Breathing new futures in polluted environments (Taranto, Italy)

Bibliographic Data

ID8099433
AuthorsMaaret Jokela-Pansini (0000-0002-6761-335X, School of Geography and the Environment University of Oxford Oxford UK, corresponding author), Elisabeth Militz (0000-0003-3939-3289, Department of Geography Environment & Geomatics University of Guelph Guelph Ontario Canada)
Year2022
Volume47
Issue3
Pages741-755
Publication date2022-02-02
Peer ReviewedYes
Open AccessYes
TypeARTICLE
VenueTransactions of the Institute of British Geographers (JOURNAL)
Journal identifiersISSN: 0020-2754 • E-ISSN: 1475-5661
PublisherWiley (PUBLISHER • GB)
DOI10.1111/tran.12532
OpenAlexW4210698249
LanguageEN
Citations received16
References cited84

This paper analyses the ways that young people create new futures in Taranto, Southern Italy, a city hosting one of the largest and most polluting steel factories in Europe. It draws on ethnographic fieldwork in Taranto and uses storytelling to understand how young people – a minority of residents aged between 24 and 35 years – shape futures in industrially polluted environments. The study weaves together geographic and anthropological scholarship about futures in (post‐)industrial cities, conceptualisations of breathing as well as lived experiences in highly polluted areas. Through mobilising the notion of breathing, we highlight the embodied, entangled, and emotional dimensions of the young people's everyday practices and develop our concept of “breathing new futures.” We argue that both pollution and the envisioning of a new future become visible in everything the study's participants do; the ways they promote environmental awareness, take care of animals, or seek to foster children's education. By focusing on generational differences, the study expands on recent scholarship analysing environmental pollution in relation to intersectional identities such as race, ethnicity, and gender, and sheds light on the activities of young people to imagine and live new futures in polluted environments

Business · Economic growth · Embodied cognition · Ethnic group · Ethnography · Futures contract · Narrative · Relation (database · Scholarship · Sociology · Storytelling · Anthropology · Environmental Justice and Health Disparities · Gender Studies · Geographies of human-animal interactions · Participatory Visual Research Methods

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