What would it mean to reframe heritage and social and environmental justice within a coastal, wetland-based imaginary?
My new chapter explores these questions through a case study of intangible cultural heritage (ICH) in Italy. Drawing on the perspectives of heritage practitioners in the Oristano wetlands, I examine the tensions between safeguarding the environment and protecting ICH. I argue that adopting a situated perspective, rooted in the lived realities of wetlands and attuned to their marginality, precarity, multiplicity and notions of care, offers a valuable lens for engaging with these questions. At the fragile intersection of land and sea, the Sardinian wetlands challenge universalist and land-based imaginaries of environmental justice. This waterscape perspective becomes particularly vital in the Anthropocene, as the shifting boundaries between land and sea invite us to recognise the complex political and multispecies dimensions of justice at both local and planetary scales.
The chapter has been published in the Critical Heritage and Social Justice volume, edited by Veysel Apaydin, Kalliopi Fouseki, David Francis, Jonathan Gardner and Sara Perry. It brings together insights and experiences of scholars and practitioners working across heritage, museums, galleries, and cultural institutions to explore how principles of social justice can be embedded within these spaces. Bridging theoretical frameworks with practical applications, it presents a range of case studies and critical reflections that illuminate pathways toward transformative, justice-oriented heritage practices. Using Nancy Fraser's three-dimensional justice framework of redistribution, recognition, and representation, the book situates social justice at the heart of critical heritage studies, highlighting its intersections with urgent global challenges including the climate crisis, conflict, forced migration, and widening social, cultural and economic inequalities. The volume articulates new conceptual and methodological directions for advancing social justice through heritage work, responding to the urgent demands of a fragmented and rapidly evolving world.
See the open access volume here:
https://discovery.ucl.ac.uk/id/eprint/10221266/1/Critical-Heritage-and-Social-Justice.pdf