La Tabacca: small Farming, bold Intentions. A walk through the challenging creation of alternative lifestyles.

Abstract: Considering small farming as a viable and optimal solution to achieve sustainability, the following work presents La Tabacca – a small farm in the Northwest of Italy – not as a generalisable model but as one of the many expressions of current environmentalism. After three and a half months of fieldwork – using the tool of critical ethnography – different layers and elements of the place have been taken into consideration. Through a narrative walk the present study provides a description of the site and of the people involved, their historical backgrounds and purposes, a list of major influencing ideas and approaches such as permaculture, a perception of a culture in transition, an ethnographic discourse analysis of the farm and its narrative and a critical view on the relationship between the study case and European agricultural funds. In the closing section, the study provides an insight on the dissent role that La Tabacca is taking towards what is to be considered mainstream society.