DOCUMENTI GEOGRAFICI - N. 2 (2025)

TABLE OF CONTENTS

Poli-thema

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Ai margini delle mappe: appunti preliminari per uno studio sulla pluralità dell’isola di Alicudi. – L’articolo analizza l’insularità contemporanea di Alicudi, l’isola più occidentale dell’arcipelago eoliano, integrando prospettive geografiche, storiche e culturali. Viene evidenziato come le rappresentazioni esterne – in particolare quelle presenti nei resoconti di viaggio del XVIII e XIX secolo – abbiano contribuito a plasmarne l’immagine, spesso sovrastando le voci locali. Oggi l’identità di Alicudi si configura in un equilibrio tra tradizione e cambiamento, influenzata da trasformazioni demografi-che, dal turismo e da nuove narrazioni culturali, soprattutto quelle promosse da autrici contemporanee. Nel tentativo di descrivere l’“insularità reticolare” di Alicudi, lo studio ne definisce il ruolo di spazio al tempo stesso periferico e connesso, non solo all’interno dell’arcipelago, ma anche in un repertorio di immaginari si estende ben oltre i suoi confini geografici.

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Mountain Villages and Resources for Sustainable Development: The Role of Traditional Water Systems in the Tourism-Cultural Ecosystem in Oman. – Prior to the advent of the Coronavirus pandemic, the Hajar Mountains, which are renowned for their distinctive peaked hills (Jebel Akhdar and Jebel Shams), were primarily frequented by the local community. However, recent years have seen a significant rise in international visitors, particularly to the mountain villages of northern Oman, known for their unique natural and cultural heritage. Key elements include the wadis, seasonal riverbeds, and the aflaj, ancient irrigation channels crucial for agriculture and daily life. Among the most significant aflaj are Falaj al-Khatmeen (Birkat Al Mouz) and Falaj Daris (Nizwa), both UNESCO World Heritage Sites. Despite their cultural value, these sites experience short tourist stays, usually not exceeding two days. This study explores tourist flows, visitor motivations, and local tour guides’ perspectives, using archival research, field surveys, and semi-structured interviews. The findings highlight the need for a new tourism strategy, shifting from a transit-based model to a sustainable tourism approach. Proposed itineraries integrating Birkat Al Mouz and Nizwa aim to extend tourist stays, enhance engagement with the region’s cultural and natural assets, and generate lasting economic benefits for local communities. By promoting responsible tourism, this study advocates for the protection of UNESCO sites, cultural heritage preservation, and the active involvement of local populations in tourism development.

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Counter-Geographies of Wine: Marginal Viticultural Practices and the Transition To-ward a Post-Alcoholic Enotourism. The Role of Acquata. – This article proposes a critical re-reading of contemporary wine geographies through the notion of counter-geographies, focusing on acquata—a traditional post-fermentative beverage derived from the rehydration of grape pomace—as an epistemic and territorial device capable of reconfiguring the cultural and ecological meanings of wine production. Building on the theoretical framework of post-alcoholic enotourism, the study explores how emerging “NoLo” (no- and low-alcohol) consumption regimes intersect with transformations in rural landscapes, sustainability policies, and socio-symbolic practices of conviviality. Historical and geographical analysis reveals that acquata, far from being a marginal residue of pre-industrial viticulture, embodies a vernacular knowledge system rooted in circular use of resources, social equity, and ecological restraint. Its historical erasure through modern regulatory frameworks reflects broader processes of epistemic and territorial exclusion within capitalist agri-food regimes. By reactivating ac-quata as a cultural and political tool, the paper advances the hypothesis of a regenerative geography of wine, in which residual practices and marginal knowledges serve as generative forces for more inclusive, sustainable, and plural forms of enotourism and territorial identity.

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Listening to the nights of Fez a fragmentary narrative. – In how many ways can one listen to a city – or rather the city – that excludes the noise of traffic while preserving the ancestral channelling and sonic configurations of its alleys and of materials belonging to a time discreet yet not immobile? The soundscape of the medina of Fez emerges not only as a visual space, but as a stratified acoustic landscape, oscillating between public, discreet, and sheltered spaces on the one hand, and private, reverberant, and communal ones on the other. The calls to prayer from the minarets, the flight of storks, and both human and non-human voices contribute to the construction of a sonic geography that defines urban spatiality. Architecture itself functions as an acoustic device that amplifies, attenuates, or trans-forms sounds, making Fez one of the most significant “cities of sound” in the world. Nighttime, in particular, discloses the sonic intimacy of the me-dina, transforming it into a natural conservatory of phonetic effects—an intangible heritage belonging not only to history, but also to the daily practices and sensory perceptions of its inhabitants
Agorà (Responsabili Giovanni Mauro, Maria Ronza)

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Global Goals, Local Gaps: The Presentation of the 2025 ASviS Report on Territories

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The China-Europe Arctic Route: Strategic Ambition and Structural Constraints

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The Literary Map as a Symbolic Configuration of Geographic Knowledge

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Between Political Technology and Territorial Practices: Space, Power, and Territorial Practices in Late Medieval Sicily

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“Erasing landscape to make space”. The protection of Palestinian olive trees as a practice of territorial control.

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Artificial Intelligence, Speed and Velocity: Between Trajectories and Compasses

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On Daedalus’ Routes: Walking the Sicani to Rethink Places

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Geographical Education for Drawing New Maps of Hope
Kritiké (Responsabile Daniele Paragano)

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Politiké (Responsabile Angelo Turco)

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Mono-thema: Biodiversità e cultura popolare

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La rilevanza sistemica della biodiversità e, di riflesso, le prospettive connesse alla sua progressiva compromissione a seguito delle intense e spesso irreversibili pressioni antropiche contemporanee, costituisce oggi un nodo centrale di riflessione scientifica e politica, che si riflette anche nell’ampio orizzonte simbolico ed espressivo della cultura popolare, attraverso un articolato e polisemico sistema di rappresentazioni.

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Eco-theater, biodiversity and environmental discourse: the perspective of ecocritical geo-politics. – The objective of this article is to analyse, from an ecocritical geopolitical perspective, a particular artistic practice, namely eco-theatre, i.e. theatrical performances that aim to convey an environmental message. To this end, a concise historical account of environmental theatre is provided, commencing with Ibsen’s An Enemy of the People (1882), followed by the experimental endeavours of The Diggers (1960s) and of the Reinhabitory The-ater (1970s), culminating in the climate change works of the 2000s and the contemporary proliferation of initiatives. The article then examines the different narrative strategies and suggests what should be analysed in the texts (plot, role of human and non-human characters, relationship with the audience, etc.) in order to grasp the environmental discourse of each text and its potential for creating an affective atmosphere.

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“No More Nature?”. An Ecocritical Theatre and Drama-Based Research Experience. – The paper presents a site-specific, theatre and drama-based research experience exploring social perceptions of biodiversity loss. Grounded in ecocritical geography, the participatory process activated post-anthropocentric relational practices, highlighting the potential of performative methods in geographical research and in imagining multispecies coexistence.

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Environmental metaphors in the lyrics of contemporary Italian songs. – Music, understood as an expressive form of popular culture, can become a moment for artists to reflect and become aware of current issues and a tool for the production and dissemination of environmental discourses. In a hybrid field between environmental, cultural, and media geographies, this contribution analyses the lyrics of 20 recent Italian songs dedicated to the defence of the planet. The aim is exploring how musical texts has represented the intricate relationship between the environment and human beings, particularly using metaphors. The research reveals that musical lyrics under examination have associated nature and the Earth with various scientific or religious concepts, but also with multiple images of women, reproducing environmental discourses centred on anthropocentric or patriarchal ideologies.

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Photographic representation of biodiversity and countercurrent aesthetics of marine landscapes. – Questioning the role of images in the communication and valorization of biodiversity, as well as in the constitution of cultural geographic imaginaries and environmental sensibilities, this paper focuses on the aesthetics of marine landscapes in some contemporary artistic and activist practices. More specifically, it investigates the function of photography in the construction and deconstruction of stereotypes related to coastal areas and islands (between artistic traditions and tourist imaginaries), thus in the representation of issues related to biodiversity. Contrary to approaches that tend to show marine landscapes exclusively as picturesque or sublime sceneries, projects such as Else, All Will Be Still (Ravi Agarwal, 2013-2015), After the Storm (Amy Balkin, 2016), The Shape of Water Vanishes in Water (Marina Caneve, 2018) and Invisible – Paysages productifs (Nicolas Floc’h, 2018-2020), seek to express the environmental, social and economic inequalities aggravated by climate change and its consequences on marine biodiversity.

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Ecomuseums, Biodiversity, and Contemporary Art in Europe. – In recent years, the growing dialogue between contemporary art and sustainability has found fertile ground also in ecomuseums. Inspired by international experiences such as Ice Watch by Olafur Eliasson and Minik Rosing, or Aerocene by Tomás Saraceno, art has become a key driver in raising awareness of ecological crises. Creative interventions now resonate in European ecomuseums, particularly those in the Mediterranean area, where context-sensitive installations, and collaborative workshops are reshaping the connections between people, biodiversity, and place. This article explores how, between 2011 and 2024, artistic approaches in 26 case studies from France, Italy, Spain, and Portugal have contributed to a new artistic geography. Artistic languages serve as tools for ecological engagement, blending local knowledge and visual culture. The study proposes a framework in which art and biodiversity converge to foster shared ecological responsibility.
Mono-thema: Per una geopolitica d'età moderna

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Il tentativo dei contributi qui raccolti – sebbene primordiale e che non si prefigge di essere esaustivo – è di gettare le basi di una riflessione condivisa, su più piani epistemologici, attorno al tema della “Geopolitica d’età moderna”.

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Geopolitics of Early Modern Age. Global Lines, Territorial Power, and Geographical Uncertainty. – This article explores the origins of geopolitics in the early modern period (16th-17th centuries), demonstrating how three key elements – the establishment of global lines, the relationship between state power and territoriality, and geographical uncertainty – shaped both the politics of the era and contemporary geopolitical thought. Through the analysis of cartographic sources (e.g., the Cantino Planisphere, 1502), treaties (Tordesillas, Cateau-Cambrésis), and theoretical works (Schmitt, Bo-tero, Machiavelli), it argues that: global lines codified the division of the world into spheres of influence, foreshadowing bipolar or multipolar logics; political territoriality emerged forcefully, crystallizing in national borders and the principle of sovereignty (Westphalia), despite simultaneous global expansion; geographical uncertainty, stemming from discrepancies between maps and reality, became a defining feature of geopolitics, with echoes in today’s crisis of international orders. The article thus reinterprets the roots of geopolitics, locating them not in the 19th century but in the crucible of early modernity, with implications for understanding contemporary power dynamics.

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The Evolution of the State and Economy in the Modern Age as Premises of Contemporary Geopolitics. – The main institutional and economic phenomena that emerged in the Modern Age and that favored the subsequent birth of geopolitics in the 19th and 20th centuries are the following: the transition from the patrimonial dynastic State to the absolute State, the birth of political borders and related cartography, religious wars and their overcoming, the challenge of the Ottoman Empire to Europe, geographical discoveries, the capitalist organization of the world. These phenomena gave rise to a territorialist geopolitical thought in the Age of Imperialism, more sensitive, that is, to the political-military appropriation of the world than to the cultural, commercial and financial control of territories.

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Lagoon geopolitical culture: Geographical, military and political knowledge at the Accademia Veneziana. – In 1558, the newly founded Accademia Veneziana, established and directed by patrician Federico Badoer upon his return from his embassy to Charles V and Philip II, conceived a monumental encyclopaedic programme of printed publications in all branches of knowledge: the Somma delle opere che in tutte le scienze et arti più nobili et in varie lingue ha da mandare in luce l’Academia Venetiana. Among all these “works in all the most noble sciences and arts”, those dealing with geographical and political topics occupy a unique position, quite new for the time. In this setting, which was eminently Venetian but oriented towards Europe and the world, took shape for the first time the project of a “reason of state”, conceived as a (geo)political science, i.e. inseparably geographical, military and political.

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Western Italian Boundaries. The geopolitics of Sabaudian space in Giovanni Botero’s Relazione di Piamonte. – In recent decades, the historiography dedicated to the Duchy of Savoy has reflected at length on the theme of the borders and frontiers of the pre-alpine dominions, investigating in depth the composite nature of those territories between discontinuities (the Monferrato, the marquisate of Saluzzo, imperial and papal fiefs ...) and attempts at assimilation. Reasoning around a text such as Giovanni Botero’s Relazione di Piamonte of 1607, we intend to retrace in a geopolitical key the agglutination of the Savoy territories, taking into account both local and international dynamics of the second half of the 16th century. Amidst tensions with France along the Alpine ridge, internal frictions with the Waldensian valleys, and Mediterranean projections, the complex picture will emerge within which Charles Emmanuel I on the one hand consolidated the achievements of his father Emmanuel Philibert with the peace of Cateau-Cambrésis, and on the other prepared the breakaway from Spain in the wake of the conflicts over the succession of Mantua and Monferrato (1613-1618; 1627-1631).

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Politics, Education, and Geography in the Early Modern Period: Notes for a Histor-ical Analysis. – This article explores the connection between political au-thority, education, and geography in the early modern period, analyzing how the teaching of geography became a fundamental tool for managing and controlling emerging territories. In a context of fragmented educa-tional systems, the article highlights how geography was used to address the new political, economic, and social needs of European powers. Schools, both secular and religious, particularly those run by orders like the Jesuits, played a key role in transmitting this knowledge, contributing to the creation of new skills essential for colonial expansion. Finally, the article underscores how geography, understood as both a scientific disci-pline and a political tool, became a point of convergence between educa-tion and power, legitimizing the imperial ambitions of European.

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The state of the nomos in the era of “planetary civil war”. – The structure of the nomos, according to Carl Schmitt, is mobilized as the full immediacy of a juridical force not mediated by laws, whose central problem is not the abolition of war but its limitation or regulation (Schmitt, 2006, pp. 63-65). The solution to the problem lies in the radical spatial separation between an inside and an outside – a boundary, precisely – which establishes the strength of the nomos itself and the immediate imposition of its structure as an order (political, ethical, geographical). This central theme, which has overwritten the Earth and legitimized globalization, is probably the one in which the disconnections, cracks, and farcical tones that disrupt the contemporary and superficial geography of the global are now most evident. If in the era of planetary civil war the categories of globalization no longer function, then it is from the cracks in the superficial geography of the global that it becomes possible to imagine different and unruly geo-political categories.

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Towards a new Geopolitics. Reflections on the challenge of theoretical clarity, in the complexity of the new Millennium. – In a historical phase of accelerating change, persistent conflict, falling ideological veils, and recognition of the importance of the spatial element in influencing politics and conflict, contemporary Geopolitics is faced with a formidable historical challenge: that of developing theoretical clarity. This is a difficult task, however, because of some legacies of classical Geopolitics and differences in approaches. Nevertheless, contemporary global political changes make it possible not only to broaden horizons, overcoming the state-centric paradigm and the theoretical rigidities of the past, but also to reorder concepts and theories, maintaining at their basis the stability of the geographic factor, albeit bal-anced by human action. It can also be done by seeking to broaden the investigation into territoriality, geographic space, and the territorial concentration of power. This can be achieved not only by extending the multidisciplinary dialogue, but also by synthesizing the most solid findings generated by different approaches and schools, such as Critical and Neo-classical geopolitics, in the direction of a dynamic Geopolitics, able to approach, even if in small steps, a general theory.