Francesca Fois

• Lecturer at University of Salford

Globalization has deeply changed the rural socio-economic form and spatial pattern, and caused a comprehensive and profound transformation of rural industries. By establishing a theoretical analysis framework for industrial transformation, this paper firstly reveals the internal mechanism of industrial transformation to promote the diversified deve...

With the increase in climate change and increasing social concerns about environmental deterioration, sustainability has become a hot topic in both natural and social research. Nowadays, sustainable cities are one of the focal points, while rural areas have been disregarded. In fact, rural areas have been suffering from environmental degradation fo...

This paper explores a historic rural craft tradition as the focus of economic development through the valorisation of the local cultural heritage, or culture economy. The case study traces the revival of bamboo birdcage making in Da'ou village in Shandong Province, where the craft knowledge of making birdcages once prized by the Chinese imperial co...

This paper analyses the experimental nature of alternative spaces and the affective, emotional and embodied experience their enactment generates. In so doing, it grounds the analysis on the intentional community of Damanhur (Italy), as an example of experimental spaces. Scholarship concerning intentional communities draws on utopian studies that co...

Drawing upon critiques that claim a lack of interest in spirituality in development studies, this paper aims to show how alternative ethical forms of development can be enacted when adopting shamanic spiritual worldviews. The paper draws upon ethnographic research conducted in Terra Mirim, an intentional shamanic community, located in the Itamboatá...

Recently scholars have emphasised the importance of looking at the researcher's experience and how positionality, emotions and embodiment shape the ethnographic fieldwork process. Specifically, feminist contributions have shown how the professional and the personal can be interlinked when conducting ethnographic research and have reconsidered the r...

The paper applies the community resilience approach to the post-disaster case of Pescomaggiore, an Italian village affected by the L'Aquila earthquake in 2009. A group of residents refused to accept the housing recovery solutions proposed by the government, opting for autonomous recovery. They developed a housing project in the form of a self-built...

During the last twenty years the Buddhism of Nichiren Daishonin, coming from Japan, has spread all around Europe, and in particularly in Italy, which has the largest number of members in the continent. The base approach of this eastern philosophy/religion puts the individual and his/her attitude at the heart of environmental dynamics. The individua...

Localization of military bases and opposition movements: the case of Vicenza. What happens if local people oppose an apparently unquestionable military decision? This paper examines the structure and the spatiality of social movements in opposition to "sovereign" decisions related to the installation of U.S. military bases abroad. Therefore, it ana...

The construction of a military base in a foreign country paints a portrait of international relationships based on a top-down decision-making process. Despite the huge academic and political debate about the importance of a participative approach to public space management and the "right to spaces," the construction of a military base location inst...