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.

Integral Land Reclamation and Climate Transition: A Mesological Perspective on the ‘Macchina della Terra’. – This contribution examines integral reclamation in the Gulf of Oristano, Sardinia, employing Berque's concepts of ecumene and mesology alongside geographical insights. Lucio Gambi’s metaphor of reclamation as a “macchina della terra” serves as a foundational idea, while Federica Cavallo highlights modern territorial constructs that emerge from contrasts such as water vs. earth and modern vs. wild. On the centenary of the Santa Chiara dam’s inauguration, which transformed Oristano’s coastal wetlands, the region now faces the challenges of climate change. The interplay between land and local communities reveals both contradictions and potential alliances in ecological resilience, particularly in discussions surrounding Nitrate Vulnerable Zones. A century of human-environment interactions has reshaped these areas into vital agro-food production hubs, underscoring the need for a mesological perspective on this evolution.

Climate Change: More Than Just Geography. – The ongoing climate change and its potentially severe consequences concern us as thinking human beings, regardless of whether we are historians, geographers, geologists, urban planners, economists, sociologists, or psychologists. The common endpoint of our reflections – and of the suggestions we offer regarding actions to be taken or avoided – engages us as citizens of the shared good that is the Earth, whose survival we value not only for ourselves today but, above all, for future generations, many of us being parents and grandparents. Naturally, it is both inevitable and important that each of us contributes based on our own disciplinary knowledge – be it historical, geographical, geological, or otherwise. However, in my view, the focus of our reflection should not be on the role each of these sciences can play, but rather on the responsibility that each of us must assume as citizens of the Earth.

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.

Central Italy earthquake evacuees, icon of a forgotten internal area

Thresholds, zones, margins: feminist and posthuman geographies of liminality. – This article aims to show that crucial pathways of feminist thought, such as current posthuman feminisms, have been and are characterized by liminal geographies. By exploring the geographies of life as zoé associated with the posthuman, I argue that feminist thought continues to change our geographical sense of connection with the world by virtue of liminal positionalities and the opening of margins. The opening of margins means, in my view, the conception of margin as a threshold. In this paper, liminal geographies are based on a geographic-semantic investigation of “threshold” and its connection with “zone”. A threshold/zone, conceived in this way, is a space of transition, which also entails a dimension of depth. Hence, the “deep” liminal geographies outlined here also address an idea of the Earth as depth, i.e., what the ancient Greeks called chthón. Rather, these liminal geographies start to explore, from a feminist perspective, the threshold between two ideas of the Earth, i.e., gê and chthón.

Marginal Narratives from a “Undisciplined” Excursion to the Architecture Biennale 2021. – If Neil Smith and David Harvey find space at the Arsenale, if at the Giardini the exercise is to dis-explore the Earth, it is because the Biennale is about surveying the crisis space of globalisation: it forces us to interrogate the geopolitical map of contemporaneity between the Anthropocene, techno-capitalism, encroachments and adaptations. This is why we thought of sharing a visit to the Biennale with those geographers for whom the exercise proposed by Architects is essential to our theoretical, disciplinary, ethical, civil and very human present of being geographers.
Our notes in the margin depend on this invitation to investigate the potential of the object of marginality starting from the concept of “hole in the plot - which - nourishes the other plots” (Negarestani, 2021, p. 106). Hole or absence that stands for the missed encounter between Geography (the material on display) and geographical discipline to imagine plots, narratives and “undisciplined” alliances to come.

App GIS-based per le Smart Tourist Destinations nel Governatorato di Muscat, Oman. – Le ICT e il turismo giocano ruoli fondamentali nello sviluppo delle economie globali emergenti, offrendo opportunità e strumenti strategici per promuovere la crescita delle mete. Le Destinazioni Turistiche Smart (STD) utilizzano strumenti e tecnologie disponibili per co-creare valore ed esperienze immersive per i turisti, generando nel contempo profitti e benefici per le organizzazioni e la destinazione nel suo complesso.
Il presente contributo espone nella sua totalità le fasi dello sviluppo di un’applicazione per smartphone progettata per l’esplorazione del territorio dell’Oman, comprendente le sue diverse risorse naturali e culturali, infrastrutture turistiche e strutture ricettive. La metodologia impiegata comprende la raccolta dati da fonti primarie, la georeferenziazione di numerosi punti di riferimento naturali, culturali e ricreativi, e l’utilizzo degli strumenti Arc-GIS e Google Earth per l’elaborazione dei dati. L’applicazione sviluppata si dimostra essere uno strumento intelligente e reattivo, in grado di soddisfare le esigenze del turismo esperienziale. Offre agli utenti la possibilità di personalizzare iti-nerari in linea con i loro gusti, preferenze ed esigenze. Integrando tecnologie all’avanguardia e dati geografici, l’applicazione per l’esplorazione dell’Oman porta le esperienze turistiche a nuove vette, mettendo in evidenza le diverse attrazioni del paese. Questo articolo specifico presenta le considerazioni finali alla luce di una serie di cambiamenti ambientali e territoriali che sono avvenuti durante la fase di validazione.

Dante, Celestino and the Forgiveness: from the Comedy to a destination branding. – Despite references to Celestino V on the Divine Comedy are not clear, the lives of Dante Alighieri and the Pope are certainly intertwined. Dante’s expectations on a spiritual renewal of the Roman Church, disappointed by Celestino’s resignation, seem to find acknowledgment today in a series of actions devoted to promoting his main bequest, the Forgiveness, a new territorial brand that is also serving the purpose to help the territory of L’Aquila recover from the 2009 earthquake, especially in trying to fostering a tourism development around Celestino’s figure.

Why Geography? – This paper underlines the great importance that geographical data have in Dante’s Comedy: the poem is entirely interwoven with references to the space of the earth, in a continuous relationship between the imagination of the places of the otherworld and the perception and geographical projection of the real world. The author considers and distinguishes in this regard three perspectives of study: a historical-philological line, a structural line, an epistemological-hermeneutic line; and shows how today the focus on Dante’s geography directly calls into question the urgency of the environmental question.

Geographers and cartographers from Sicily between the 16th and 19th centuries. – The study aims to analyze the development of geo-cartographic culture in Sicily between the 16th and 19th centuries in relation to the evolution of geographical studies in Europe induced by the progress of scientific knowledge and the discovery of new territories, the result of great geographical explorations.
After a brief examination of the affirmation of Geography between the Renaissance and the modern age in the various European countries and in Italy, the study will proceed in the delineation of the development of geo-cartographic culture in Sicily through the examination of the production of Sicilian geographers and cartographers, certainly minors and often misunderstood, active on the island between the 16th and 19th centuries, trying to grasp the most significant aspects in relation to the various events which, over time, have conditioned the island’s culture.
They are often exponents of the local aristocracy and of the clerical class open to culture and relationships with scholars from other countries who, acknowledging scientific progress, devoted themselves to geographical studies and elaborated cartographic surveys no less significant than those produced outside the Isola, certainly stimulated by the desire to know the peculiarities of the island in different historical moments, but sometimes by the need to study and graphically represent the changes induced on the land structure by natural events, such as volcanic eruptions, earthquakes and plagues, or by episodes of war that exploded between the various political forces which tended to impose their power on the island.

Conflict mitigation goes (also) through ecological economy. – «It is foreseeable that, once certain resources have been depleted, the scene will be set for new wars, albeit under the guise of noble claims»: this recent quote by Pope Francis (Laudato Sì, p. 57) has once again drawn the attention of world public opinion to the issue of the limitation of available resources, which already is one of the main causes of war and violence, and it is likely to cause even more in the future. The more the depletion of non-renewable sources, the higher the number of the conflicts, as well as their seriousness. In 2022, the Earth Overshoot Day underlined that mankind has depleted all the resources annually available on July 28th (a day earlier than 2021); moreover, land grabbing is out of control due to hyper-connection at the basis of global production chains. These processes also continued during the pandemic that, on one hand, mitigated overexploits thanks to lock-downs but, on the other hand, it has not driven to a U-turn in attitudes towards the environment and access to resources. In this essay, after a preliminary analysis of global value chains and of the social consequences with regard to the increase of fear and violence indirectly provoked by the quest to sources, we discuss an in-depth study of an ecological and circular economic development model, based on the regionalization of exchanges for the exploitation of domestic resources.

Rare-earth elements: frontier of geoeconomic and geopolitical competition

Interactive apps for the tourist enhancement of Oman. – Many tourist destinations are embracing ICT in order to become an STD (Smart Tourist Destination), a place that uses the available tools and techniques to allow demand and supply to co-create value, pleasure, and experiences for the tourist in addition to wealth, profits, and benefits for organizations and the destination. The main aim of this paper is to present the prototype of an application for smartphones to explore the territory of Oman in relation to its resources (natural and cultural), infrastructure and accommodation for tourism purposes sector. The methodology provided for: the collection of data from the main statistical sources, the acquisition of geographical maps, the georeferencing of a substantial number of natural, cultural and recreational resources, the use of the Arc-GIS and Google Earth tools for data processing, the compilation and addition of text information to feature locations in tables, and the use of specific software for programming the app. The main goal of the app is to meet the needs of experiential tourism through interactivity that allows the users to obtain itineraries that reflect their tastes, needs and preferences.

The (human) face of the Earth

Per me la geografia è quella dei fiumi, della graduatoria dei più lunghi, dal Po all’Adige al Tevere. E i laghi, i più grandi: Garda, Verbano, Lario, Trasimeno...La geografia umana è un’altra cosa. Eppure la parola chiave è geo. Terra. La terra madre, Gea.

Smart: Opportunities and Risks for Urban Development and Challenges for the African Continent. – In recent decades there has been a proliferation of studies, research and approaches to the “smart” theme, viewed with interest as the “new” frontier of sustainability, which seeks to combine technological development with territorial development, social inclusion with environmental protection. This seems very stimulating for the develop-ment of the poorest regions of the Earth, which, following political instability, or economic difficulties, or structural and infrastructural back-wardness, are lagging behind the richest and most stable regions, although in recent years they are witnessing a very fast GDP growth rate. Starting from some definitions of “city”, I will examine the concept of “smart city” and will try to identify the approaches that best respond not only to objective needs for the development of a territory, but also to its qualitative characteristics, in so that “smart” urban and territorial planning projects represent a real and effective instrument of integrated and lasting development, also in urban and rural Africa.

“The Land of my Dreams”: Ideas of Sustainable Tourism between Research and Participation in the Territory of the Gran Sasso-Laga National Park – The Project “The land of my dreams” is part of the activities of the Cartolab laboratory’s research activities (Department of Human Sciences, University of L’Aquila) and of the initiatives planned by the National Park for the elaboration of the Economic and Social multi-year Plan. In the framework of a participatory research-action, the aim of the Project is to study the social and territorial potential of the National Park, in terms of social capital, expectations, hopes and “dreams” of its inhabitants. In the current post-disaster situation in which a large part of the Park’s territory is involved, through the research and participation actions planned by the Project, it is possible to give shape to the hope of rebuilding one’s own life, one’s own community, one’s own land starting from those traces of future that obstinately and stubbornly persist. To this purpose, one of the topics on which the second phase of the Project, concerning the formulation of choices and decisions, focuses its attention is tourism as it represents one of the most recurring themes in the narratives about the future of the 428 people interviewed.

Scipione Breislak (1750-1826) was a Roman geologist and naturalist who studied the volcanic areas of central and southern Italy in the 1780s and 1790s. The Topografia fisica della Campania (1798) – written in Breislak’s stay in Naples where he worked as a teacher of Physics in the Military Academy of Nunziatella and was the Director of the factory alum of the Solfatara of Pozzuoli – shows the results of his investigations on the phenomena of the Vesuvius and the Phlegraean volcanic area. In this report Breislak explains his thoughts on the so called Grotta del Cane. These thoughts show us for the first time the directional concept of the Earth directional and his theory on volcanoes. By rejecting the hypothesis of iron sulphides, adopted few years before in the Essais mineralogiques sur la Solfatare de Pouzzole (1792), Breislak argues that the combustion of the petroleum is the cause of eruptions of Vesuvius. This assumption rules out the Huttonian idea of a correlation between the activities of volcanoes and the heat of the Earth.