Emotion, Perceptions and Resilience: Fishermen's Responses to Socio-Environmental Changes in Taranto, South of Italy

Abstract

Coastal small-scale fisheries are facing significant challenges from climate change, European Union fishery policies, and other ‘uses’ of the sea (Raicevich et al. 2020), such as wind farms, drills, and pipelines. In particular, little is understood about the impacts of offshore wind farms on marine resource dwellers in the South of Italy. By taking the first offshore wind farm of the Mediterranean in the Gulf of Taranto as a starting point of analysis, this work aims to unpack the emotional responses and risk perceptions of fishermen under socio-environmental change and uncertain circumstances in the context of Taranto. Specifically, I argue that, in the context of Taranto, fishermen rely on the function of the sea, considering it as an identity marker that drove them to develop emotional involvement, specific sea-oriented expertise, and self-motivation to cope with change and uncertainty. Therefore, drawing attention to the sea is paramount to grasping how emotions, change processes, risk exposure, and resilience are interpreted, experienced, and produced. Based on three months of ethnographic fieldwork, this study draws on participant observation, small talks, spontaneous conversations, and semi-structured interviews with recreational, commercial, and professional fishermen. Among my interlocutors, disinterest, anger, and optimism/lack of optimism, emerged as affective reactions concerning the wind farm and further transformations within the broader change scenario. Furthermore, by examining the mutual interplay between emotions, change-related risk perceptions, and imaginations of the future, I demonstrate how ‘diversification’ and ‘social identity’ (Johnson et al. 2014) can be indicators of sociocultural resilience to cope with the perceived risks in the fishing-based community.