Farming in the shadow of violent organizations: understanding farmers’ relational place-making in socio-ecological crises

Abstract

AbstractThis study investigates how farmers develop place-based relations when subject to structural conditions of violence and environmental crime. We particularly focus on environmental crimes perpetrated by the Camorra, the Neapolitan Mafia, at the expense of farming communities in the metropolitan areas of Naples and Caserta, in Italy. Farmers located in this area have struggled to mobilize collectively, with only a group of farmers enable to re-act to land exploitation, illegal burning or dumping, and more in general to the waste crisis. Stimulated by this rather puzzling empirical evidence, our research team engaged in a deeper investigation of the waste crisis, exploring how farmers located in the Land of Fires reacted to conditions of violence and environmental crime by developing a differentiated set of place-based narratives and practices. Using the Land of Fires and the waste crisis as an empirical context, in this study we focus particularly on conceptualizing place-based processes emerging in the context of organized violence and environmental crime. In our approach, these are structural conditions produced by the Camorra and the state, to which local agencies, such as farmers, respond.