“Not Here Nor Elsewhere”

The Local-Global Dialectic in Locally Unwanted Land Use (LULU) Campaigns; The Case of Italy

Abstract

Over the last decades, several local populations throughout Italy have started to mobilize against the use of land to build infrastructure which is defined by its promoters as crucial to competitiveness in the global market. These challengers have been labeled by institutions and media as NIMBY (Not In My Back Yard) and egoistic actors who operate in opposition to the public interest. Local movements have created oppositional NOPE (Not On the Planet Earth) or NIABY (Not In Anyone's Back Yard) discourse to underline the local-global dialectic oriented toward broadly questioning the effects of globalization. Using frame analysis, this paper examines nine Italian LULU campaigns in order to investigate the presence of discursive strategies able to transcend the local dimension, the ability of the challengers to develop and spread a common key of interpretation to the different conflicts and, finally, the existence of recurring and successful frames despite the local peculiarities.