as 'quality', 'empowerment', and 'efficiency' are employed to covertly pursue neoliberal policies (Shore and Wright 1999;Kipnis 2007).
Undesirable outcomes include an unsightly landscape, weak business environment, disused buildings, and disengaged and irresponsible residents and visitors. Indeed, the service-based economy is dependent upon the contribution of middle-class communities and business owners. The exclusion of low-income groups is apparent through their omission from regeneration strategies, except for concerns that high-end housing developments may 'create a "ghetto" of economically disadvantaged residents which would diminish the overall character of the area' (EDAW 2001, 52). This indicates that their concern is for image, and not long-standing deprivation This serves to obscure and dehumanise precarious, unemployed communities (Fairclough 2003, 136-37;Standing 2012). Meanwhile, those with sufficient economic and cultural capital can make heritage-based claims to fulfil private interests (Alonso González 2019; De Cesari and Dimova 2019). I observed that many successful planning applications align their regeneration design with historically significant forms of the building. However, the capacity for middle-classes to partake in the landscape is dependent on financial security, which is threatened by increasing wealth disparity. This would set the stage for a 'dramatic reversal of profitability' of the service-based economy and a significant expansion in those excluded (Moore 2015, 128).
Neoliberalism simultaneously obscures and profits from these zones of exclusion. Neoliberal transformations have eroded community space. This was clear through my interactions with the group of retired fishers. They met weekly in a community hall in Meadow Well, the same housing estate where residents of North Shields Fish Quay were relocated during the 1930s. The retired fishers have personalised the space with fishing memorabilia, commemorative plaques, photographs, and paintings ( Figure 6). However, they expressed frustration that there was no space available for them to meet in North Shields Fish Quay. To do so required hiring a room or visiting a cafe. Regardless of financial capacity, I sensed that they were refusing, on principle, to spend money on the landscape. Many fondly recalled the former Fishermen's Mission building and grocery store located on the Quay for supporting and provisioning the fishing community, respectively. Both buildings have been converted into restaurants, with apartments above. Some retired fishers felt significantly more aggrieved by these transformations than others, but there was a general sense of alienation (Alonso González 2019).
The rationalisation of neoliberal discourse is integral to the continuity of the Capitalocene. All interviewees besides the retired fishers responded positively to regeneration and the service-based economy, citing more activities, greater affluence, and wider appreciation for the area's historical assets. However, when probed, several residents and heritage professionals acknowledged underlying issues of deprivation and marginalisation which gentrification amplifies. Still, gentrification and the commodification of heritage are accepted as inevitable or necessary to respond to decline and dereliction, a view shared by some retired fishers. The landscape successfully naturalises and reproduces capitalist logics, and big businesses accumulate profit (Paynter and McGuire 1991;Zukin 1991).
Returning to the social problems which structured the CDA, it is clear how they sustain the social order instantiated by heritage-led regeneration. The physical and social separation of low-income communities from the landscape provided disused space and an alienated fishing heritage 'brand' to be appropriated by developers and entrepreneurs. The second problem, the deprivation of the wider community, is bound to persist for as long as low socio-economic groups cannot contribute to or derive benefit from investments directed towards North Shields Fish Quay.
Neoliberalism underpins heritage-led regeneration. However, this is realised by AHD's tangible definition of heritage and valuation in aesthetic terms. At best, heritage-led regeneration provides economic and social opportunities for middle-classes, while overlooking wider issues of deprivation. At worse, it appropriates the landscape and cultural products dispossessed from working-class population to prepare new terrain for cheap nature to be extracted. As higher proportions of the population fall into the 'precariat', this honeymoon phase will come to an end (Standing 2012). The contradictions and abuses of the Capitalocene will crystallise, but much too late.

Discussion
At North Shields Fish Quay, heritage-led regeneration can be understood as a capitalist response to capitalism-induced crisis. The existence of fishing heritage and its appropriation was possible due to long-term processes of othering and exploiting communities who inhabited North Shields Fish Quay. The decline of the deep-sea trawling industry shaped the value of heritage to economic and social policy. Heritage-led regeneration subsequently serves to extend capitalist mechanisms of domination. On the one hand, heritage-led regeneration generates new streams for capitalisation and profit. The mapping and evaluation of historic buildings facilitates their identification as tangible, in need of expert care, and a lucrative brand for capital accumulation (Harvey 2006;Moore 2015). Engagement in the landscape depends on capacity to purchase commodities provided by the service-based economy. As a result, heritage extends capitalisation into people's daily lives. This perpetuates existing inequalities by increasing the barriers to housing and services and excluding low-income communities from the landscape. 4 On the other hand, heritage-led regeneration provides a 'cultural fix' that naturalises and legitimises recent economic and social reconfiguration (Shapiro 2014). Discourses of recovery and opportunity pervade regeneration strategies and public opinion, as revealed by my interviews with residents, council representatives and heritage professionals. This is reproduced by the sanitised landscape, and framed against the past of dereliction, precarity, and decline. Some view the contraction of the fishing industry positively, highlighting its association with pollution and environmental degradation. Trawling is massively unsustainable, but to frame this harm in terms of the irresponsibility of fishers alone is a gross simplification (McCall Howard 2017, 210). Longstanding systems for organising human and extra-human nature, encapsulated by the endless search for cheap nature, shaped this trajectory and are reproduced through heritage-led regeneration. We may take comfort in the reconfiguration of former fishing ports. However, the forces that induced their collapse and manipulated the lives of their communities have found new life in leisure and tourism industries. Meanwhile, the same threats loom large, expressed by precarious employment, waste production and environmental destruction, and insufficient housing provisions for low-income populations.
The combination of these two roles enables heritage-led regeneration to 'respond' to crisis while obscuring the cause, and prolonging a collapse which will only become more severe (Moore 2015;Hartley 2016). Klein's concept of disaster capitalism elucidates this phenomenon, as it has heritage preservation and ecotourism (Pyburn 2014;Fletcher 2019). The collapse of the fishing industry has been harnessed through heritage-led regeneration to perform 'orchestrated raids on the public sphere' and reframe 'disasters as exciting opportunities' (Klein 2008, 6). The long-term erasure of working-class communities, from slum clearances in the 1930s through to piecemeal demolition in the 2000s, were ruptures that provided a 'vast, clean canvas' (Klein 2008, 21). Upon this, neoliberal restructuring was enacted. The physical and metaphorical façade provided by the regenerated landscape and service-based economy obscures the structural violence perpetuated by capitalism and recent neoliberal mutations. Structural violence refers to less visible forms of violence, such as marginalisation, inequality and exploitation, which arise when social institutions prevent people from meeting their basic needs (Galtung 1969).
The conceptual strength of the Capitalocene is to underline the unrelenting forces of extraction that underpin heritage-led regeneration. The image I have sketched out is not of careless outsiders mishandling or commodifying another's past. Rather the discursive and material unfolding of heritage-led regeneration are systematic, predicated on the power capitalist logics have held over life and labour at North Shields Fish Quay for over 500 years.
As we continue to grapple with the collapse and reconfiguration of traditional extractive industries, and heritage expands as a field for study and investment, I advocate for deploying concepts that face up to the precarity, destruction and dispossession that have become ubiquitous in the contemporary world.

Conclusion
Focusing on the case of heritage-led regeneration at North Shields Fish Quay, this paper argued that fishing heritage must be understood in conjunction with the collapse and long-term boom-andbust cycles of the UK fishing industry. Accordingly, the Capitalocene provided a lens to do so, foregrounding capitalist logics of accumulation and the mechanisms of appropriation, alienation, and exploitation which have shaped the industries, landscapes and livelihoods of North Shields Fish Quay. As a capitalist response to capitalist-induced crisis, the dual threat of heritage-led regeneration is as follows. Firstly, it profits from and perpetuates these abuses by preparing new terrain for cheap nature to be extracted through the service-based industry. Secondly, it obscures the history of capitalist destruction, and its legacy in the physical and social separation of low-income communities. This paper proposes that the concept of the Capitalocene has utility for the field of critical heritage studies. I also encourage vigilance to the ongoing social struggles centred on heritage practices in fishing ports such as North Shields Fish Quay. Deconstructing the logics and values that dictate heritage-making must be a priority for heritage scholars, particularly for those working in contexts where heritage is alleged as a promising stimulus to respond to the decline of traditional industries and forms of employment.