UNDERSTANDING LOCAL TERRITORIAL IDENTITIES: CONCEPTS, QUESTIONS, AND PITFALLS

In the everyday language, as well as in the political and institutional one, territorial identity is an expression largely used, thanks to its strong evocative and performative power. Therefore, territorial identity is often treated as a taken-for-granted concept, or rather as ‘something’ that territories ‘have’ or ‘do not have’, for better or for worse. In these cases, there is the risk of falling into essentialist conceptions of territorial identity that ascribe some connotations to territories on the basis of reified discourses, stereotypes, habits or clichés, without considering some key questions (territorial identity according to whom? By what criteria? And for what purposes?). When local territorial identity is understood as closely linked to sustainable, participatory and place-based development issues, it can become a dynamic, open, and plural social construction process, through which collectivities/groups choose the distinctive characteristics of the territory they inhabit, in order to develop shared views and common targets for policy implementation. In this sense, territorial identity is not to be ‘unveiled’ or ‘discovered’ but ‘built’ through a research-action focused on the opinions, attitudes, and expectations of local collectivities towards the territory they live or act in. As a research topic, local territorial identity is far from easy to deal with. Based on the key issues raised during the works of the research group "Territorial Identity" of A.Ge.I. (Association of Italian Geographers), the contribution aims at presenting some theoretical and methodological questions in the study of territorial identities, proposing some possible answers, and giving some examples of emblematic local contexts.