Environments to rehabilitate Crisis, abandonment, and territory in the mining areas of south-western Sardinia

Abstract

Starting from ethnographic research among former miners in Iglesiente (Sardinia), this article deals with the local conceptions of environment and health arising from the mining and industrial crisis. After the decommissioning of the last metal mine (1993), the environmental remediation becomes a strategic issues in which “Environment”, “Territory” and “Health” are mobilized by local people in the struggle for the jobs. The mine becomes a symbolic place to represent new forms of conflict that claims a “healthy” and “clean” work. The healthiness of 'environment 'is played as key issues of a struggle for resources that attempts to recomposition of the class fragmentation that former miners had to cross after the corporations disinvestments.