Paper short abstract:

At the margins of the mining region of Sulcis we try to understand the role of local socio-cultural aspects in decarbonisation processes. We focus on the local industrial crisis linked to the coal phase out of the region, which has produced economic crises and dispossessions of entire communities.

Paper long abstract:

We propose here reflections on a recently opened fieldwork, in which the social role of researchers is still under negotiation. In the framework of an H2020 funded project we are conducting at the margins (San Pietro island) of the mining region of Sulcis an ethnography aimed at understanding the role of some local socio-cultural aspects in decarbonisation processes. In particular, we focus on the local industrial crisis linked to the decarbonisation of the region, which has produced economic crises and dispossessions of entire communities. This context sees the rise of populism and an increasing misrtust in institutions. Anthropological knowledge can be considered a militant theoretical practice in itself.The researchers here broadly shares the political objectives at stake, especially in terms of the appropriation of political processes by local communities and the expansion of the capacity for co-creation of the territory and negotiation in the management of resources. Having adopted locally a posture of dialogical reflexivity, we had to confront our own projections, which at first led us to erroneously glimpse in San Pietro island a prefigurative environmental community. Actually, the local environmental movement is very small and marginalized by the community. Environmental claims are fragmented in a local context that seems to absorb and nullify forms of grassroots solidarity and collaboration. The community here, heavily afflicted by the environmental bads of the coal and steel plants, seems dispossessed to the extent that it cannot express a real organised movement to demand the inclusion of local voices in socio-technical transformation processes.

Paper short abstract:

We explore two different sites of displacement prominently featuring activists who respond to the takeover of their lands, aggressive privatisation of the commons, and dismantling of social structures by neoliberal and imperialist forces through place-based hopeful practices and acts of defiance.

Paper long abstract:

This paper offers a reading of hope, hopefulness and political vocabularies of the future across two very different sites of displacement. Both sites prominently feature activists who have responded to neoliberal and imperialist takeover of their lands through practices that might best be described as place-making. In each context, place is the site of struggle over identity, rights, and resources, which come together in such a way that they give shape to different, hoped-for futures, which contest the dominant discourse of the hope of the commons through a refusal to let go of an imagined, hopeful future set in place. Instead of beginning our theorization and inquiry with a focus on destruction, we’re concerned with the ways in which hopefulness offers insight into political possibilities.

Through an analysis of Saharawi refugees’ ‘waiting’ in the self-managed Saharawi refugee camps in Algeria and the ‘death’ of a village in the easter Australian coal fields, we seek to develop a rich starting point that turn ethnographic attention from dispossession fixated on ruination and absence and towards activists’ resistance struggles as part of a process of creation facilitated by hope. This, we argue, requires a reframing of our ethnographic lens that centres hope and liveliness in our research that might otherwise be subsumed in an external diagnosis of ruination. Within these settings alternative visions of hope are generated and nurtured that counteracts the dominant discourse of the commons, life and hope.

Paper short abstract:

Based on ethnographic fieldwork this paper analyses how, in an Australian mining town, new forms of solidarity have grown from resistance and begin to transform an extraction oriented rural town by introducing commons-oriented practices that pursue to overcome socio-economic differences.

Paper long abstract:

Extraction often goes hand in hand with the emergence of social divides in local communities between protesting groups and those who hope to benefit from them. Often these divides are based in different positionalities resulting in contradicting expectations regarding the pros and cons of such extractive projects and thus contrasting strategies in dealing with them. In Comley, a small town in Australia, the opponents to fossil fuel extraction engaged in a large variety of tactics that aimed to stop the mining producing a strong and effective protest regarding their target, the state policy makers. However, this also resulted in emotional burnout related to how the energy devoted to this resistance was experienced as something negative and to how the resistance divided the local community. Many opponents active in the resistance therefore started to engage in something ‘more positive’ that was hoped to provide a neutral site to alleviate the dividing tensions, such as: a community vegetable garden, community renewable energy, and a yearly conference on sustainable futures. Based on ethnographic fieldwork this paper analyses how these new forms of solidarity have grown from resistance and begin to transform an extraction oriented rural town by introducing commons-oriented practices that pursue to overcome socio-economic differences.