Paper short abstract:

Wildfires increasingly ravage the Portuguese landscape, posing risks for its rural inhabitants. This paper follows residents of the Serra de Monchique in their attempts to build sustainable citizenship in order to increase their resilience against their changing environment.

Paper long abstract:

This paper, based on three months of ethnographic fieldwork research, explores the rural location of the Serra de Monchique in Portugal, and how it is connected to global processes, by positing the concept of landscape, on a local scale, opposite the global interconnectedness of the countryside, often assumed to be relatively isolated. In this way it portrays the frictions experienced by locals, and analyses how these frictions contribute to local perceptions of powerlessness and precarity.

The residents depict how they experience inadequate rights applying to them in their landscape of residence, as they perceive threats from corporate conduct and climate change, while the responsibilities imposed on them through neoliberal and political narratives are unjust and cumbersome. Subsequently, the residents of Monchique attempt to negotiate more appropriate rights and responsibilities through acts of citizenship, as reactions to local perceptions of powerlessness and governmental neglect. This is illustrated by the ways residents try to procure more rights and resilience to combat the annually increasing wildfires that ravage the local landscape and livelihoods.

These local acts of citizenship are contrasted with theoretical debates on sustainable citizenship, pursued by residents of Serra de Monchique. Narratives surrounding sustainable citizenship often fall prey to common limitations in sustainability discourses, inhibiting it from being applicable and effective on a more local and rural scale. Thus, in an attempt to expand the concept of sustainable citizenship, and advance its applicability in the context of Serra de Monchique, this thesis critiques existing literature on sustainable citizenship.