Marco Armiero

INDICE DEL VOLUME: Introduzione. - PARTE PRIMA: LE QUESTIONI. - I. Il pensiero del passato e l’idea di moderno. - II. Misurare il tempo. - III. Rivoluzioni ecologiche lunghe tre secoli. - IV. Cartografare lo spazio. - V. Reti globali e merci. - VI. Lavoro, schiavitù, migrazioni. - VII. Grande divergenza, capitalismo, industrializzazione. - VIII. Stati, imperi, colonie. - IX. Le città. - X. Violenza e guerra. - XI. Le stratificazioni sociali. - XII. Matrimonio, famiglia, sessualità. - XIII. Culti e religione: contatti, conflitti, trasformazioni. - XIV. Emozioni tra individuo e collettività. - XV. Organizzazione e sapere scientifico. - XVI. La comunicazione: stampa, scrittura, oralità, immagini e suoni. - PARTE SECONDA: I LUOGHI E LE GRANDI CESURE. - XVII. 1368. Dopo la «pax mongolica»: l’Asia dei Ming e di Timur. - XVIII. 1434-1512. La fondazione dell’«Estado da India» e l’inizio del colonialismo. - XIX. 1453-1526. Istanbul, la Persia e Agra: gli imperi islamici. - XX. 1492. Da Granada ai Caraibi: la Spagna unita tra «conversos» e vecchi cristiani. - XXI. 1517. Wittenberg, Ginevra, Londra e Roma: la crisi religiosa in Europa. - XXII. 1519-1555. Da Gand ad Augusta: Carlo V e il potere asburgico. - XXIII. 1520-1683. Da Rodi a Vienna: la sfida ottomana. - XXIV. 1521-1534. Tenochtitlán e Cuzco: come finirono gli «imperi» del Nuovo Mondo. - XXV. 1527. Il sacco di Roma e le guerre d’Italia. - XXVI. 1533-1613. La Russia e l’Eurasia: Ivan il Terribile e il «periodo dei torbidi». - XXVII. 1559-1648. Da Parigi a Vestfalia: i conflitti di religione. - XXVIII. 1602. La VOC: i Paesi Bassi e l’imbarazzo della ricchezza. - XXIX. 1603-1644. Una dinastia di «shogun» per il Giappone, i Qing in Cina. - XXX. 1609. Espellere i «moriscos». - XXXI. 1649. Una repubblica puritana e le origini della potenza britannica. - XXXII. 1660. Lo Stato sono io: la Francia e l’Europa del tardo Seicento. - XXXIII. 1682-1796. Baltico, Mar Nero, Siberia: la Russia dei Romanov in guerra. - XXXIV. 1700-1738. L’Europa multipolare. - XXXV. 1740-1763. Guerre europee e guerre globali. - XXXVI. 1776-1833. Le Rivoluzioni Atlantiche. - XXXVII. 1789. Parigi insorge: la Rivoluzione Francese. - XXXVIII. 1804-1815. Il nuovo ordine in Europa. - Carte. - Cronologia. - Indici.

The communities affected by toxic contamination in Campania, Italy, have had to confront the challenge of
proving a direct causal connection between exposure to pollutants and health issues, given a long history of
mismanagement of waste. Medical studies have been conducted, but the social and political debate is static. In
September 2014, the Italian Ministry of Health simply repeated earlier statements that Campania's increasing
cancer rates are due to poor lifestyle habits. The article casts light on the politicization of ill bodies of
Campania. We analyze three practices of political action and resistance which employed the subjectivization
of physical bodies and illnesses to expose environmental injustice affecting communities. In the neighborhood
of Pianura, Naples, people gathered medical records as evidence for a trial into 'culpable epidemics.' In the
so-called Land of Fires, in the northern periphery of Naples, hundreds of postcards featuring pictures of
children killed by rare pathologies were sent to the Italian Head of State and the Pope. Finally, in the town of
Acerra, the blood of a dying shepherd became a political object to prove exposure to dioxin contamination in
that area. The politicization of illness and bodies conflates the public and private, challenges the mainstream
production of knowledge, and proposes an alternative narrative for affected communities and individuals.
Nevertheless, the practices of this politicization have differed and are not always 'political', as we will show
through the three cases.

It is difficult to define what belongs exclusively to Environmental
History (EH), and even more what belongs to Italian
Environmental History (IEH). This discipline often includes
research concerned with different chronological periods,
issues, approaches, and methods. This plurality of perspectives
reflects the varied and often contrasting labels attached to
those studies. This plurality of paths and experiences should
not be considered a problem, but an opportunity to overcome
the limitations of the current hyperspecialized structuring
of research. For this reason, we have chosen to refer to the
multidisciplinary area of the environmental humanities as the
common ground. On the other hand, we have chosen a new
way to present IEH to an international public: the interview
and, especially in the last part, the multidisciplinary and hybrid
dialogue

Questions of dam safety and hazard potential most often do not take center-stage in contestations and articulations concerning large dams. Through a comparative study of two of Europe’s most emblematic dam disasters – Vajont (Italy) and Ribadelago (Spain) – and the ongoing conflict over the safety of the Lower Subansiri Hydroelectric Project in Northeast India, this article argues that the damage caused by dam disasters is often not unavoidable or unforeseen but instead allowed to happen. Our cases show that power relations, economic pressures and profit influence “risky” dam management decisions, often disregarding the vernacular knowledge of concerned communities and silencing critical voices that do not fit dominant narratives of modernization and progress. We posit that an essential requirement for re-politicizing the question of dam safety is to unpack the apolitical notion of “socially constructed disasters,” thinking instead about “capital-driven destructions.” By emphasizing resistance against dam projects and against dominant risk discourses across space and time, this article seeks to underline the legitimacy of past and ongoing struggles surrounding the construction of large dams.

KEYWORDS: Political ecology, environmental history, risk, vernacular vs. scientific knowledge, large dams,

Questions of dam safety and hazard potential most often do not take center-stage in contestations and articulations concerning large dams. Through a comparative study of two of Europe’s most emblematic dam disasters – Vajont (Italy) and Ribadelago (Spain) – and the ongoing conflict over the safety of the Lower Subansiri Hydroelectric Project in Northeast India, this article argues that the damage caused by dam disasters is often not unavoidable or unforeseen but instead allowed to happen. Our cases show that power relations, economic pressures and profit influence “risky” dam management decisions, often disregarding the vernacular knowledge of concerned communities and silencing critical voices that do not fit dominant narratives of modernization and progress. We posit that an essential requirement for re-politicizing the question of dam safety is to unpack the apolitical notion of “socially constructed disasters,” thinking instead about “capital-driven destructions.” By emphasizing resistance against dam projects and against dominant risk discourses across space and time, this article seeks to underline the legitimacy of past and ongoing struggles surrounding the construction of large dams.

By bringing to the fore the affective, bodily and narrative dimensions of environmental injustices, the project Toxic Bios aims to open new paths of collaborative research and grassroots activism focused on " guerrilla narratives " and counter-hegemonic storytelling Toxic Bios is a Public Environmental Humanities project based at KTH Environmental Humanities Laboratory in Stockholm. Building on Richard Newman's definition of Toxic Autobiography (https://mitpress.mit.edu/books/histories-dustheap), this project is informed by Stacy Alaimo's work on transcorporeality (http://www.iupress.indiana.edu/product_info.php?products_id=385653) and by research connecting the body and environmental justice, as, for instance, Gregg Mitman's Breathing Space (https://yalebooks.yale.edu/book/9780300143157/breathing-space). Newman (2012) defines Toxic Autobiographies as a literary genre in the US second-wave environmental writing, meaning a distinct product of marginalized groups denouncing the environmental injustice in which they feel trapped. Toxic autobiographies are a prototype of counter-history, which aim to sabotage mainstream toxic narratives (https://www.wumingfoundation.com/giap/che-cose-la-wu-ming-foundation/) particularly those which reproduce or silence injustice (https://www.academia.edu /8415688/Telling_the_Right_Story_Environmental_Violence_and_Liberation_Narratives) through counter-hegemonic storytelling. The toxic writers seek to uncover everyday life stories from the environmental margins, through the blending of narrative and history, science and politics, personal and collective. Toxic Bios: A guerrilla narrative project mapping contaminatio...

This article builds upon a rich scholarship that has proposed, though with different shades, the concept of socionatures, meaning by this the inextricable hybrid of ecological and social facts. In this article, we aim to explore how the Mafia produces particular socionatural formations, entering into landscapes, becoming rivers and cities, penetrating into the bodies of humans and non-humans. We will develop our argument by exploring a specific geographical area, the Simeto River, and how the Mafia has become intertwined with its ecologies. We will analyse the appropriation of the river since the 1950s, illustrating various ways in which the Mafia has blended with its ecologies: the control of water, the touristification of the river’s mouth and the placement of waste facilities. We argue that one crucial feature of Mafia socionatures is the attack against commons, i.e. the attempt to subdue the (re)productive properties of human and more-than-human communities to Mafia economic interests. Therefore, we will propose the practices of commons and commoning – that is, the making of commons – as one of the possible strategies against the Mafia.

Negli Stati Uniti si è iniziato a parlare di “autobiografie tossiche”. Con questo termine si indica un genere di scrittura prodotta da persone in qualche modo affette da contaminazione.
In Europa questo genere di scrittura èquasi assente e comunque invisibile, nel senso che questi testi non hanno avuto abbastanza circolazione (magari autoprodotti o pubblicati con case editrici molto piccole).

Lo scopo di questo progetto èdi raccogliere i materiali giàprodotti e soprattutto stimolare la scrittura di “autobiografie tossiche”.

The communities affected by toxic contamination in Campania, Italy, have had to confront the challenge of proving a direct causal connection between exposure to pollutants and health issues, given a long history of mismanagement of waste. Medical studies have been conducted, but the social and political debate is static. In September 2014, the Italian Ministry of Health simply repeated earlier statements that Campania's increasing cancer rates are due to poor lifestyle habits. The article casts light on the politicization of ill bodies of Campania. We analyze three practices of political action and resistance which employed the subjectivization of physical bodies and illnesses to expose environmental injustice affecting communities. In the neighborhood of Pianura, Naples, people gathered medical records as evidence for a trial into 'culpable epidemics.' In the so-called Land of Fires, in the northern periphery of Naples, hundreds of postcards featuring pictures of children killed by rare pathologies were sent to the Italian Head of State and the Pope. Finally, in the town of Acerra, the blood of a dying shepherd became a political object to prove exposure to dioxin contamination in that area. The politicization of illness and bodies conflates the public and private, challenges the mainstream production of knowledge, and proposes an alternative narrative for affected communities and individuals. Nevertheless, the practices of this politicization have differed and are not always 'political', as we will show through the three cases.

Les communautés affectées par la contamination toxique en Campanie, en Italie, ont dû faire face au défi de prouver un lien de causalité direct entre l'exposition aux polluants et les problèmes de santé, compte tenu d'une longue histoire de mauvaise gestion des déchets. Des études médicales ont été menées, mais le débat social et politique est statique. En septembre 2014, le ministère italien de la Santé a tout simplement répété des déclarations antérieures selon lesquelles les taux croissants de cancer en Campanie sont dus à de mauvaises habitudes de vie. L'article éclaire la politisation des corps malades de la Campanie. Nous analysons trois pratiques d'action politique et de résistance qui utilisaient la subjectivisation des corps physiques et des maladies pour exposer les injustices environnementales qui affectent les communautés. Dans le voisinage de Pianura, Naples, les gens ont rassemblé des dossiers médicaux comme preuve pour un procès en «épidémies coupables». Dans le pays de Fires, dans la périphérie nord de Naples, des centaines de cartes postales contenant des photos d'enfants tués par des pathologies rares ont été envoyées au chef de l'État italien et au pape. Enfin, dans la ville d'Acerra, le sang d'un berger mourant est devenu un objet politique pour prouver l'exposition à la contamination par les dioxines dans cette zone. La politisation des maladies et des corps confond le public et le privé, remet en question la production traditionnelle de connaissances et propose un récit alternatif pour les communautés et les individus touchés. Néanmoins, les pratiques de cette politisation ont divergé et ne sont pas toujours «politiques», comme nous le montrerons à travers les trois cas.

Las comunidades afectadas por la contaminación tóxica en Campania, Italia, han tenido que enfrentar el reto de demostrar una relación causal directa entre la exposición a los contaminantes y problemas de salud, dada una larga historia de mala gestión de residuos. Aunque se han realizado estudios médicos, el debate social y político ha estado estático. En septiembre de 2014, el Ministerio de Sanidad italiano se limitó a repetir declaraciones anteriores de que el aumento de las tasas de cáncer de Campania es debido a los malos costumbres de vida. El artículo arroja luz sobre la politización de los cuerpos enfermos de Campania. Se analizan tres prácticas de acción política y resistencia que emplearon la subjetivación de cuerpos físicos y de enfermedades para exponer la injusticia ambiental que afecta a las comunidades. En el barrio de Pianura, Nápoles, la gente ha recolectado los registros médicos como prueba para un ensayo en ‘epidemias culpables’. En la llamada Tierra de los Fuegos, en la periferia norte de Nápoles, cientos de postales con imágenes de niños muertos por patologías raras fueron enviados al Jefe de Estado italiano y el Papa. Por último, en el municipio de Acerra, la sangre de un pastor agonizante se convirtió en un objeto político para demostrar la exposición a la contaminación por dioxinas en esa zona. La politización de la enfermedad y los cuerpos mezcla lo público con lo privado, se opone a la producción de conocimiento convencional, y propone una narrativa alternativa para las comunidades y los individuos afectados. Sin embargo, las prácticas de este politización han sido bastante diferente y no siempre políticas, como se verá a través de los tres casos.