The Future(s) of the Mediterraneans: Between Uncertainty and Resilience
Parole chiave:
Mediterranean, future, crisis, uncertainty, resilience.Abstract
In this introductory discussion, we argue that uncertainty can
be seen as a common feature of Mediterranean countries beyond their
varying histories and social realities. Such sense of uncertainty regarding the
present and the future – strongly linked to economic instability and political
turbulences – is analysed in this special issue through examples from the
South and the North of the Mediterranean. A particular focus is laid on
innovative forms of resilience, understood as actors’ capacities to adapt or
deal successfully with change, or with challenging circumstances. However,
we also discuss the limitations and potential misuses of the concept when
applied uncritically. Equally important in the case studies presented here, in
Greece as in Portugal, in Morocco and Tunisia as in the Italian case is the
investigation of social actors’ perception of the future. Times of crisis and the
capacity to aspire, anticipation and the individual or collective imagination:
these are topics also investigated by the articles of this special issue, which
are not only contributions to Mediterranean anthropology but also to the
anthropology of the future. Altogether, the articles scrutinise how powerful
imaginations of potential futures and orientations to the yet-to-come are in
structuring individual and collective experience in times of political and
economic uncertainty.
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