Urban thirst and water conflict: the case study of the Comunanza Agraria di Bagnara

This study aims to discuss legal proceedings that occurred between a collective property institution and certain public and private actors concerning water governance and management. It elaborates place-related research on an empirical case study to provide for a deep understanding of the entanglement between water management, property relations and law-in-action. This paper uses a political ecology and legal geography conceptual framework to analyse the political dimension of water governance and the mutual interactions between law and space. The research examines how law manifests itself spatially through an empirical analysis of water conflict. During the fieldwork, a series of semi-structured interviews were carried out with key spokespeople, and visual data was gathered. The coexistence of different legal orders and property regimes shapes spaces differently in terms of conservation or exploitation, according to their socio-political characteristics. The overlap of different property arrangements promotes conflict as different regulations and visions mutually collide. The conflict contributes to the reshaping of the socio-spatial environment. This supports the idea that every territorial weave created through law in action reshapes power relations among actors. The contributions lie in elaborating on empirical research into the legal geographies of property and water within the Italian context, focusing on law in action through an original case study. Assessing collective property’s social, political, environmental and ethical qualities is a fruitful area of research. Furthermore, broadening the concept of legal pluralism is essential to decentralise it from its predominant application in post-colonial societies.