This doctoral study develops as the diagnostic phase of a fourth-generation formative intervention seeking to understand and catalyse the learning processes at the core of eco-social mobilisations triggered by collective challenges (Heidemann, 2019; Kuk, Tarlau, 2020; Engeström, Sannino 2021). Ever more local communities across Europe strive to resist the existential risks posed by climate change, globalisation, and pandemics by engaging in transformative activities aimed at envisioning alternative futures (Gümüsay, Reinecke, 2022). Plagued by intensifying floods, relentless overtourism, and rampant depopulation, the urban lagoon of Venice has notoriously become one of the most endangered European sites (Pascolo, 2020: 17-26). Therefore, the current research focuses on the critical case of the Venetian civil society, which is struggling to reclaim the vanishing future of its city suffering from an organic crisis akin to those experienced along the Northern Mediterranean region (Dlabaja 2021). Venice’s civil society organisations (CSOs) seem unwilling to surrender to the chronicle of a death foretold: they have recently tried to mobilise together by breaking the historical tensions between environmentalist groups, neighbourhood associations, and trade unions (Chiarin, 2022).

The general research question orienting the fourth-generation formative intervention captures the above problem statement:

How can the Venetian community learn to collectively enact its desirable futures?

Nonetheless, this preliminary stage focuses on diagnosing the conditions, or the lack thereof, for expanding the transformative activities of Venetian CSOs into heterogeneous coalitions seeking to regenerate the futures of the urban lagoon.

In view of its enduring environmental, residential, and economic crises, the diagnostic research questions guiding the present study are as follows:

1)    How have Venetian CSOs learnt to coalesce into mobilisation networks dealing with these critical challenges?

2)    Have mobilisation networks enacted collective transformative agency (TADS) by producing mediating artefacts sustaining their future-making activities?

3)    Which major congruencies and contradictions have emerged between mobilisation networks and multi-level activity systems seeking to shape the futures of Venice?

The corresponding research objectives consist of a) the reconstruction of long-lasting learning processes enabling Venetian CSOs to mobilise more or less effectively; b) the identification of primary, secondary, or tertiary artefacts enabling coalescing CSOs to enact collective TADS; c) the hypothesis of congruencies and contradictions constituting the relationships between Venice’s civil society and its public bodies, educational establishments, and labour market. Besides this practical impact at the community level, the project aims to contribute to the emerging fourth generation of Cultural-Historical Activity Theory, first, by conducting and documenting a systematic diagnosis preparatory to multiple Change Laboratories (Sannino, 2022).

Hyperobjects such as climate change, globalisation, and pandemics affect cross-sectoral activities, which in turn call for eco-social transformations of communities and their institutions (Hasse, 2019). The formation of cross-scale coalitions coordinating various actors at local, national, and global levels capable of responding to these challenges becomes both the qualitatively new unit of analysis and intervention goal of 4G Activity Theory. Thus, the diagnostic work must focus on the potential developments of activities across sectoral and hierarchical boundaries by examining the history and configuration of the field (Antti, 2019). For the Venetian case, this entails mapping:

• The timelines of mobilisation and institutional activities responding to the organic crisis of the urban lagoon;
• Their major transformations due to novel mediating artefacts (Venice’s special laws, mobilisation strategies, etc.);
• The germ cells of coalescing mechanisms involving multi-level actors in cross-sectoral campaigns for the city’s infrastructure, sustainability, and degrowth.

Such 4G diagnosis lays the foundation for the operational phases of multiple Change Labs meant to enact the future-making coalition through cross-scale expansive learning cycles.

In line with CHAT-based methodology (Morselli, Marcelli, 2022), the research employs a post-qualitative approach to explore and intervene in the learning and transformative activities performed by mobilisation networks across Venice. The embedded critical case focuses on three civil society campaigns presently opposing further degradation, turistification, and depopulation of the urban lagoon. Their activities are examined in relation to historical and prospective patterns of cross-scale coalitions centred on the Venetian community. The diagnostic investigation consists of three stages that integrate the preliminary Change Laboratory procedures (Virkkunen, Shelley Newnham, 2013) with ethnographic fieldwork (Madden, 2017) and narrative inquiry (Chase, 2018): Charting – First, we reconstruct the historical coalitions of civil society mobilisation networks by conducting ethnographic observations and informal interviews during open conferences, town assemblies, or public demonstrations. Then, documentary research of organisational archives brings the focus on the role played by particular regulations (e.g., Special Law for Venice n° 171/73) and local or global incidents (e.g., extreme high tides, Covid-19 outbreak) in catalysing CSO’s future-making activities. This allows us to sketch the entangled timelines of mobilisation and institutional activities tackling Venice’s major societal challenges: flooding, tourism, and housing. Identification – Secondly, we triangulate the data obtained by completing two semi-structured interviews with representatives from CSOs engaging with each of these problem-spaces. Because their changing configurations result in the decades-long development of civil society activities, the corresponding learning processes are categorised into non-expansive, proto-expansive, or fully expansive. Next, we conduct ten more semi-structured interviews with representatives of active mobilisation campaigns and examine further their archival records. This leads us to identify the conflicting objectives, mediating artefacts and potential for collective TADS amongst civil society networks seeking to regenerate the futures of the urban lagoon. Questioning – Thirdly, we plan to organise four focus groups with CSO representatives, whose cross-sectoral experience was confirmed through previous interviews. During the sessions, the participants can mutually diagnose and question the major congruencies and contradictions underlying key mobilisation activities by civil society networks. Besides, they can explore the conflicts, resources, and potential for catalysing the expansive learning processes across policy, education, and market sectors throughout the following phases of the 4G Change Labs. These meetings may prove empowering and conducive to the formation of novel cross-scale coalitions, involving first other CSOs, then legislators, district educators, and local workers, capable of enacting Venice’s future as a collective subject.

First, our doctoral study responds to the critical need of the Venetian community – not only reclaiming its future but reaching those it desires. Therefore, it focuses both on the transformative role played by its civil society and on the potential for wider participation through coalitions of future-making activities. We will present the following preliminary results of this diagnostic investigation: 1) Increasingly, civil society networks seek to confront Venice’s organic crisis in its environmental, economic, and residential configurations. Thus, they learn from those past institutional activities that addressed such critical challenges through coordinated efforts (e.g., Special Law for Venice n° 171/73); 2) Civil society networks often produce primary artefacts (e.g., roundtable meetings), as well as secondary (e.g., national bills) and tertiary ones (e.g., island regeneration projects) to sustain their future-making activities; 3) These prove progressively more effective when mechanisms for horizontal cooperation between CSOs, strategies for cross-sectoral involvement of schools, municipalities, or trade associations, and schemes for developing into multi-level coalitions are envisioned. The systematic diagnosis may enable both civil society networks and external actors to partake in multiple Change Laboratories aimed at expanding their coalitions of activities. Validating this methodology by cross-checking its tentative applications across Europe (Lund 2021; Grimalt-Álvaro, Ametller, 2021; Morselli, Marcelli 2022) can significantly improve field studies based on CHAT. Follow-up research on the operational phases of this 4G formative intervention likely provides further insights on the concrete actions needed to establish cross-scale cycles of expansive learning. Besides, such empirical evidence may confirm, challenge, or extend the novel theoretical proposition of CHAT’s fourth generation as elaborated by CRADLE and RESET, the leading research groups of Scandinavian Activity Theory (Engeström, Sannino 2021). Ultimately, although centred in Venice, the overall project might serve as a model to help regenerate different communities whose futures are endangered by entangled hyperobjects.

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