The research unit of the Cospecs Department of the University of Messina is the leader of the national project. Its research vocation is therefore transversal to some of the macro-areas under investigation (Sicily, Mexico) and to the thematic lines of the project (industry, environment, health and cultural heritage). Specifically, the ethnographic areas under investigation concern the city of Milazzo (Andrea Ravenda, Pietro Saitta) in Sicily, a historical area of the Italian petrochemical industry and at the same time hub of Aeolian naturalistic tourism; the municipality of San Dionisio del Mar in Oaxaca, Mexico (Francesco Zanotelli), theatre of the opposition to the installation of a wind farm, where one can observe the contrasting discursive and material productions around the category of “environmental sustainability” and the political ontologies linked to oil and wind, the two main energy sources produced by Itsmo of Tehuantepec. The political-electoral descent of nature (and its contamination) is finally investigated through the case of the Parma incinerator (Martina Giuffré).
The research unit is also dedicated to the definition of conceptual tools that guide the entire national project, with particular attention to the processes of capitalization (Beradino Palumbo), and to the translation into pedagogical tools of the theoretical debate on anthropocene (Patrizia Panarello).