Abstract

This paper aims at exploring the current Italian ecologist archipelago by focusing on three main dimensions: organization, «frame» and action repertoire. By investigating these dimensions, we would like to address some fundamental questions: a) how does the environmental movement in Italy look like today? Who are the protagonists? What are their patterns of action and their claims? b) How the relationships between protest and ecologist groups are? c) Where environmental claims can be placed between materialist and post-materialist perspectives? By drawing on a mixed qualitative/quantitative methodology, we aim to provide an updated overview about Italian environmentalism. We first use the Protest Event Analysis (PEA) to trace the main trends in terms of institutionalization/ radicalization, territorialisation, alliance structure and other aspects of the environmental protest, and eventually further explore the issue through the frame analysis approach based mainly on in-depth interviews and the analysis of documents drafted by social movement actors.