Paper short abstract:

From a situated case study, I analyze multiple tensions between different ways to take into account the sea element: how to regulate fragile coastal areas, between scientific analysis, control necessities, economic activities and locations iconic functions?

Paper long abstract:

Departing from a situated case study, my phd research analyzes how a public policy – the Italian law on parks, natural areas, and sustainable economic development - comes to life in the everyday reality of a territory. After a fieldwork based in La Maddalena’s archipelago (Sardinia), I observe how different actors and institutions give shape to a National Park and to environmental local policies. The complexity characterizing environmental issues demands a multiscalar institutional and bureaucratic organization, as well as a considerable participation of multiple local actors. Relations, or difficult relations, become the very place of existence of this kind of institutions. In those compositions, the local context, with its configurations, connections, and conflicts, is never a blank sheet on which transcribe protocols and procedures, and local state agents are never mechanical translators of orders. Furthermore, scientific knowledge and scientists come to add complex analysis and unpredictable phenomena's descriptions. It is in this dense web of relations that the case of coastal erosion and loss of sand here illustrated had to be approached, in a mediterranean archipelago at the core of a touristic and pleasure-sailing district. The observed case reveals multiple tensions between different social and economic ways to take into account the sea element: how to regulate access to fragile coastal areas when scientific survey outlines plural erosion causes, control authorities seek to define univocal norms and perimeters, economic actors construct their activities on possibly damaging practices and marine locations assume iconic and symbolic functions?