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In the first four or five centuries of its manufacturing in Europe, paper was neither cheap nor available in unlimited quantities. Old rags, the primary material from which the paper was exclusively made, were a strategic commodity and trade with them was strictly regulated. Owing to their perpetual scarcity, as well as to the overall laboriousness of the papermaking process, a skilled master printer of the Incunabula period was hardly able to purchase a ream or two of high-quality paper for his monthly earnings. Consequently, the earliest printers had to rely on the support of ‘venture capitalists’ in order to secure steady supplies of paper. But the limitations of its manufacturing were not resolved by the end of the Incunabula period. Alas, the shortage and high cost of paper accompanied the development of print in Italy and elsewhere practically up until the advent of its industrial production from wooden pulp in the nineteenth century. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

This paper analyzes how language is framed as a route to full inclusion, particularly for unaccompanied asylum-seeking students labelled as disabled. It is based on a qualitative study carried out in the Italian city of Rome, which, although cosmopolitan, is often characterised by nationalistic political landscapes. The manuscript reveals how institutional biases (re: race, ability, and migration) about unaccompanied forced migrant youth, often manifested in their construction as disabled and foreign by local professionals, hinder the likelihood that they successfully participate in the life of the host society. The paper also shows how the inclusion of migrant and refugee students living in foster care homes is conceptualised as a violent integration into monolingual and monocultural education settings. Drawing on Disability Critical Race Studies and Raciolinguistics, this contribution analyzes how unaccompanied forced migrant students respond to their linguistic urgency, learn power majority languages, and simultaneously devalue their home language to perform the 'good (im)migrant.' Lastly, the contribution shows how processes of racialization of disabled unaccompanied asylum-seeking and refugee students influence how western communities perceive their linguistic capacity and effort. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper explores the proximity of local media to audiences during the COVID-19 pandemic. It is based on a case study of Italian daily L'Eco di Bergamo combining two sets of data: a list of initiatives the newspaper took in 2019 and 2020 to be closer to audiences, and interviews shedding light on how staff viewed the paper's relationship with audiences during that time. An analysis of these two datasets shows that the pandemic increased the newspaper's proximity to audiences but did not fundamentally change the way in which it related with audiences, despite significant changes in journalists' work routines. Based on these findings, the paper proposes a conceptualization of proximity as a dynamic balance between three structuring dimensions (gatekeeping, social and commercial), with a focus on audiences as a plural figure determined by news organizations' strategies. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper draws attention to the role of colonial memory in the Italian populist radical right. Italy's colonial past has been long confined on the fringes of memory in Italian politics and in the Italian public debate. While recent academic attention has been devoted to the selective colonial memory transpiring from Italian cultural products, scarce attention has been paid to colonial memory in contemporary Italian political parties' discourse. Therefore, by applying Critical Discourse Analysis to semi-structured interviews with Italian populist radical right representatives from the Lega and Fratelli d'Italia (FdI), this paper aims at investigating which role colonial memory plays in these parties' discourse. This paper argues that the Lega and FdI reproduce colonial discourse in constructing the image of the contemporary immigrant Other. At the same time, they forge a selective memory of Italy's colonial past, cleansed from its most controversial aspects. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The paper addresses the critical issue of teacher shortages in Europe, with a focus on Italy. It examines the declining attractiveness of the teaching profession, citing factors such as job dissatisfaction, low pay and difficult working conditions. It highlights the growing demand for teachers and the need for reforms in teacher education. The Italian context is examined, revealing a dual scenario of surplus teachers in some areas and severe shortages in others. The paper discusses the reforms underway in Italy to improve teacher education, recruitment and retention, emphasising the need for innovative, high-quality teacher education programmes and a comprehensive approach to tackling the problem at national level. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper provides a critical analysis of Freire's Italian reception and argues that reinventing Freire requires us to historicise and to contextualise his legacy, which in Italy makes sense in consonance with the already existing Italian popular education tradition. Based on the case study of his 1989 honorary degree at the University of Bologna, this article investigates Freire's influence in academia by comparing two generations of scholars and activists who have received Freire in different ways. Drawing on interviews to key informants who belong to two generations of educators influenced by Freire, this paper argues that the Italian Freire's renaissance is associated with the growing need for a generation of militant educators to find a theoretical framework to oppose the hegemony of both neo-liberal and neo-nationalist discourses in education. The reasons for Freire's reinvention in the academic sphere are investigated and the profile of the second generation of Freireans in Italy traced out, highlighting both continuities and tensions with the first one. Finally, the motives for Freire's success in today's Italy are presented in seven main theses, showing that many of them are made possible by virtue of the political, cultural and pedagogical background that made Freire's re-invention in an Italian context possible. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The paper navigates Ethiopia's history of resistance against Italian colonial aggression as reported by New Times and Ethiopia News (NTEN) founded and edited by Sylvia Pankhurst in defence of Ethiopia. Her London-based weekly, which started the day fascist forces took control of Addis Ababa, was in the years to come to step up discursive pressure on Italy and the big powers for the salvation of the Eastern African nation. The paper reported on the freedom fighters' victories in the antifascist resistance through the empire as well as the diplomatic and activist crusades in Geneva, London and the United States by the government in exile as well as friends of Ethiopia. Using a sample of archival corpus of the newspaper and employing rhetorical methods, the study examines narratives of victimhood, resistance and victory as carried in headlines covering the period 1936–41. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The fact that traditional information sources are neglected by tour operators and the statement arguing that digital information sources, contrarily to traditional paper ones, allow the projection of modern and innovative destination images, served as a starting point for this study. The aim of this research is to determine what destination images of Italy are projected by traditional and digital information sources from 15 Scandinavian tour operators. A qualitative method based on secondary data (1306 photographs) and a thematic analysis has been employed. Images from catalogs mainly illustrate Italy with hidden mass tourism, famous Italy, and culture, while images from social media accounts mainly represent Italy with mass tourism, unfamiliar Italy, and culture. Further, each Scandinavian country focuses on specific features of Italy. This research has implications for Scandinavian tour operators, DMOs (Destination Management Organizations) in Italian cities and for Scandinavian tourists to Italy, suggesting how displaying images more consistent with reality would better match the customers' need for information through photographs and more accurately form and shape their pre-travel expectations. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article examines the photographic career of Stefano Lecchi, the Italian photographer best known for his series of photographs documenting the aftermath of the defence of the Roman Republic in 1849, a key episode in Italy's nationalist movement, the Risorgimento. This study concentrates on the album Fotografi di Roma, which presents thirty of Lecchi's salted paper prints from that series together with eleven topographical views. This album demonstrates how the events of the Risorgimento expanded the existing canon of Italy's historical monuments to include new sites identified with contemporary political actions that in turn contributed to the collective memory of the founding of the nation. Using newly discovered biographical information and highlighting the transnational network of colleagues and patrons surrounding this album, the author proposes the significance of these photographs to Italian nation-building across the political spectrum and posits Lecchi as an important, although often neglected, figure in the early development of paper photography. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The paper analyses how SMEs manage the knowledge needed to carry out innovation, focusing on how the various knowledge management (KM) processes (acquisition, documentation, sharing, application) come into play during the different phases of the innovation process (idea generation, ideas selection, project development, launch). In fact, little is known about the KM processes and practices that SMEs employ during their innovation activities. Given the novelty of the issue, a multiple case study was carried out on 13 innovative projects implemented by as many Italian manufacturing SMEs. Empirical evidence shows that all KM processes play a role in the various phases of the innovation process, but this role changes from phase to phase. Furthermore, the study highlights that the practices used in the various processes may vary in relation to the type of innovation that is being developed. Lastly, it confirms that SMEs tend to adopt an informal and emergent KM approach. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

It is common wisdom that the diffusion of information and communication technology (ICT) in cultural institutions can influence their mission and activities, reshaping their role as producers and distributors of cultural content. Nevertheless, the extent of ICT facilities in European museums has been rather scarce, although recently it has grown faster in response to the new challenges brought up by the COVID-19 crisis. This paper aims at exploring the drivers of the ICT strategy adopted by museums and similar institutions (in terms of both in situ and online services), considering not only supply-side but also demand-side characteristics. To the best of our knowledge, such an issue has not been investigated so far in a systematic way. We use a novel dataset based on three waves (2011, 2015, 2018) of a census survey carried out by the Italian National Statistical Office on all the cultural institutes spread over the Italian territory. Results show that supply-side, demand-side and contextual factors are significantly associated with the use of ICT by museums and similar institutions. Interestingly, we find that the relationship between demand features and museums' digital strategy is closely related to the type of services and to the presence of financial incentives. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Based on in-depth qualitative research, this paper compares and contrasts two different policy approaches to Preventing and Countering Violent Extremism (P/CVE) within the European context. On the one hand, the Dutch case relies on a holistic and integrated approach in which a national framework underlies a targeted multi-stakeholder approach to preventing and countering manifestations of violent extremism. On the other hand, while lacking an overarching national policy framework, the Italian case study presents a range of mechanisms and projects aimed at combating violent extremism at the local level. The paper traces the different histories of terrorism and radicalization in the two countries to assess the emergence of these divergent approaches. Subsequently, regional case studies of the Delft and Milan areas are explored in-depth to illustrate how the respective policies are put into action, and to highlight the strengths and weaknesses of each approach. The research is based on expert interviews and institutional research involving municipalities, education, social work, and civil society actors. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper adopts a Geographical Political Economy perspective to critically investigate how successive economic crises occurring from 2009 onwards (including the COVID-19 pandemic) affected youth labour markets in Greece, Italy, and Spain. To do so, it first calculates a Resilience Index for three youth employment types (total, part-time, and temporary employment). It then employs Shift-Share Analysis to quantify the effect of national trends, sectoral dynamism, and local characteristics upon total youth employment changes. After identifying those regions that have exhibited resilience or lack thereof and the underlying reasons for their trajectories, the paper outlines a typology of regional youth labour markets' resilience and examines their dynamics. Specifically, the paper examines the effect of path dependencies, structural deficiencies, and labour polarization on resilience outcomes, concluding that each has steered in different ways the regional youth labour markets examined towards either bouncing back shortly after recessive shocks or developing mechanisms of adaptation amidst recession. Closing, the paper discusses the role of work flexibilization in shaping resilience, finding that whilst it may contribute to coping/adaptation capacities under certain conditions it does not guarantee them. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The Ukrainian crisis has caused important repercussions at the international level, including the influx of thousands of voluntary fighters from abroad. According to recent estimates, from 2014 until the 2022 Russian invasion of Ukraine, approximately 1,000 Westerners travelled to the disputed region of the Donbas (Eastern Ukraine), on both sides of the conflict (Ukrainian forces and Russia-supported "separatist" militias). This article intends to offer an original contribution to the empirical study of the mobilization of Western fighters in the Donbas, by taking into account, for the first time, the national case of Italy (one of the countries most affected by the phenomenon in the West). In particular, based on detailed primary and secondary sources, the paper examines in depth a relatively large Italian network of pro-separatist fighters and direct supporters, including far-right militants, and analyzes their profiles and mobilization dynamics, drawing upon the literature on social movements and contentious politics. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper investigates how a regional perspective can offer an insightful frame to examine the distribution of agency in energy transitions, with particular reference to the widespread problem of restructuring electricity grid networks to accommodate the expansion of renewable energy. Understanding governance and agency in this sphere requires a conceptual framework that can capture the layered nature of infrastructure and the functional and territorial mismatches between network governance and other governmental arenas. Thus, this paper adopts Barry's concept of 'technological zones' and uses it to examine grid capacity challenges and prospective solutions in two Italian regions. The paper investigates how regional governments can exploit the techno-economic opportunities and fixities to develop energy network solutions in their administrative territories and shows the nature (albeit partial) and reach of regional-level agency. The findings highlight that regions should not only be seen as a layer of governance but as sites of problems – and action – which spark innovations. We argue that while the regional-level has had a modest influence in the regulation of network infrastructure in the chosen cases, regions have had a role in rendering their territory, directly or indirectly, available for infrastructural investment and in mediating potential constraints. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Do political parties keep their promises? The coherence between parties' ideology and policy output have always attracted scholarly interest. Moreover, the importance of political parties' accountability has dramatically increased also because of the rise of populist parties. This paper aims at contributing to the current debate by investigating different phases: the electoral manifestoes, the framing on issues in parliament, the votes, and the ways through which the manifestoes for the following elections change. What are the patterns parties can adopt to address a possible dissonance between electoral platforms, votes, and frames? Are there recurrent patterns of party behaviour between manifestoes, rhetoric, and policy outputs? To answer these research questions, the manuscript builds on a cross-country and cross-time (2007–2017) empirical analysis of three West European social democratic parties and their attitudes towards transnational issues, such as migration, terrorism, military operations and the financial crisis. The paper, which is based on content analysis of debates and manifestoes, identifies several patterns parties can follow for managing these crises. This paves the way for further variable-testing research. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

There is a growing focus in political science on right-wing populist parties. But few comparative studies address their discourses and politics relating to family values, especially when involved with policy-making. Moreover, many comparative works about populism focus on a single region – often Western and Eastern Europe. This paper adopts a definition of populism with two different dimensions: the vertical (inclusive), which regards elites, and the horizontal (exclusive), which addresses 'foreigners'. The use of family values in political discourse and policy pertains to the two axes of populism. On the one hand are elites who are accused of being uncommitted to traditional values and morally corrupt. On the other hand are demographic concerns regarding declining birth rates among native populations and immigrants with large families. The stress on family values can also originate from a value orientation – or merely a tactical move – engendered by political competition. This paper specifically examines the politics of family values in the context of policies concerning gender equality, family planning and LGBT rights in three countries: Israel, Italy and Turkey. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

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The paper explores the role and value of the so-called 'balcony performances' – community special events, organized during the first national lockdown in Italy in March-May 2020. Following the constructionist research paradigm, in-depth interviews were collected and analysed to understand how through engaging with special events, residents found ways to deal with uncertainty and distress during the time of lockdown. Balcony events allowed participants to connect with others at a distance, express and share their feelings and emotions and, eventually, transform fear and worry into hope and positivity. The paper reiterates the vital ritualistic role of events in community life and introduces a conceptual framework of the transformative power of events. The framework explains how during times of uncertainty, improvisational creativity within neighbourhoods, expressed in special events, can provide a platform for resilience building and community cohesion. The paper also puts forward a new perspective on residential balconies as event venues. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper focuses on the extreme hardship suffered by migrants crossing through Libya to reach Italy and Europe. The paper documents and defines the notion of extreme hardship and argues in favour of an ethics of care that provides for protection for those migrants who may not be asylum seekers for what concerns their initial motivation for migrating but who need humanitarian protection because of the harm suffered while en route. Starting with a normative exploration of how an ethics of care can and should inform the policy of countries of arrival, this paper analyses the specific case of Italy and the emerging case law and legal practice in relation to the humanitarian stay permits. Based on the analysis of relevant scholarly literature, policy and legal texts and interviews with expert informants (lawyers and judges) and taking stock of an innovative practice that emerged in Italy in the period 2015–2020, the paper also discusses similar provisions in other European countries and argues for the possibility to develop and codify a humanitarian permit, at national or also European level. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The research aim of the project presented in this paper is to contribute to an understanding of the meaning of push- and pull-out in inclusive school systems. We ask: How do Italian and Norwegian teachers regard the fact that it is sometimes seen as necessary for some students to spend time out of class? A vignette with short scenarios to stimulate responses was used for teacher interviews in lower secondary schools in Italy and Norway. Situations in two different contexts were designed for the vignette, including a description of some students, their class and the available resources. The main funding is that most teachers' opinions were sensitive to the context, here the way teaching and learning activities were organised. When presented for a traditional teacher-centred class situation (context 1), most of the respondents thought pull-out was a good solution for some students under certain conditions. Presented with the more differentiated and pupil-centred context 2, a clear majority found that the described learning environment would meet the educational and social needs of all learners within class, regardless of disabilities or learning challenges. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

After decades of disinvestment in public housing in Italy, the European Recovery and Resilience Facility (RRF) opens a window of opportunity for the regeneration of a housing segment displaying multidimensional (structural, spatial, economic, and social) criticalities. The PINQuA (Programma Innovativo Nazionale per la Qualità dell'Abitare), endowed with € 2,8 billion from the RRF, is a national programme, promoted by the Ministry of Infrastructure and Sustainable Mobility (MIMS), aimed at enhancing the quality of housing and urban spaces, with a particular focus on the requalification and increase of the social housing stock and the adoption of innovative models of management and social inclusion. After the identification of 159 projects eligible for funding, it has recently entered the implementation phase, to be concluded until 31 March 2026. As the PINQuA is currently considered the main tool for addressing severe deficiencies in the residential landscape of Italy, high hopes are associated with the programme. The objective of this paper is to understand whether these hopes are justified with respect to the regeneration needs of the Italian public housing stock, analysing (i) to which degree public housing is the object of regeneration activities in PINQuA projects; (ii) which types of regeneration activities have been admitted for funding; (iii) innovative elements that can be identified in projects; and (iv) shortcomings of the programme and related procedures. The research has been developed through document analysis and a series of semi-structured interviews with stakeholders from the public housing sector, public administrations, Federcasa (the Italian Federation of Public and Social Housing Providers) and academics. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Research evaluation, which is an increasingly pressing issue, invariably relies on citation counts. In this contribution we highlight two concerns that the research community needs to pay attention to. One, in the world of search engine facilitated research, factors such as ease of Web discovery, ease of access, and content relevance, rather than quality, influence what gets read and cited. Two, research evaluation based on citation counts works against many types of high-quality works. We also elaborate on the implications of these points by examining a recent nationwide evaluation of researchers performed in Italy. We focus on our discipline (computer science), but we believe that our observations have relevance for a broad audience. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper empirically examines the impact of organisational psychological support on employees' outcomes as an example of the 'Common Good HRM' model on the well-being – performance continuum of police officers, using a Conservation of Resources (COR) theoretical framework. The study uses Structural Equation Modelling to analyse data from 220 Italian police and 228 English police officers to compare the impact of Perceived Organisational Support (POS) on organisational stress, employees' resilience, and engagement. The findings show that low Perceived Organisational Support (POS) leads to high stress, which then comprises employees' resilience and likely demotivates them from being engaged on the job, explaining approximately half of their engagement. Stress and resilience also mediate the relationship between POS and engagement. COR theory explains that when POS is low, employees perceive a resource loss spiral which compromises their wellbeing, and consequently, police officers' engagement is low. The contribution of this paper is that it shows how organisational support is an integral part of managing emotional labour and therefore demonstrates how the 'Common Good HRM' model has the potential to protect emotional labour more effectively. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

While violence against health care workers is being progressively recognised as a serious problem in the healthcare industry, it remains an under-studied area of enquiry in global public health. Anthropologists have long observed that violence toward patients is tied to institutional care practises in multiple ways, including repression, misrecognition and silencing. But research on health care staff's experience of violence is still lacking. This article aims to address this literature gap by providing research on the daily experience of vulnerability to violence that health care providers face during their work. To do so, the paper ethnographically explores the effects and perception of violence against health care workers in an emergency department (ED) in northern Italy, a place with a dramatic escalation of violent incidents. The article illustrates how the ED staff attended to the experience of suffering of potentially violent patients. In so doing, ED professionals shifted the responsibility of violence against them from violent individuals to violent structures shaping health inequities. The paper thus argues that ED professionals display a structural competence perspective when dealing with violence. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper puts forward the relevance of the concept of precarity in the investigation of the housing conditions of migrants. With this aim, the article presents an inductive journey, anchored in the analysis of the roots of migrant housing problems in Italy. Specific attention is paid to the connection of causal factors internal to the housing system (e.g. the shortcomings of the public housing system, the marginality of the private rental market, and the spread of illegal renting) with the functioning of public institutions, demonstrating that the housing precarity of migrants in Italy is institutionally constructed, maintained and shaped. Subsequently, the reflection lands on the notion of precarity; use of said term – which is usually confined to the analysis of the labor market − is extended to the field of housing. Four main epistemological dimensions of the concept of precarity are identified and explored: i) the centrality of the political and institutional creation of precarity; ii) the intersection of personal attributes and structural forces, of local and global causes; iii) the understanding of sectoral problems as part and parcel of an ontological condition of risk and uncertainty; iv) the indication of precarity as a potential point of departure for collective political agency, in particular among the disparate groups which − despite being marginalized by neoliberal exploitation − are not represented by traditional working-class organizations. The paper concludes with a note on migrant housing in pandemic times. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The paper investigates urban regeneration processes in Italy by comparing large-scale and long-term experiences in Piedmont and Apulia regions, both involved in the promotion of innovative urban regeneration policies for some decades. The multi-level perspective approach is employed to analyse transitions and to identify key leverages and lock-in mechanisms. A core influencing factor on transition pathways in urban regeneration is found in the range of policy instruments employed by the regional governments, which are in turn influenced by existing regime features. -Based on research findings, some suggestions are given on how to improve the consolidation of innovative practices in urban regeneration. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Since the outbreak of the Covid-19 pandemic, progressive social movements have been engaged in an incredibly intense period of contestation. Confronted with the unprecedented extent of the crisis, the current wave of mobilization brought together both older and newer actors, bridging generations and movement sectors, building on past experiences of previous mobilizations while also innovating in important ways. The Covid-19 pandemic provides an opportunity to contextualize the role of past mobilizations in contemporary struggles, singling out continuities and innovation in the forms of resistance, collective frames, and organizational models. This paper focuses on the framing of health rights and analyzes the emergence of care as a bridging frame in the movement campaigns developed during the Covid-19 crisis. In examining the processes of cross-temporal diffusion, it considers the legacy of the Global Justice Movement and its offspring in the current mobilization in Italy. Through the analysis of key documents produced by social movements triangulated with in-depth interviews with activists, we observe the ways in which some collective frames migrate from past mobilizations to new ones, and are adapted through the reactivation of old organizational networks and the emergence of new organizations. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The privatization of public utilities marked a turning point in European capitalism, reshaping the relationship between the public and private spheres of the economy. However, the extent of state disinvestment varies greatly from country to country. While in some countries direct state ownership has disappeared, in others the state still acts as a reference shareholder in strategic companies. Despite their institutional similarities, Italy and Spain provide a puzzling example of this divergence. While Spain completed the privatization of all public utilities, the Italian state retains a controlling stake in many of them. Through historical case studies based on official documents, legal texts, archival research of newspaper articles, secondary sources and memoirs, this paper explains this divergence. Contributing to recent debates on patient capital and state-business interactions, it is argued that Spain completed the privatization process because the state was able to orchestrate the creation of shareholder alliances among private investors. Crucially, these investors were willing to ensure that management prioritizes long-term investment plans over the distribution of short-term financial profits. In the absence of domestic private providers of patient capital, the Italian state had to keep the role of anchor investor for itself after unsuccessfully experimenting with various privatization strategies. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The aftermath of the pandemic crisis and the war in Ukraine have revived the debate on the causes and consequences of inflation, as well as the policies needed to combat its effects. Despite the obvious absence of a role for monetary policy in triggering price rises, the response of monetary authorities, especially in the Eurozone, has been conventional: raising interest rates, with negative consequences for activity levels. In this paper we argue that the inflation episode we are witnessing is a consequence of the attempt by profit-makers to maintain the same (if not higher) levels of profitability as before. It is, therefore, a case of conflict inflation. The policies needed to avoid severe consequences for the weakest sections of the population should be aimed at compensating workers against the loss of purchasing power. In this context, Italy is a case study. It is one of the few advanced countries where there is no statutory minimum wage. Considering data from the main studies on the conditions of Italian workers and building our argument on the most recent economic theory, we stress the need for the introduction of a legal minimum wage in Italy and, in general, for upstream redistribution policies. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper aims to explore the argumentative legitimation of discriminatory attitudes against Silvia Romano on Italian newspapers front pages. A volunteer-aid worker and activist, Romano was kidnapped in northeast Kenya in 2018 and eventually released after 18 months of captivity. Upon her return to Italy, a jilbāb-covered Romano declared she converted to Islam while held hostage and changed her name to Aisha. Romano’s conversion triggered a wave of exclusionary rhetoric across Italian media and opened the dam to a deluge of misogynous and Islamophobic attacks against the newly liberated activist, accused of having betrayed Catholic religion and Italian culture. Our corpus comprises 86 front pages from mainstream Italian newspapers of different ideological backgrounds, collected during the first week after Romano’s release in May 2020. Following the agenda of Multimodal Critical Discourse Studies and drawing on van Leeuwen’s language of legitimation, we study the recontextualization of social practice on the front pages and the main argumentation strategies, namely topoi, that emerge on the basis of this recontextualization, ending up argumentatively legitimizing discriminatory attitudes against the intended target. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

AbstractThis paper explores the processes of individual and collective subjectivation experienced by non-binary individuals living in contemporary Italy. Using qualitative methods, the study, which was conducted between July and September 2021, involved a sample of twenty-six young adults aged between eighteen and thirty years. Starting from participants’ narratives, the thematic analysis revealed the significance of both physical and virtual support environments in the subjectivation process, taking into account the diverse micro-contexts in which people live. The study’s findings underscore the continued need to challenge societal norms and structures that perpetuate discrimination against people who reject exclusive identification with the male or female gender and opt for more fluid and non-traditional definitions of gender identity. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper describes the establishment of banking supervision in Italy and its operation between 1926 and 1936, using a narrative approach based on previously classified documents from the Bank of Italy's Historical Archives. This case is particularly interesting from the international perspective, Italy having been the first European country to assign substantial supervision to its central bank, a few years before the 1929 crisis. Notwithstanding insufficient regulation and a light touch concerning the four major mixed banks, we document considerable enforcement of the law, which went beyond the initial provisions, thanks to the rather proactive supervisory approach adopted by the Bank of Italy. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In response to the economic crisis unleashed by the Covid-19 pandemic, the EU authorities have launched extraordinary fiscal and monetary measures in support of member states. The impact of these measures is of great significance for Italy, the EU third-largest economy, which as a result of the pandemic has suffered a dramatic decline in GDP, and a further rise in the government debt to GDP ratio. Building on a stock-flow consistent, structural macro-econometric model, this paper shows that the currently planned EU measures are insufficient to boost the recovery of the Italian economy, and to ensure the sustainability of its government debt. The paper also assesses two potential alternative policies. A fiscal consolidation (i.e. austerity) policy would exacerbate the decline in GDP and further deteriorate the government debt to GDP ratio. By contrast, a money-financed fiscal stimulus policy could lead the Italian economy on a path of sustainable growth, with positive outcomes for employment and government finances. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper explores the entanglement of humanism and posthumanism within the Western European University, focusing on ethical implications and the role of the university in protecting the marginalised. To illustrate its arguments, it draws on a small study conducted in an ancient Italian university which specialises in Humanities and Social Sciences. The paper focuses on two key knotty issues: relationships between university aspirations to posthumanism and the colonial legacies of humanism, and the implications of holding on to humanism as a guarantor of human rights for marginalised people. It concludes by discussing the limitations of a posthuman ethics of responsibility and proposes instead a posthuman ethics of rights for the university. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

From the farthest north to the deepest south, the cities, towns, and countryside of Italy have provided set locations which show us images of an Italy that is multiform and various. Based on a massive database of more than 5000 Italian-set films from 1988 to 2016, this paper explores the geography of Italian set locations and their related cinematic landscapes. In order to achieve this goal, the study proceeds in two phases. First, the paper identifies the concentrations of set locations (filmogenic spots) overall and by genre in particular areas through spatial analysis tools. Second, it presents a qualitative analysis of the representation of selected locations, underlining the different roles played by the landscape in film narratives. By using an integrated quali-quantitative perspective, the paper offers an analysis that combines the spatial and the representational dimensions of Italian set locations over a wide area for a long period. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Knowledge brokers are among the main channels of communication between scientists and the public and a key element to establishing a relation of trust between the two. But translating knowledge from the scientific community to a wider audience presents several difficulties, which can be accentuated in times of crisis. In this paper we study some of the problems that knowledge brokers face when communicating in times of crisis. During the first wave of the COVID-19 pandemic, we collected interviews with Italian experts that played a major role as knowledge brokers in the local media. We asked them questions about five main topics: the features and role of science communicators; the use of language in communicating science; the importance of the relation of trust with the public; the peculiarity of communicating in a context of emergency; the problem of disagreement among experts, and its public perception and communication. The goal of this paper is to understand, through the words of knowledge brokers themselves, what they consider as best practices (and obstacles) to create trust between scientists and the public. Our empirical work can inform normative accounts of what knowledge brokering should be about. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The extensive involvement of Italian sport organisations in delivering various social and humanitarian services and activities to migrants, along with the peculiarity of the country, offered the ground to the conceptualisation of this paper. This study aims to discuss the contributions of sport to migrants' social inclusion through a review of the pertinent literature and the use of a Qualitative Document Analysis (QDA) to examine a group of projects and interventions carried out in Italy. In Italy, the third sector, and in particular, sport for all organisations, develop several initiatives to respond to the heterogeneous needs of the migrants, including educational and communication campaigns, research activities and direct participation of migrants in sport events and tournaments. Our study highlights the importance of overcoming the lack of homogeneity in those projects and interventions with common and shared strategies, and the importance of educating and training coaches and other professionals for working in these contexts. The findings also led us to propose a conceptual framework with the critical areas of intervention for research and sport-based projects: social inclusion, settlement, positive development and social capital. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Studies of childbearing across partnerships—having children with more than one partner—have generally focused on countries with relatively high separation rates. We complement this previous research with analyses for Italy using nationally representative, retrospective data and event-history techniques. This study offers three key findings. First, we detected a non-negligible share of childbearing across partnerships, although at substantially lower levels relative to other wealthy countries (5 per cent of parents aged 25–54 with at least two children). Second, multivariate analyses revealed an impressive similarity to the demographic correlates found elsewhere. Finally, we showed that childbearing across partnerships was initiated by the 'social vanguard' of new family behaviours but then diffused among the least well-off. Overall, this paper adds to the growing literature on childbearing across partnerships by showing the phenomenon to be demographically and sociologically relevant, even in countries with strong family ties and a limited diffusion of union dissolution. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

As increasingly more upper secondary schools mainstream bilingualism via an array of strategies, databases collecting students' appraisals of their bilingual experiences become invaluable for informing practice. This paper discusses how the ADiBE Interview Protocol was adapted to efficiently collect candid appraisals from 99 students attending a high school in highly monolingual southern Italy. Students welcomed the opportunity to shape their instruction, generating a database of commentaries from which 11 thematic issues emerged: three related to improved language competence, personal growth and general satisfaction, while eight themes called for attention to methods, materials, classroom management and even scheduling. Appraisals are presented, alongside brief discussions regarding implications for teacher-training, task-diversity, task-choice and translanguaging strategies for optimizing the shared L1 in monolingual classrooms. That said, appraisals also unveiled expectations for native-speaking English-fluent Content-experts, which, in contexts such as ours, is not only unrealistic, but depreciates Content-experts who, although may not be fluent in English, know content very well. Appraisals indicate that students appreciate the opportunity for receiving bilingual instruction and are willing to put in extra work to learn 'complex upper secondary content through a foreign language', a challenge they feel could be rendered more manageable via more learner-centred, language-aware and inclusive pedagogies. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The panel depicting The Descent from the Cross, painted in 1620 by the Portuguese artist Pedro Nunes (1586-1637), shows a clear Italian formal influence. The painter's colour palette was identified in another paper. The panel is now investigated from a technical perspective, discussing aspects related to the support, preparatory system, and paint layer build-up. The research is based on the visual inspection of the painting's surface with complementary imaging techniques and on the analysis of the materials from the preparatory layers with microscopic and spectroscopic techniques. The characterisation of the painting technique revealed an ingenious use of colour that is based on the understanding of the optical and handling properties of oil paint. This knowledge is illustrated by the painter's ability to exploit and combine a range of different oil painting techniques, such as glazing, scumbling, wet-in-wet, or wet-in-dry painting; by his formulation of a wide variety of pigment mixtures; and by his use of diverse and often complex layering systems - some quite unconventional for Portuguese painting practice. The material and technical originality of this painting clearly reflects Nunes' international Roman experience and his desire to update the Portuguese mainstream practice of his time. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article shows how, within a caregivers' self-help group in Emilia-Romagna, Italy, the narrative of caring fatigue was mobilised to question and negotiate local normative discourses and social norms on affective states and family care responsibilities. The neoliberal discourse on family caregiving in Italy assumes that it comes from authentic affective states and mutual understanding. By showing how intergenerational obligations and shifting parent-child hierarchies constrained the building up of caregiving relations, the narrative of caring fatigue allowed participants to explain the ambivalence they perceived about their filial responsibilities. Therefore, this narrative legitimised the choice of preserving caregivers' wellbeing and delegating aspects of care. This paper argues that stories of caring fatigue contradict the ideal model of family care that shapes academic and institutional discourses. Nevertheless, they play an important role in sustaining caregiver endurance. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Inspired by Streeck's consolidation state theory, this paper develops a theoretical framework of the restructuring of the state in late-stage financialized capitalism. It observes how in Italy, an emblematic consolidation state, the use of public real estate investment funds supports assetization, that is how state properties are gradually transformed into financial assets via multilevel and multi-sector politics of public assets. As it explores the institutional and material rearrangements underpinning the restructuring of the Italian state, the paper shows how permanent austerity and financialization mutually reinforce each other, with the result that state organizations internalize a financial investor's viewpoint, while statecraft increasingly rely on financial actors, instruments and capital. The conclusion discusses how this theoretical framework can be extended beyond Italy and to other public assets. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Food concerns practices with material and discursive effects on bodies, involving, at the same time, relations of power and care. The international debate has widely analysed food in terms of biopolitical technologies and ethics of care, paying particular attention to school meals. In particular, school canteens constitute physical and relational contested spaces, characterized by different rationalities and perspectives. Drawing from qualitative research carried out in Turin, Italy, this paper unpacks school food discourses and practices by analysing the coexistence and entanglements of biopower and care. Starting from the awareness of the fluidity of these categories, the paper suggests that food at school be neither connected nor reduced to a dichotomous and static view. It proposes a more nuanced understanding of food practices, in which forms of productive biopower and subversive care are deeply intertwined and it discusses how children, staff and parents daily negotiate these entanglements. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Can a writer be considered a visual humorist? If words are the writer's primary material, can they be bent into caricatural or grotesque formations? Through what filters must words be processed or mediated for comic pictures to emerge? This article seeks to answer these questions by focusing on an understudied short story that Mark Twain wrote in Florence, Italy: "Italian Without a Master," published in Harper's Weekly in 1904. The story offers a wild ride through the Italian language from the perspective of an English-speaking narrator who espouses "undictionarial" methods of translating the words he finds in the daily newspaper. To encourage readers to look at words with fresh eyes, Twain supplied, as his illustrations, clippings cut from the Italian papers. With these word-filled illustrations, Twain tests an expanded and experimental visuality, I argue, while also reimagining the terms of visual caricature. The story thus announces the capaciousness and elasticity of the writer's comic vision, demonstrating his mastery over multiple domains. At the same time, however, the story also criticizes the impulse to expand into new territory by subtly gesturing to the geopolitics of imperialist "mastery," which Twain railed against repeatedly at the turn of the century. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper presents the analytical data collected from the analyses of several cauldrons with cross-attachments, perhaps better known under the German name Kreuzattaschenkessel. The analyses seem to confirm the hypothesis that these distinctive artifacts had been produced in two different periods and areas and show different characteristics. The chronology of the vessels is still not defined with certainty, but different shapes, different details, and different compositions seem to suggest that also in the later period there were two or more production sites. The implications of this fact and the related problems are discussed in this paper. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Since 1990, an irregular migration industry has flourished in different cities of Indian Punjab because of the eagerness among young men to emigrate at any cost and increased border controls imposed by the European Union. In Europe, the majority of irregular immigrants from Punjab end up in Spain or Italy due to continuous regularisation programmes, support from social networks and the availability of informal jobs. In this paper, with a thematic analysis of 72 in-depth interviews with irregular immigrants from Punjab in Italy or Spain, their relatives in Punjab and members of the host community, this paper explores the main causes and consequences of Punjabi irregular immigration in Italy and Spain. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this paper, we analyse the sustainability of Italian public finances using a unique database covering the period 1862–2013. This paper focuses on empirical tests for the sustainability and solvency of fiscal policies. A necessary but not sufficient condition implies that the growth rate of public debt should at the limit be smaller than the asymptotic rate of interest. In addition, the debt-to-G.D.P. ratio must eventually stabilise at a steady-state level. The results of unit root and stationarity tests show that the variables are non-stationary at levels, but stationary in first-differences form, or I(1). Some breaks in the series emerge, however, given internal and external crises (wars, oil shocks, regime changes, institutional reforms). Therefore, the empirical analysis is conducted for the entire period, as well as two sub‐periods (1862–1913 and 1947–2013). Moreover, anecdotal evidence and visual inspection of the series confirm our results. Furthermore, we conduct tests on cointegration, which evidence that a long-run relationship between public expenditure and revenues is found only for the first sub-period (1862–1913). In essence, the paper's results reveal that Italy had sustainability problems in the Republican age. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Italy was unified in 1861. As part of the process of nation-building, a mandatory free-of-charge primary school system was established. Whereas the new school system greatly contributed to the modernization of the country, its initial design did not considerably reduce regional disparities in human capital, with Southern regions lagging behind. The paper studies the effects of the heterogeneous territorial diffusion of literacy during the post-unification period (1871–1911) on economic outcomes of Italian provinces 100 years later. We exploit the exogenous variations in the territorial spread in literacy rates arising from the gradual building and expansion of the railway network across provinces. We find evidence that provinces with a higher territorial diffusion of literacy in the post-unification period today have higher income per capita, lower unemployment and greater educational attainment. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Policy ideas are often crafted in international fora, such as international organisations, multilateral institutions, and high-level summits. However, whether and how ideas will eventually inform policymakers at the domestic level remains an understudied subject. This paper contributes to this debate by tracing the domestic consolidation and eventual erosion of ‘Crisis Management’, a policy paradigm that emerged after the end of the Cold War and became dominant among NATO members in the 2010s. We investigate Germany and Italy as two case studies that followed two distinct trajectories. Policy elites suddenly adopted the paradigm in Italy and built a broad consensus on it. In Germany, crisis management has emerged lately and remains contested, as the territorial defense has maintained legitimacy among elites. Understanding the mechanisms underpinning such trajectories is the key to uncovering whether a consensus on a new version of territorial defense as a dominant paradigm will consolidate. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]