'a Dead Man Walking': Confluences and Resistances between Global Risks and Local Transformations in the Catania Street Market (Sicily, Italy)

Although portrayed as a future apocalypse, the global impacts of climate change produce specific frictions and conflicts in local contexts that require an analysis that brings out the political and social dimensions of these transformations. This contribution presents the study of the data collected during the ethnographic research (2022-2024) that investigated community resilience practices concerning flood risk in the area of the open-air food market called "Pescheria" located in the historical centre of the City of Catania (Sicily, Italy). This place constitutes a confluence between environmental, spatial and socio-economic processes and a relational space where multiple forms of local knowledge are reproduced. The working and marketing activities present in the market are based on the intertwining of experiential learning, territorial identity and informal practices that are fundamental to addressing the intertwining of ongoing environmental, urban and social transformations. Considering the critical reflections on the concept of ecological transition, the contribution aims to analyse how local knowledge derived from the everyday experiences of inhabitants, workers and market-goers can play a significant role in understanding environmental risks and their governance. While forms of adaptation and response to natural hazards and disasters have developed within the framework of a historically rooted human-environment-space relationship, thus demonstrating a reasonable degree of effectiveness, ongoing socio-economic transformations are changing the market structure and the process of knowledge transmission. The ecological transition reveals the pervasiveness of economic and social contradictions and cultural asymmetries experienced within the Pescheria market. In the working practices, it is possible to identify tactics and representations necessary to guarantee the market's working continuity and reconstruct street vending activity as a condition for a market defined as historical but risk dying.