Anthropology of Global Climate Urgency
Doctoral Network
Fieldwork Updates by Luisa Mohr - March 2025
Sicily's eastern coast has long been a hub for the oil industry, with major refineries in Milazzo, Augusta, Priolo, Melilli, Siracusa, and Gela. While oil production has declined, industrial infrastructure still shapes the region’s landscape and economy. Decades of extraction have led to environmental damage, health concerns, and economic instability, fueling tensions between industrial interests and ecological movements. In response, various local actors including activists, farmers, and researchers are engaging in ecological reparation efforts, seeking sustainable alternatives to fossil fuel dependency. My research, Urgency Amplifiers: Futuring Ecological Repair in Late Industrial Sicily, examines how different economic, social, and political actors in Sicily respond to climate urgency amidst the legacy of fossil fuel extraction. This study investigates how these actors work creatively toward an ecological future, offering critical insights into energy policy developments, alternative narratives, and counter-narratives both in Sicily and across Europe. By focusing on local networks, this research challenges dominant knowledge productions on climate change and urgency, contributing significantly to anthropological engagement with environmental transformations.
I employ Ethnographic Experimentation, developed by Estalella and Sánchez Criado (2018), which redefines ethnography as a collaborative, interventionist, and co-creative process. This approach dissolves traditional boundaries between researcher and subject, fostering new forms of engagement with social phenomena. Unlike conventional ethnography, which often treats the field as an object of study, this approach sees ethnographic work as a dynamic, evolving process involving both researchers and participants in knowledge production. Key to this methodology is the use of fieldwork devices co-created books, public events, or material interventions that facilitate collaboration. Instead of merely collecting data through observation or interviews, researchers and participants jointly develop tools to explore social and environmental phenomena.
This shifts the ethnographic process from an extractive model to an interactive and participatory framework. Furthermore, this approach foregrounds infrastructures, both physical (industrial landscapes, environmental degradation) and social (networks of activists, policy dialogues), as dynamic elements that shape human interactions. Through this approach, I have co-developed two major infrastructures: “Conoscenza del Territorio” (Knowing the Territory) Workshop Series and “Archivio del Futuro” (Archives of the Future). The workshop series, initiated in collaboration with Piano Terra, facilitates discussions on ecological reparation and industrial legacies, while “Archivio del Futuro” , a collaboration with the photographers Giuseeppe Scafidi and Maria Bauer, integrates photography and biographical interviews to document personal narratives of environmental change. These projects aim to counteract extractivist forms of knowledge production by actively involving research participants in shaping the research process.
From the outset, my goal has been to ensure that my research benefits not only academic and policy discussions but also the communities I engage with. A major challenge has been addressing tensions within activist circles, particularly in response to the 2024 documentary Toxicily, which sparked debates about external representations of local struggles. Many activists questioned how such portrayals „benefit“ the communities whose suffering becomes the subject of films, articles, and books. To navigate these concerns, my research has been structured around collaborative knowledge production, emphasizing participatory methods rather than detached observation.
