Montemagno stories: Narratives and videos as tools to facilitate re-construction of sustainable localities

Abstract

This paper discusses a research-experience carried-out at a rural locality — Montemagno — near the city of Pisa (Tuscany, Italy).

As with many locations elsewhere in Europe, the area is experiencing new ‘post-rural’, reflexive dynamics: social processes of reflection and discursive negotiation between noticeably heterogeneous stake-holders, attempting to re-build a ‘sense’ of locality: its identity, its ‘story’ — past, present and future.

Within this framework, as rural researchers interested in facilitating pathways for ‘endogenous development’, we collected the ‘voices’ of some elder locals: environmental narratives, bringing insights on the pre-existent, socio-cultural context and highlighting the meanings constructed by the old inhabitants to make sense of their lives, of their locality and its deep transformation.

The use of video was a central factor in the facilitation experience, providing some promising results and methodological reflections.