Of Miracle Clams and Doomsday Crabs: A Guide to the Taxonomies of the Capitalocene in the Sacca di Goro

Abstract

Since the 1980s, the Sacca di Goro (Po River Delta) has undergone a radical socio-ecological transformation, turning the lagoon shared by the communities of Goro and Gorino into one of the largest industrial Manila clam (Ruditapes philippinarum) farms in Europe. In the past decade, however, the climate crisis has emerged in this context through the proliferation of various non-native species, culminating in the recent feral expansion of the Atlantic blue crab (Callinectes sapidus), whose predatory dynamics have disrupted the local production system and triggered deep-seated identity anxieties. This article examines this moment of crisis through an analysis of the political, scientific, and popular narratives surrounding the so-called blue crab invasion, exploring how the biological discourse on invasive species is renegotiated within the cultural framework of an extractive ecology, which has redefined notions of native, allochtonous, and invasive species around the Manila clam. The ethnographic analysis thus highlights the social construction of the crisis and its militarized articulation, exposing the contradictory taxonomic orders that, within the ecological regime of the Capitalocene, are mobilized according to logics that bypass the categories of systematic biology.