Dear colleagues,
for the Italian Review Antropologia Pubblica we are editing a special issue on culture and sustainability in their multiple entanglements.
Here below you can find the CfP in Italian, English, French and Spanish language. All the languages we accept for the special issue.
We would like if the CfP can circulate and be published in the EASA website or social networks as we’d like to improve, if possible, the number of paper proposals from European and non-european countries.
Thank you in advance for whatever you can do for us,
kind regards
Letizia Bindi
Full Professor of Cultural Anthropology , University of Molise (Italy), President of the Degree in Liberal Arts and Cultural Heritage , Director of BioCult – Centre of Research on Bio-Cultural Heritage and Local Development – Member of the Accademia dei Georgofili
Public Anthropology (AP), Journal of the Italian Society of Applied Anthropology (SIAA)/ Antropologia Pubblica (AP), Rivista della Società Italiana di Antropologia Applicata (SIAA)
Deadline for abstracts submission: Extended to January 20, 2026
Notification of results: December 15, 2025
Full papers submission: February 28, 2026
Please send your abstract to the editors:
AP, vol. 12, n. 2/2026
Culture of Sustainability and Sustainability of Culture: Interdisciplinary Experiences in Enhancing Biocultural Heritage Between Local Communities and Governance
Editors: Letizia Bindi, Michela Buonvino, Paula Gabriela Núñez, Jacopo Trivisonno
This issue aims to investigate the various ways in which biocultural enhancement processes can be integrated to promote alternative and participatory models of sustainable local development, especially in predominantly rural and peripheral areas located in Italy, Europe, and beyond. The variety of contexts allows for a comparison of experiences that, despite their heterogeneity, share dynamics of marginalization and processes of creative and critical reappropriation of biocultural heritage.
Through an interdisciplinary perspective, this issue seeks to explore a series of case studies that highlight the transformative potential of collaborative and participatory culture-based practices in addressing contemporary economic, social, and environmental challenges, particularly in areas considered “fragile” and “marginal”. The proposed approach relies on dialogue among disciplines (including cultural anthropology, heritage studies, environmental humanities, political ecology, performance studies, landscape architecture, human and critical geography, participatory design, and site-specific artistic practices), since the multiplicity of perspectives allows for an analysis of the various ways in which heritage is “used,” negotiated, reactivated, and reinterpreted in sustainable and transformative ways.
The dossier welcomes contributions that critically reflect on the opportunities and tensions related to territorial regeneration based on creative design and cultural activities. The broader aim of this proposal is to expand the debate on biocultural heritage through the sharing of diverse research experiences. In recent decades, anthropological debate on the relationship between heritage and sustainability has become increasingly relevant, precisely in response to the global challenges posed by the ecological crisis and the connected socio-economic transformations. The very notion of heritage has undergone radical revisions by experts from various disciplines, who have questioned the capacity of heritage to generate sustainable practices and contribute to the well-being of local communities. At the same time, sustainability—often approached from an ecological perspective— is increasingly being analysed as a social and cultural construct involving a plurality of actors and institutions and redefined through everyday practices. In this regard, the issue aims to explore various forms of sustainable enhancement of biocultural heritage and their impact on local communities, questioning the role of interchange between diverse forms of knowledge and skills in the sustainable management of biocultural resources. Furthermore, the dossier attempts to critically reflect on cultural policies and heritage governance, offering insights into the ethical dimension of sustainability and the new challenges for applied anthropology. Another purpose of this issue is to delve into the tensions between different politics and poetics of development, highlighting the existence of collaborative networks activated by local and external cultural actors and stakeholders; such networks may or may not help reduce economic, social, and cultural marginalization, while experimenting with innovative solutions to re-inhabit rural and/or marginal areas. In this regard, the dossier seeks to address several questions: How can broadly cultural activities serve as laboratories for experimenting with new forms of heritage awareness and shared learning? What models of collaboration, alliance, and interaction among territorial actors can facilitate the implementation of such processes? How can these practices challenge the prejudice of “cultural emptiness” in marginal areas? What strategies can contribute to creating circular and sustainable economic models with positive impacts on social well-being, civic engagement, and cultural landscapes?
In this perspective, particular attention will be paid to emerging conflicts around the access, management, and heritagization of biocultural resources. In many biocultural enhancement experiences, heritage—far from being a neutral concept—becomes a contested field among actors with divergent interests, exposing power asymmetries and regulatory deadlocks, and often contributing to processes of marginalization and exclusion. The heritagization of nature and so-called “traditional” cultural practices can provoke resistance from local communities, especially when perceived as institutional imposition or a form of “symbolic expropriation”. In this regard, the dossier seeks to stimulate critical dialogue on how local, embodied, and experiential knowledge interacts with—and sometimes clashes against—dominant scientific and technocratic epistemologies in development and conservation processes. The relationship between local and “expert” knowledge is never straightforward but rather constitutes a dynamic and often contentious terrain that requires practices of mediation, translation, and mutual recognition.
We encourage contributions that examine intersubjective negotiation and co-production of
knowledge among researchers, institutions, public administrations, and communities, proposals capable of critically examining cultural and environmental governance practices, highlighting challenges and opportunities in participatory processes.
Anthropologists are invited to reflect from an interdisciplinary perspective on governance, community empowerment, and access to biocultural resources, proposing participatory and horizontal research. This proposal therefore aims to refine collaborative practices among the various actors involved in development projects and to lay the groundwork for crafting a new public aesthetic that regards peripheral contexts as generators of alternative and replicable models of inclusive and sustainable development. The culture of sustainability and the sustainability of culture thus reveal themselves to be interconnected and complementary. Culture, art, creativity, and the shared enhancement of biocultural heritage have the power to transform the poetics and politics of the environmental crisis into performative action, contributing to social change and to the transformation of the cultural sector itself.
Through a multidimensional analysis (offering a layered and intersectional reading of biocultural enhancement processes that considers symbolic-cultural, political, ecological, economic, and affective dimensions, attentive to networks of relationships and to conflicts between institutional and local knowledge, between policies and daily practices), the dossier aims to contribute to both theoretical and practical reflections on territorial policies, understood as the set of institutional practices, regulatory mechanisms, and local initiatives that affect the transformation, resilience, and ‘livability’ of territories. Biocultural valorisation is thus analysed not only as a strategy for sustainable development, but as a means to renegotiate settlement models and reconfigure the relationships between centre and periphery.
We welcome contributions based on empirical research that critically address the following questions:
• How do practices of heritagization and biocultural valorisation influence local development and community sustainability?
• What are the potentials and limitations of territorial and social regeneration projects based on cultural co-design experiences?
• What models of collaborative governance are most effective in managing common resources?
• How can the promotion of biocultural resources in territories generate conflicts between institutions and local populations?
• To what extent can an interdisciplinary and collaborative approach promote cultural valorisation and sustainable development practices capable of fostering more inclusive development strategies
For more information, please see here (please note that the call for abstracts has been extended to January 10, 2026):