Vajont the political ecology of an unnatural disaster Marco Armiero

Format:

Book

Author/Creator:

Armiero, Marco, 1966- author.

Series:

History for a sustainable future

Standardized Title:

Tragedia del Vajont. English

Language:

English

Italian

Subjects (All):

Landslides.

Floods.

Italy--Vajont River Valley.

Genre:

History

Physical Description:

1 online resource

Place of Publication:

Cambridge, Massachusetts The MIT Press [2026]

Summary:

"The sobering political implications of a disaster—the Vajont landslide in Italy in 1963—and how it speaks directly to our present environmental crisis. On October 9, 1963, 2,000 people perished in the Belluno mountains, not far from Venice, engulfed by a wave of water and mud unleashed by a massive landslide that crashed into the basin at the foot of Mount Toc. Science, power, and memory are entangled in the vortex of the Vajont Dam disaster—a stark reminder that these domains are inherently political, even when they are presented as natural. It might be tempting to interpret the Vajont disaster as a perfect metaphor for the Anthropocene, where humans act as a geological force capable of moving mountains. But in Vajont, Marco Armiero takes a different path to reveal the political implications of this disaster, which was anything but natural. Viewed from the cemetery where its 2,000 victims lie, the disaster’s true cause becomes evident: It was not humanity that was responsible, but a specific way of organizing and subordinating both human and nonhuman nature in the service of profit for the very few.In this book, the author argues that the Vajont disaster speaks directly to our current planetary predicament—as well as our deluded notion that we can solve it through technological fixes and neutral science"-- MIT Press Direct

Contents:

Prologue : the facts

The flood without an ark

Projects, predictions, omens

The Vajont cases

Resistances

Memories, shared and divided

Notes:

Includes bibliographical references and index

Online resource; title from PDF title page (MIT Press Direct, viewed June 3, 2026)

Other Format:

Print version Armiero, Marco, 1966- Vajont

ISBN:

9780262053020

0262053020

9780262053037

0262053039

OCLC:

1588637855

Access Restriction:

Some versions Open access versions available from some providers open access