Geographical observations on the Gilet jaunes movement: from inner-city violence to protest roundabouts. – Against a backdrop of economic crisis, climate catastrophe and anti-globalisation struggles, social protests characterised by a strong spatial rootedness have developed in the recent past. The contribution aimed to analyse the influence of spatial differences on the development and articulation of social movements, with particular reference to the role of space in violent expressions. In particular, the Gilet jaunes movement was analysed, which in terms of the complexity of political protest and the dialogue between protest demands and spatial context, seems to be a particularly significant case not only in terms of political symbolism but also in terms of spatial semiotics. Indeed, the movement developed in two main spatial contexts whose differentiations generated different declinations of the protest and different perceptual and representational processes.

Geographies of Pandemia in the Chile of Social Riots. New appraisals of urban-rural inequalities. – The global spread of the Covid-19 virus, its speed and mode of propagation, the implications on morbidity, social relations and local and state economic dynamics, redefine the social construction processes of the territories. We propose a reading of the Chilean case, in an attempt to relate the structural, economic and territorial conditions, with the evolution of the health measures adopted, read through the perspective offered by social questions at the center of the protests that have animated the country since 18 October 2019. The structural political framework is the hyperliberist economic model, imposed during the dictatorship of General Pinochet, preserved and enlarged by the center-left governments in the last twenty years, which has among its elements characterizing the maximum opening and dependence on markets international, a production sector flattened on the export of raw materials, the privatization of fundamental services (such as health). At a time when, due to the virus, individual states restore a generalized closure of borders, the Chilean model aims to perpetuate itself by depriving special economic interests of collective well-being, further accentuating internal inequalities between groups social and between territories. The objective of the contribution is to analyze how much the geographical peculiarities of rural areas (low settlement density, relative isolation in terms of connectivity, ecc.) can limit the spread of the virus and, at the same time, how the limited presence of essential services (such as specialized medical centers) may give rise to greater negative effects than in metropolitan centers. The adopted methodology foresees: – a quantitative analysis of the dynamics of the spatial diffusion of virus – a diachronic and micro-territorial analysis of the containment measures adopted by the central government, supplemented by an analysis of the discursive constructions of the main social actors - a discussion of the interrelationship between political actions, social and economic factors.

Perceived Risk Effect and Nimby Syndrome. Analysis of the "No-Tap" Conflict in Puglia. – In the first half of 2017, a series of protests and clashes in the Salento region of Puglia attracted media attention. At the origin of such clashes, there is a desire to counter an infrastructure project with an international scope for environmental, landscaping, economic and social reasons. This is the Trans Adriatic Pipeline (TAP), which involves the construction of a natural gas pipeline from the Shah Denizinin fields in Azerbaijan to the Italian coast, and then distributed to Europe. Beyond the underlying motivations of mobilization, what emerges as relevant is the phenomenon associated with the environmental conflict, defined in literature as NIMBY syndrome.
The purpose of the paper is to analyze the nature of environmental conflicts, how they emerge, what characteristics they assume and how they can be managed and contained. To this end, will be addressed the issue of risk, perceived risk and probabilistic statistic risk, clarifying the difference, as it is closely related to the theme of environmental conflicts. A review of the literature on the NIMBY and LULU phenomena will be presented, and finally, the case-study of the NO TAP movement in Puglia will be treated.