Grassroots ecologies of value: environmental conflict and social reproduction in southern Italy

Abstract

In this article I examine socio-environmental conflicts through the category of value. Drawing from a single case study, an industrial city in southern Italy, I address the revaluation projects underpinning the conflict around socio-ecological arrangements that are considered unfair, unsustainable and detrimental to life. Focusing on the trajectory of local environmentalism and the specific case of a women group, the paper shows how the intensification of the socio-ecological crisis prompted the shift of environmental conflicts from the sphere of production to the broader relations of social reproduction. I propose to analyse this shift through the concept of grassroots ecologies of value, which outlines a framework for thinking about how people deal with the socio-environmental contradictions in which they live, and their struggles for dignity and worth.