Chapter 1. Against the European Green Deal
Chapter 2. San Pietro Island: Centrality of a Margin
Chapter 3. Methodologies and Ethnographic Polyvalences
Chapter 4. ‘The Past Is Our Future’
Chapter 5. Tuna Against the Machine
Chapter 6. Fish, Red Sludge, Fear and Other Arguments Against Wind Farms
Chapter 7. Extractivism and Renewables
Chapter 8. Against Windmills
Chapter 9. Energy-scapes
Chapter 10. ‘Once, the Fish Died’: Becoming Margin and Dehistorifying the Negative
Chapter 11. ‘We Are Lucky That There Is a Mistral Wind’: Loss and Emptiness.
Chapter 12. Being Communists in Carloforte: Overturning Hegemony and Subalternity
Chapter 13. Local Move toward Towards a New Paradigm: The Grassroots Creation of a Renewable Energy Community

Conclusion

References
Index

The Give and Take of Wind

History, Struggle and Renewable Energy in the Mediterranean

Elena Apostoli Cappello

194 pages, 20 illus., bibliog., index

ISBN 978-1-83695-428-6 Hb Published (March 2026)

eISBN 978-1-83695-429-3
web ISBN 978-1-83695-429-3

Details

Focusing on a Mediterranean case study located in the Sardinian Sulcis sub region, The Give and Take of Wind explores local positions in response of European transitional politics. What are the practices, horizons of meaning and alternative strategies of those who oppose them? This book seeks to understand whether the struggle around the off shore wind farm provides the basis for redefining political subjectivity, extraction and the environment. By examining the small Sulcitanian island of San Pietro, the book describes an ongoing process and helps shed light on the issues, contributing to a broader anthropological debate on identity constructs, territorial sovereignty, energy democracy, public participation and the (consequent) redefinition of the political sphere. The book shows a process of re-semantization resulting from cases of expropriation that have also influenced political language, restoring cultural meaning through the politicization of certain cultural, biological and atmospheric elements.

Elena Apostoli Cappello is Researcher in social anthropology at the Laboratory of Architecture and Human Sciences (SASHA) at the Université Libre de Bruxelles. She has taught social anthropology at several universities in France, Switzerland and Italy, and teaches today at Venice University as adjunct professor. She has published widely on subjectifi cation processes, activism, land politicization, public participation and citizenship.