Article ID: CBB643566102

The Nature of Mafia: An Environmental History of the Simeto River Basin, Sicily (2020)

unapi

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.

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https://data.isiscb.org/isis/citation/CBB643566102/

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Authors & Contributors
Tvedt, Terje
Raito, Leonardo
Margaret Cook
Ragonese, Peppino
Emanuel, Ryan E.
Bianco, Anna Domizia
Concepts
Water resource management
Nature and its relationship to culture; human-nature relationships
Environmental history
Water
Ecological economics; environmental economics
Rivers
Time Periods
19th century
20th century, late
20th century
Modern
Medieval
21st century
Places
Italy
United States
Australia
Danube river
Sicily
Singapore
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