EXPLORING THE DWELLING PRACTICES OF LITTERING IN SOUTHERN ITALY: THE CASE OF NAPLES AND SORRENTO

Littering is a consistent part of everyday life in most urban contexts. It is practiced widely as well as being commonly considered as socially undesirable conduct. Littering is a day-to-day issue, and so too is its most common explanation. Indeed, leaving small amounts of litter on the ground is often understood as an individual moral failure, a bad habit of people who lack commitment to genuine environmental concerns. Likewise, the litterer is considered to be careless about their own environment and largely unaware of the consequences of their behaviour. Therefore, environmental education appears to be the main institutional response to this problem. Because littering is understood to be caused mainly by a lack of behavioural discipline, discipline through public education campaigns is the method often used to govern this public challenge. As a result, the ubiquity of littering is reflected in the ubiquity of the communication campaigns that urban authorities put in place to make people conscious of their actions, showing them how ethically and environmentally unsustainable their everyday actions can be. From a sociological point of view, what seems clear is that the connection between individual acts and the institutional response is basically a matter of education/communication, but that too often the proliferation of littering is not questioned enough. How is it possible that so many people are so coordinated in doing something that is largely disapproved of socially?