SUSTAINABILITY AS A SYMBOLIC RESOURCE AT THE LOCAL LEVEL, AND ITS STRATEGIC USES. A study in Northern Italy

Our article focuses here on the regional level of a reconversion that is global in scope; that is,social experiments in small-scale agricultural production in two different places in Italy: Bologna and Venice. Our aim is to show that, at least locally, agricultural production aimed at experimenting with modes of non-extractive relationships with natural resources is creatively and transversally embodied in communities and actors (McMichael, 2006). I attribute to these disparate communities the classical categories of conservative sovereignty and eco-socialism (Lowy, 2015). Both old and new farmers claim to act for environmental sustainability. Despite ideological differences, old and new farmers move on the ground in harmony with each other, and intercept and embody the ecological expectations of a variety of urban consumer-activists. They are promoters of an ecological movement embodied mainly in locavore demand. I consider here the negotiable role of sustainability to be a decisive factor from both a symbolic and economic point of view. I analyze here its discursive use by considering it as a resource for negotiating access to resources at the local level by communities.