Paper short abstract:

The paper investigates the seashore transformations, starting with a regional case (Liguria-Italy), to demonstrate the importance of history, in relation to other technical disciplines, in reconstructing the social, economic, institutional and cultural value of water in reshaping the coastal profile

Paper long abstract:

Among the best-known actions that water performs and has performed is certainly that concerning the constant reshaping of the coastline, due to the joint action of sea motion and river deposits, which are perceptible in both the very short and very long period, and are well known and discussed, even in public discourse, globally (think of the debate on the issue of the sea level rise). The historical analysis of these dynamics, however, while involving many different disciplines and expertise, does not always solicit those of historians in the narrow sense. The subject is thus potentially transdisciplinary, but how historical analysis can enter the debate today is yet to be defined. Instead, as recent international studies have shown, historians could help decipher not only how the material and physical transformations that have affected coastlines in the past have had consequences for human societies, but more importantly how they have resulted from specific social, political and cultural (human) dynamics - which cannot be explained simply by the categories of technicians, and by a purely "natural" explanation of such phenomena. These implications in the past will be shown, and the potential of applying history in the present will be discussed, starting with a regional case study, that of the seashores of Liguria (Italy) in the last centuries, which has had and has a very important role in the regional economy (tourism, industrial infrastructure), and which is constantly being re-discussed from the transformations that human activity and the action of water constantly produce.