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Paper short abstract

On the volcanic island of Stromboli, the islanders lives with the eruptive activity as part of their daily lives. Far from becoming a source of fear, it is what makes the ‘stability’ of their island. This is the basis of a particular geosociality in which silence is terrifying and growl, reassuring.

Paper long abstract

On the island of Stromboli, Sicily, the population is used to the constant rumble of ‘their’ volcano. Spewing incandescent material, ashes and hot gas multiple times per hour, Stromboli is considered one of the most active volcanoes in the world. Yet, for the few hundred inhabitants, this constant activity is not a threat, a potential danger, as it is their normality. This is the basis of a particular ‘geosocial paradigm’, in which the instability of the very ground is what makes it stable.

Based on long-term ethnographic research conducted on the island, I propose to explore the intimate geosocial relationships that develop between the strombolani and the volcano. Far from becoming groundless, it builds on the movement. While a heightened activity can make one feel “cautious” as one interlocutor told me, the silence of the volcano is source of 'fear'. When the ground ‘stabilise’, many of my interlocutors reported being afraid, considerably more so than when they can “feel that Lui [him] is alive”. In relation to James Hutton’s “deep-time”, I argue that coliving with an active volcano consent being aligned with the ‘shallowness’ of the geos, its rapid evolution. In other words, the strombolani don’t need to learn how to live on a moving, unstable and breathing earth; they don’t have to ‘realise’ its intrinsic instability. From the shallow, volcanic context of Stromboli, this presentation is an invitation to think of the various geosocialities with a ground that, even if at an imperceptible rate, is always moving.