Paper short abstract:

This paper explores Sardinian wetlands as archives of hydro-social violence, spanning from Fascist land reclamation and post-WWII malaria campaigns to current environmentalism. Heritage ethnography investigates repertoires of contestation and repair, pointing to other archives & wetland relations.

Paper long abstract:

The paper explores wetlands as archives of recurrent hydro-social violence. Inspired by Veronica Strang’s observation on the “vital relationship between state power and the ownership and control of water," it unravels the impact of strategies employed to control waterscapes, revealing the emergence of patterns of epistemic violence.

The Sardinian wetlands have been imagined as key to solving the Southern Question— the perceived inability of the Italian South to achieve development. In the 1920s, wetland control played a crucial role in the Fascist "battle against the swamps," aiming at land reclamation and settling the marshes. Post-World War II, wetland malaria became a key battleground for international modernization. The UN-Rockefeller Foundation's “Malaria Blocks Development” model attributed poverty to the environment, deflecting attention from social and political issues. The DDT-based malaria eradication initiative, framed as liberating Sardinia, aligned with Cold War political objectives, including military base establishment.

Recent concerns over coastal erosion renewed state and international interest in the wetlands. Climate change risks led to new environmental initiatives to protect the wetlands from the population. The waterscape emerges as an archive of sedimented layers of development and intervention.

Drawing on ethnographic research with Sardinian basket-makers, the paper explores heritage practices as sites of repair and contestation within the evolving epistemic order of development and safeguarding. It considers the potential role of local practitioners as wetland archivists and caretakers, showing how these everyday, ephemeral, careful activities point to alternative histories as well as other repertoires of hydrosocial, more-than-human, and more-than-economic relations of wetland life.