Consequences of Deindustrialization of the Eastern Adriatic Coast: (Dis)Entangling People, Landscape and the Sea

This project focuses on deindustrialization and radical transformation of maritime industries in the Eastern Adriatic Coast (Slovenia and Croatia, including Croatian islands). To understand their consequences, we explore the history of making and unmaking fish canning industry in this area. Fish canning industry importantly influenced economy, demography and social relations in this area; it is simultaneously deeply ingrained into the locality of coastal and insular landscapes, and governed by the global trends of demand, circulation and trade of canned fish. In the last decades, it experienced radical dismantling, transformations and relocations.

This project observes deindustrialization as a longue durée, complex and multilayered process; it aims to explore its consequences through combination of archival and multi-site ethnographic research at places with different histories of (de)industrialization related to fish canning industry (Izola, Vis, Mali Lošinj, Niš).