9 - Expertise Versus Aspiration: Ethnography of Post-disaster Reconstruction in Emilia

Summary

Introduction

On a warm afternoon in June 2014, during my ethnographic fieldwork in the Emilian area of the Po Valley afflicted by a seismic swarm in May 2012, I received a phone call. It was Pino, a man in his forties who was a member of Sisma.12, a local committee of people affected by the earthquake (Pitzalis, 2015). Excited, he told me that the following week, a delegation from the Sisma.12 committee would meet the Regional Councillor for ‘Productive activities, energy plan and sustainable development, green economy, construction’ Gian Carlo Muzzarelli, the ‘Extraordinary Commissioner for Reconstruction’1 Vasco Errani (both from the Democratic Party – PD) and some experts in charge of the reconstruction in Bologna. He sarcastically told me: “You absolutely must be there! We’ll be going to have fun!” Realizing the relevance of that meeting, I confirmed my participation without hesitation.

On the day of the meeting, I joined a group of people at the region's headquarters, most of whom were my research collaborators. There were about 20 of them, with some Committee flags with red and black writing on a white background: ‘Sisma.12. ricostruire la Bassa2 dal basso’ (‘Sisma.12. Rebuild the Lowlands from below’) and a banner that read: ‘Basta con la non-ricostruzione’ (‘Enough with non-reconstruction’). After an hour of waiting outside the building, we went up to the second floor and entered a room. On one side, the representatives of the regional and local institutions and the ‘experts’ (two engineers and one architect) were sitting behind a large table; on the other side, the delegates of the Sisma.12 committee were standing. I immediately thought that the position in which the various actors were placed within the room indicated the role played by each of them. After a few pleasantries, the ‘Extraordinary Commissioner’ invited the experts to present what would technically happen during the reconstruction phase. During that presentation, I was confronted with significant evidence that one becomes an expert ‘not simply by forming familiar – if asymmetrical – relationships with people and things, but rather by learning to communicate that familiarity from an authoritative angle’ (Carr, 2010

, p 19).