The city inside the shipyard: connecting agencies and contexts through the investigation of dworkers and artifacements

Abstract

The present paper illustrates a theoretical and methodological framework designed to describe and connect environmental and economic concerns related to an alleged situation, the yachting industry. Adapting the methodological sensibility of Actor-Network Theory, the site is treated as an entity yet to be formed, keeping the landscape flat and following actors’ ontological pluralism across levels. In fact, it is argued that an ecological perspective can be assumed only by dismissing hierarchical frameworks based on the distinction between micro and macro dimensions, or idiosyncratic agencies and structural context. Thus, the separation between theory and practice is overcome as well, since conditions and possibilities of such reflections are inseparable from the analytical assessment of the peculiarity of shipyards manufacture taken in exam, which refer to a situated knowledge revolving around the ship, and which is treated as a complex and heterogeneous matter of concern: a controversial entity capable of formatting and interesting both workers and urban dwellers. This is achieved by researcher following different modes of existence through the work of problematization of contents provided by informants. Which are collected and assembled by the former, and consequently turned into a manageable and addressable territory tied to a specific public and its interests.