Paper short abstract:

This paper addresses how legitimate agency and authority of management regimes are sought through mnemonic entrepreneurship. It investigates the attempt to restore and safeguard the biodiversity of the Mediterranean basin focusing on the preservation and conservation of territorial heritage as a public-private arrangement.

Paper long abstract:

The insight that human activity by now permeates all processes on Earth has led to a shift in the management of natural and cultural heritage towards approaches that recognize human-environmental resources as integrated and continuous. In the attempt to restore and safeguard the biotic communities and the genetic resources of the Mediterranean basin—one of the worlds' 18 biodiversity hotspots - international agreements and national decrees have been adopted to facilitate the protection of area biodiversity.

The establishment of the Majella National Park in the mountainous Abruzzi region, some 200 kilometres east of Rome, presents the background for this paper and addresses how the park through the enforcement of local cultural and biological diversity has constructed the Majella territory as a diversified cultural landscape. By constructing the Majella territory as a diversified cultural landscape and mobilizing the local communities as key partners in the protection of environmental assets, the park has strived to become part of locality, and actualizing the establishment of a 'native society' and taken the role of helping people of the area connect to place and time. It investigates how the park, in the arrival at legitimate agency and authority of management regimes, positions as an agent of 'mnemonic socialization' (Zerubavel 1006) in enabling residents' sense of belonging, intensifying protective concern and making the local communities more supportive of the park and its intention to recover territorial resources.