On Italian mobilities and ecological fretwork

Stephanie Malia Hom

doi:10.1017/mit.2021.24

Abstract

This invited commentary explores the ecological fretwork binding people and nature, and, specifically, how Italy and Italianness serve as critical frames for envisioning an environmental history of migration. It examines how each contribution in this special issue adds rigorous archival research to the growing body of academic literature on Italy and the environmental humanities. It also comments on the future research directions, which are connected to this emerging history. Situating these contributions in the wider context of climate change and planetary transformation, this article illuminates how mobilities, understood as an Italian phenomenon, have shaped the globe on a scale previously unknown.

Highlights

This invited commentary explores the ecological fretwork binding people and nature, and, how Italy and Italianness serve as critical frames for envisioning an environmental history of migration
The text asserts, we might achieve just the slightest shift in consciousness, a shift that would afford us even ‘the mildest form of reconciliation to the rest of the living world’ (Hamner 2018) and inspire in us appreciation and gratitude for what we have been given, a world of meaning imparted by a chorus of living wood. In this special issue of Modern Italy dedicated to ‘Environment and Italianness: Socio-Natures on the Move’, the authors compel us to explore the ecological fretwork binding people and nature and, how Italy and Italianness serve as critical frames for envisioning an environmental history of migration, along with a new understanding of the variegated mobilities that said history involves
In that same era of mass migration, Claudio De Majo and Samira Peruchi Moretto train their lens on Italian immigrants who settled in a different south, that is, the Rio Grande do Sul state of Brazil, where they transformed the landscape through logging and viticulture, and, at the same time, forged a new identity as Italian colonos

Summary

Introduction

This invited commentary explores the ecological fretwork binding people and nature, and, how Italy and Italianness serve as critical frames for envisioning an environmental history of migration. Each article traces out the long-lasting impact of human presence on a given landscape – from the city of Kerch on the Black Sea in Crimea, to the Argentinian pampas, to the wine-growing highlands of Brazil, to the rural South in the USA, to agricultural homesteads in Libya.

Results

Conclusion