Reclaiming Territory from Below : Grassroots Environmentalism and Waste Conflicts in Campania, Italy
Författare
Summary, in English
Rooted in previous activist engagement and on ten months of empirical research with the grassroots committees and the Stop Biocide Coalition of Campania, this thesis reconsiders the recent history of the region’s urban and toxic waste ‘crises’ and investigates the emergence, the outcomes and the legacies of grassroots environmentalism from 2000 to 2015. Positioned across the fields of political ecology, anthropology and geography, the research traces the drivers, the historical depth, the spatial and ecological articulations, and the power relations embedded in the Campania’s waste metabolisms. Next to clarifying the processes leading to waste occupation, the main contribution is an ethnography of social mobilizations.
By focusing on the knowledge generation and on the spatial interventions of the committees and the Coalition, the research explores the bottom-up defense, reimagination and reclamation of territory in the course of environmental conflicts, scrutinizing resistance strategies and meaning-making processes. The overarching question asks how the grassroots environmental movements experienced, contested and counteracted processes of waste accumulation and socio-environmental degradation. In particular, analytical attention is devoted to charting the emergence of alternative imaginaries and practices of socioecological relations with a transformative political scope. Accordingly, the four articles included in the thesis represent three empirically grounded theoretical interventions and one methodological reflection into the concerns of the research.
The findings suggest that socio-environmental conflicts such as Campania epitomize a crucial question of our times: the relations between the unequal distribution of power, the physical and cultural survival of social groups, and the maintenance of ecological conditions suitable for life. The grassroots environmental movements of Campania have developed strategies and notions to tackle these issues that I bring to academic scrutiny. By elaborating the concepts of commoning, ecological decolonization and competing territorialisations, I expand and complement the groundwork of activists, establishing links with emerging debates that interrogate the relevance of grassroots environmental mobilizations for projects of broader political emancipation.
Publiceringsår
2017
Språk
Engelska
Publikation/Tidskrift/Serie
Meddelande från Institutionen för kulturgeografi och ekonomisk geografi. Avhandlingar
Issue
20
Fulltext
Dokumenttyp
Doktorsavhandling
Förlag
Lund University
Ämne
- Human Geography
Nyckelord
- grassroots movements
- popular environmentalism
- territory
- waste management
- environmental conflicts
- Organized crime
- southern Italy
- political ecology
- socioecological metabolism
Status
Published
Handledare
- Guy Baeten
- Marco Armiero
- Erik Swyngedouw
ISBN/ISSN/Övrigt
- ISBN: 978-91-7753-376-4
- ISBN: 978-91-7753-375-7
Försvarsdatum
22 september 2017
Försvarstid
13:00
Försvarsplats
Världen, Geocentrum I, Sölvegatan 10, Lund
Opponent
- Julie Sze (Professor)