This thesis presents some articulations of environmentalism in Italy. Using the Italian environmental association Legambiente as entry point, it explores how the vision of a collective environmental conscience is constructed, represented, claimed and contested in the 2013 edition of the association’s principal campaign, Goletta Verde. The integration of theoretical tools [narrative-networks (Lejano et al. 2013), matters of concern (Latour 2008), imagined audiences (Litt 2012) and performance and impression management (Goffman 1959)], and research methods [fieldwork, interviews, participant observation, and the use of extensive literature], reveals analytical findings divided in three parts - how the campaign narrative is constructed, what are some of the discontinuities encountered, and what are implications of the associative vision for environmentalism and its study by anthropologists.

Drawing on traditions of cultural geography and creativity, the environmental humanities, and critical geographic theory, this dissertation includes five articles that develop geopoetics as a sub-field of the geohumanities. It sketches the contours of three modes of geopoetics: as creative geography, as literary geography, and as geophilosophy. Through site-based projects at three Sonoran Desert ecological research and tourism sites, it furthers the use of artistic and literary practice in geohumanities research, employs that practice to interrogate climate change and Anthropocene narratives, and addresses the role of art and literature in environmental issues. In addition, it utilizes the development and teaching of a community course on climate change and poetry as an additional "site" of research, to illustrate the role of arts and humanities approaches to global environmental change. Drawing on the content of the climate change and poetry course, it also includes a close reading of the work of five contemporary Indigenous ecopoets in relation to climate narratives. This dissertation proposes that geopoetics, literally "earth-making," is broadly relevant to questions of socio-ecological futures and is a means to imagine and enact other ways of inhabiting the world.

Ongoing environmental change is one of the greatest barriers facing programs and policies aiming to achieve sustainable development today. While the concept of sustainable development is relatively new, the threat of environmental change is not. Throughout colonization in Kenya the British colonial government was overly concerned with the quality of soil and increasing possibilities of erosion. Both Victorian ideologies of culture and society as well as the colonial discourse that existed in Kenya lead to a conception of the Africans as environmentally and agriculturally inept. Thus, they were blamed as the greatest threat to soil fertility. These notions together created a colonial environmental narrative based on inaccurate conceptions of the African farmer. International examples of environmental degradation as well as the expertise of Western research were used to support the narrative and further intervention into Kenyan society. The goal of this thesis is to examine exactly what made up the narrative, what purposes it served and who benefited from it. Through analysing the case of the Kikuyu in Kiambu, the district where Africans came in closet contact with the Europeans, this paper examines how a reorganization of power and control occurred. Specifically, archival research was utilized to gain direct insight into colonial perceptions and departmental reporting. The results show that African farmers were wrongly accused as the main culprits of soil degradation; in fact, changes to cultivation methods during much of colonization such as increased output and forced implementation of European techniques had a detrimental effect on soil fertility. While evidence existed to counter the narrative, it was reinforced as truth by Western research and colonial power. The result for the settlers was prioritized agriculture as well as security over land rights; simultaneously, for the colonial administration the narrative served as justification for their humanitarian mandate, while fostering an amount of social control. The results reveal that the creation of a narrative based on environmental change where the African was labelled as the problem, created a situation where colonial and settler interests triumphed over all others.