Paper short abstract:

The young people opposing the construction of a high-speed railway in Northern Italy are widely stigmatised by the national media as violent and anti-progress. Nonetheless, the practices they engage in aim at strengthening an enlarged idea of community, thus interpreting instances of social change.

Paper long abstract:

This paper presents the findings of an ethnographic research carried out amongst the young activists of the No Tav social movement in Italy. Despite being strongly stigmatised by the mainstream media and the national authorities as highly conflictual youth, they engage positively in society and they become interpreters of instances of social change. The hypothesis that lies behind our research is that the young activists, despite the strong stigmatisation they are subjected to, succeed in interpreting instances of social change by borrowing from the overall movement they belong to the key features that allow them to turn stigma into a positive value. Our theory is that the intergenerational dimension is key to the innovation process the young activists are bringing about. Through the conscious adhesion to the community and the relationship of trust and solidarity established with its members and particularly with the elderly, the young activists are able to convey their innovative potential. They convert such potential into practices that point at consciously boosting a social change, with a view to gradually investing not only in their individual lives but that of an entire community - a community whose boundaries start in the local Alpine Valley but stretch out to reach national and even European ones.