Rebel Valley: Territorio, Infrastructure and Resistance in Alpine Italy

Based in the Valsusa, a valley in the western Italian Alps bordering France, the No TAV movement has opposed the construction of a transborder high-speed railway for over thirty years. As the largest and longest-running of Italy’s lotte territoriali (territorial struggles), it offers a sustained example of place-based resistance. Bringing together the anthropology of resistance and infrastructure with political theory and geography, this book situates the movement alongside similar struggles across Europe and beyond. It argues for territorio as a generative force in shaping liberatory politics beyond neoliberal hegemony and right-wing reaction.

Mateusz Laszczkowski is a Lecturer in Social Anthropology at the University of Manchester. He is the author of 'City of the Future': Modernity, Built Space and Urban Change in Astana (Berghahn, 2016), and coeditor of Affective States: Entaglements, Suspensions, Suspicions (with Madeleine Reeves; Berghahn 2017).