Collective land tenures: socio-ecological infrastructures in the mountain territories of l’Aquila, Italy. – This study examines collective land tenures as socio-ecological infrastructures articulating multi-scalar relationships among local communities, rural commons, and mountain governance. Despite extensive dismantling and erasure during the twentieth century, these institutions persist as self-governed systems supported by statutes and assembly-based practices. Drawing on qualitative methods including participant observation, interviews and walking as a research method in the mountain territories of L’Aquila, the research shows how collective land tenures continue to sustain ecological stewardship yet struggle to reproduce civic participation and territorial habitability due to depopulation and the erosion of cultural transmission. Recognizing them as socio-ecological infrastructures highlights their potential for civic regeneration, ecological care, and shared decision-making, offering self-organized responses to contemporary political and socio-ecological challenges in mountain areas.

Sicani-telling: small stories from Sicily’s margins. – This article tells some stories from the Sicani inner area, in Sicily. Drawing on the considerable debate that in recent years – particularly after the National Strategy for Inner Areas, launched in 2012 – has flourished, this article aims to contribute to the deconstruction of the aestheticizing visions that invest these territories. In particular, the narcotized image of the bourg is critically considered: a discursive and political tendency that underlies selective and pacified imaginaries. Following the idea that small stories produce the world, the article describes some narratives collected during an experiential guided tour through walking research methods. This storytelling is analyzed asking what discourse is produced on these marginal places. As a result, the small stories are a mode of the geographic discourse: a method in doing geography with an embodied and affective approach.