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Introduction
Education
November 2000 - February 2004
Publications
Publications (96)
La sensibilità emergente in tema di violenza di genere, come quella che segue l’omicidio di Giulia Cecchettin, viene qui definita “femminismo diffuso”. Questo appare come un ibrido concettuale che emerge dall’incontro tra le elaborazioni prodotte in raffinati circoli di movimento e le loro ricezioni da parte di opinionisti e media maggiori. Gli ope...
L’autoritratto postula platee differenti su cui generare effetti diversi tra loro, volutamente positivi per alcuni e negativi per altri. Inoltre, nel quadro delle possibilità tecnologiche attuali, è proprio questa diversità reattiva che si ricerca attraverso le immagini. Lo scontro prevedibile che deriverà dalle differenti reazioni e il loro farsi...
Un'analisi del rapporto tra scrittura autobiografica e politica
This chapter deals with the pandemic management in Italy. It portrays the entanglement of different administrative levels and unveils both the nature of the complex game between these levels and its resulting blurred configurations. Local set-ups are the outcome of adaptive processes that combine both technical and political aspects. Indeed, for mu...
Il panico morale è un sentimento reattivo che necessita per esistere di: notizie; di strumenti per la messa in circolazione delle notizie; di professionisti della notizia; di un’aspettativa sociale di disgrazia e decadimento, e di una lingua, ovvero uno stile narrativo che sia immediatamente comprensibile. L'intervento esplora dunque tutte queste d...
Circa cinquant’anni orsono il concetto di “panico morale” faceva la sua comparsa nel discorso sociologico e pubblico. Per l’ennesima volta nella storia, a partire dal secondo dopoguerra i soggetti fondamentali della riproduzione sociale – i giovani – davano forma a un dibattito e a una serie di politiche tesi a criminalizzarli, a tutelarli dai loro...
The article provides an analysis of the urban regeneration process in the city of Messina (Sicily). The case at hand is seen in the light of the “language of risk” employed by local powers. The analysis of the discourse shows the disconnection between scientific meanings and public uses of the notion of risk (and other related concepts such as heal...
La «teppificazione» del sociale, senza significative differenze tra le classi e con modalità che includono i ricchissimi, viene qui intesa come una forma di sedazione sia delle inquietudini generate dall’instabilità delle posizioni di privilegio ereditate, sia dalla fissità inaggirabile degli status ascritti che collocano i soggetti “in basso”. Tal...
L’autoetnografia è una scrittura autobiografica, ma è distinguibile da quest’ultima perché non pretende di parlare in primo luogo dell’individuo che si racconta, ma di utilizzare il personale per dire qualcosa del mondo. Ossia delle forze sociali che determinano esperienze intense, dense e di segno per lo più – ma non esclusivamente – negativo. Si...
Quali visioni del mondo sono in gioco quando si parla di populismo? La tesi di questo
volume è che i suoi significati sono solo parzialmente universali e che bisognerebbe
riconoscere una coesistenza di populismi: uno centrale e uno locale, quest’ultimo legato alla storia sociale dei luoghi. A partire dal caso di Messina e del suo sindaco Cateno De...
The present article analyzes the role that shopkeepers play in the life of cities in terms of space production, cultures, and policies on the use of public space. Shopkeepers are seen as the co-promotors of a revanchist culture that affects liberties in contemporary cities. In the light of such premises, the present theoretical study inquires into...
This essay explores the semantics of the term “informal economy” and, in particular, the relation between the two words. It shows how this subject is anything but something with no form and no structure. Moreover, it reflects on the historical relations between this type of economy and the cyclical transfor-mations of capital. Informal economy is s...
Through a reflexive and auto-ethnographic analysis, the present article
discusses meanings and effects of the governance that, in Italy, followed
the 2020 pandemic crisis. The essay shows how, paradoxically, the political
imperative of isolating and distancing has produced the emergence of
collective sentiments that, at least in some cases, have no...
he present essay focuses on the theoretical production that accompanied the appearance of Covid-19 at the beginning of 2020. The study observes the production of articles published on the Italian cultural magazines, and reflects on the dynamics, the interests and the cultural milieu within which ideas are developed, elaborated and, finally, launche...
The present article reflects on the management of the pandemic crisis that hit Italy in the early months of 2020. Different administrative, social and political plans are entangled in the discussion and analyzed in their intertwinement. The main hypothesis discussed in the article is that the local level within which social events take place are no...
Nel paper si suggerisce che il concetto di “sopravvivenza” possa indicare con precisione maggiore rispetto a quello di “resistenza” la natura delle poste, dei contesti e delle pratiche che caratterizzano quei gruppi sociali e quegli ambienti urbani marginalizzati che si ritrovano al centro di molte analisi socio-antropologiche. La nozione di soprav...
The secondary effects of a pandemic: «social distancing» and digital activism
Undesired events take place within social spaces endowed with different resources, political situations and histories. This basic rule is even truer when
an event has a world-wide scale, as in the case of Covid-19. In this framework,
«social distancing» is likely to produ...
Sommario Il presente saggio indaga le manifestazioni locali di quello che viene chiamato populismo urbano. Il caso di Messina e del suo sindaco Cateno De Luca sono al centro di questo studio. Per mezzo dell'analisi del dibattito pubblico sollevato dal politico, la ricostruzione della sua "fenomenologia" e la descrizione delle forme di opposizione d...
The paper reflects on the notion of “margin” as an analytical category. It shows the ambivalence and the derogatory connotations of the word in both the scientific and common uses. Then, it reflects on the semantic inaccuracy of the term, insofar that, within the city, the margin and the center coincide and sustain each other reciprocally. It is th...
This chapter introduces the notion of disaster and provides a selection of key themes derived from the current sociological and anthropological debate on undesired events. Disasters are interpreted as elements that can revitalize old fractures and lines of separation that are at the very basis of the processes of national formation. These crises ge...
The Italian south, the Mezzogiorno, is often described as being impervious to modernization, with an innate attitude of inertia and even illegality. Contrary to similar narrations, the chapter suggests that the south mirrors dynamics and organizational choices that pertain to the Italian State formation process. Since the Unity, the national divisi...
Following the 1908 earthquake, the establishment of new channels for financing reconstruction and the creation of special agencies for the financial management of economic flow casted Messina into the hands of small groups of interest that reconfigured the city both socially and physically. In particular, the considerable extension of the post-disa...
This chapter discusses how subjects belonging to subaltern classes have made use of the gaps left open by local powers, to access forms of fragmented and unstable social mobility. Through biographical analyses, this part of the study provides some reflections on the subaltern condition in the city of Messina and, to some extent, in southern Italy a...
The present chapter summarizes the findings of a monographic study on the long-lasting effects of a disastrous earthquake that hit the city of Messina, Sicily, in 1908. The analysis shows that the political logic, structure, and ties that characterized the city before the crisis survived the earthquake. In spite of this form of continuity, however,...
Starting from an analysis of the public discourse, identitarian representations, and practices, this chapter aims to show that stereotypical and essentialist representations can sometimes be changed, challenged, adapted, and politically activated by the subaltern in order to make specific claims and can also often be reversed. In particular, this c...
This chapter discusses how the construction of urban public and private space in the city of Messina followed lines of intervention that, from post-earthquake reconstruction onwards, relegated marginalized subjects to specific areas of the city, and housed them in specific types of accommodation in order to make the most of ground rent, favor specu...
This is a study on the long-lasting consequences of a disastrous earthquake that hit the city of Messina, Sicily, in 1908. The quake killed about 86,000 people, and destroyed one of the most important portal cities of the Mediterranean. The book investigates both the forces that shaped that event and made it possible – firstly, urban speculation pr...
Cosa accade quando l'antagonismo esce dai centri sociali e incontra la "subalternità", quel vasto sottoproletariato caratterizzato da bassi livelli di istruzione, sospeso tra lavori precari e malpagati, che affolla le città del Sud? Il volume risponde a questo interrogativo proponendo uno studio etnografico sull'incontro tra il movimento politico e...
The study inquiries into the life of a radical formation that works on the right to housing in the city of Messina (Italy, Sicily). Communist militants and families in seek of a house, are here observed over the course of their collective life and interactions in an occupied place. The focus of the study is represented by the unexpected eruption of...
The paper reflects on the uses of the concept of gentrification, and finds it that there is often a misuse of it both in the urban studies and in the common language. First of all, against users’ purposes, the word can easily become part of the identitarian jargon aimed at consolidating boundaries within the city. Secondly, general uses of the word...
Purpose – The purpose of this paper is to explore the links between “informal economies” and the concept of
“resistance.” The author argues that the petty illegalities of the dominated and subaltern classes should be
seen in their connections to the illegalism of the élites and the state. Within this framework, the informal
economy is seen as both...
This study explores the historical development of a deprived class in Messina, a Southern Italian city. By means of 85 in-depth interviews and the analysis of the most important phases of the reconstruction following a disastrous earthquake which took place in 1908, the authors investigate the forces that, over the course of a century, shaped the f...
The present essay focuses on the environmental crisis of Italy. For decades Italy has witnessed a systematic erosion of its territory and a pollution process stemming by a substantially unregulated industrial presence, and housing-related speculative processes. The chapter addresses three issues: epidemiological rates, social effects of the environ...
Italian Abstract: Questa relazione va intesa come un tentativo di ricostruzione di una rete sparsa e per lo piu disorganizzata di persone che cerca di praticare forme di resistenza dentro l’Universita e la societa, in una cornice che non solo e sempre piu autoritaria e anti-intellettuale, ma che inizia anche a criminalizzare i settori non-conformi...
Through the historical reconstruction of the events following the big 1908 earthquake, the article observes the process of formation of a subaltern class in the city of Messina, the phenomena of space appropriation by
the same class and some elementary forms of resistance shown by individuals and groups. The thesis maintained is that subaltern spac...
Quali sono oggi le forme individuali e collettive con le quali si esprimono le resistenze, passive o attive, nelle relazioni di potere che attraversano lo spazio pubblico e privato delle nostre esistenze quotidiane? Utilizzando un vasto panorama di dati e studi etnografici, urbanistici e sociologici, in questo suo lavoro Saitta introduce il lettore...
Cos’è il disastro e cosa significa tornare alla normalità? Lo Stato è un alleato dei cittadini quando si tratta di ricostruire, oppure si aggiunge alla tragedia, rallentando la ricostruzione o rendendola terra di conquista per speculatori? È possibile un’autoorganizzazione che si contrapponga agli interessi esterni generati dalla ricostruzione? Que...
The essay explores the links between «informal economies» and the concept of «resistance». The author argues that the illegalities of the subaltern classes should be seen in their connections to the illegalism of the élites and the State. Within this framework, the informal economy is both the outcome of a set of material conditions aiming at the s...
Riassunto: Il saggio indaga gli intrecci tra la nozione di spazio pubblico e quella di resistenza, basan-dosi su dati secondari di matrice etnografica. L'idea al centro del lavoro è che lo spazio pubblico nella metropoli contemporanea sia sottoposto a una sostanziale negazione a opera del raccordo tra Stato e impresa privata; qualcosa che conferisc...
Environmental issues are at the center of struggles ongoing in a number of different countries and for different reasons. Many of those struggles, however, are connected with the effects of industrialization on public health and/or the land. Instead, such events can also comprise occasions of resistance and moments during which to experiment with n...
By delving into the recent history of sex work in Italy, and the related practices, discourses and policies implemented in the past sixty or so years in the Bel Paese, this essay suggests that commercial sex is at the center of a plurality of forces and phenomena, which are apparently very distant from it, but converge on this «hub» and, while tran...
Fascism, then, is an ideology, a world view, and a set of practices and attitudes that are part of Italian political and civil culture. It lives and changes as it is reproduced within democracy. The training process and the formation of specifically fascist personalities that takes place in an elite unit within the Italian armed forces- A paratroop...
Il presente saggio ha come obiettivo l’esplorazione della relazione tra detenzione e suicidio nell'Italia della crisi. Sulla base di dati etnografici secondari, viene osservato il dispositivo carcerario e sociale che induce gli individui detenuti al suicidio tra venti e cinquanta volte più che quelli in condizioni di libertà. La tesi proposta è che...
Il saggio estende l'analisi dei dati discussi in un precedente contributo. A partire dall'esperienza diretta di uno dei ricercatori, e attraverso una metodologia autoetnografica, lo studio si incentra sui processi di addestramento propri di un corpo d'èlite dell'esercito italiano. Si analizzano gli effetti di tale addestramento sulla psicologia col...
The present essay – an introduction to the special issue of ERQ on "Informal economies: oppressions, negotiations, resistances" – explores nature and meanings of "informal economy" in the societal organization. In particular, it provides a critical perspective aimed at rejecting merely institutional and legalistic definitions of this phenomenon. Th...
La riproduzione di uno spazio subalterno Abitazione, classi marginali e resistenza in una città del Sud di DOMENICA FARINELLA E PIETRO SAITTA This study explores the historical development of urban stratification in an Italian Southern city, Messina. By means of 85 in-depth interviews and the analysis of the most important phases of the reconstruct...
The informal economy includes all those forms of economic and social relationships which escape state regulation. The book explores how people make choices and practice informality according to the available opportunities. Using empirical work, authors from across Europe look at different illegal or informal activities. They include legal and illeg...
Il presente articolo indaga le modalità di apprendimento della violenza all’interno di una “istituzione totale” e di un corpo d’elite dell’esercito italiano: la Folgore. L’addestramento e i riti estremamente violenti di questo gruppo possono essere considerati simbolici, oltre che particolarmente rappresentativi, di un modello ideale perseguito dal...
The present auto-ethnography discusses the arrest of a researcher engaged in the study of female street prostitution. The event becomes a way to reflect on the nature of the recently implemented tackling measures of commercial sex in Italy, and the consolidation process of a new penal ethic based on prevention and new powers for the police forces....
This article discusses immigration flows to Italy in the framework of the neoliberal restructuring process of welfare state and the security policies. The author argues that Italy is witnessing the crisis of “zero tolerance” as a means of managing social problems, and proposes the subversion of the common perspectives. On the bases of the outcomes...
The present article discusses the history of a Roma community settled in Mazara del Vallo (Sicily). The experience of such community becomes a way to reflect on the role of informal practices in determining positive, albeit paradoxical, changes concerning people at the margins. The paper is intended to destructurate a significant part of the securi...
The present article discusses examples and problems stemming from research programs conducted in Sicily (especially, in Gela). The author maintains that much of the current research on areas at risk focuses on the “elites” (green movements, civic boards, etc.) rather than on the populations at large, and does not adequately reflect on the ambivalen...
This article summarizes the major outcomes of the studies presented in two special issues of JMIS on children of immigrants in Italy. The authors suggest that Italy is a monochrome society – a society that truly cannot imagine itself as multicultural. The master narrative emerging from opinion polls, political rhetoric and government policy and pra...
The author argues that in Italy immigration has become for both left and right-wing moral entrepreneurs a symbolic resource to be employed in the creation and recreation of territorial identities. The permanent endeavor of the Italian elites is the one of re-proposing the moment of foundation of a ‘community’. What makes Italy complex and fascinati...
This article describes the outcomes of a 2009 study into the reasons for the regional differences in implementation of “stroke networks” in Italy. Evidence shows that early diagnosis and delivery of treatment in specialized stroke units, including rehabilitation therapy, can reduce the risks of death and disability. Nevertheless, there are signific...
areas at industrial risk, using examples and problems deriving from studies conducted in Sicily, as well as the review of a number of contemporary studies.
The author argues that much of the contemporary research on areas at risk focuses
on the ‘elites’ (environmental movements, boards of citizens, and the like) rather
than on populations, and does...
The article focuses on Mazara del Vallo, Sicily. It aims to show how a group of Roma from Kosovo, living in the area since the 1970s, has gained a livelihood through such enterprizing methods as music, improvized handicrafts and small-scale drug dealing. Their precarious situation is conditioned in large measure by the complex interplay of state re...
Anni Cinquanta: il petrolio affiora in Sicilia e le popolazioni accolgono tripudianti l'arrivo degli stabilimenti petrolchimici. "La Sicilia come il Texas", č quello che molti pensano. Mezzo secolo dopo il conto del sogno č servito: malformazioni, malattie da industrializzazione, risorse idriche devastate e sottratte ai territori, criminalitŕ organ...
This auto-ethnography discusses the arrest of a researcher engaged in the study of female street prostitution. The event becomes a way to reflect on the nature of the recently implemented measures for dealing with commercial sex in Italy, and the consolidation process of a new penal ethic based on prevention and new powers for the police forces. Wi...
The article discusses the outcomes of the first phase of a study conducted in 2009. The research aims to investigate the reasons of the regional differences in the implementation process of the «stroke networks» in Italy. By employing 50 in-depth interviews addressing key-actors operating in the health systems of six Italian Regions, the following...
The present article focuses on the evolution of “critical” approaches to society and deviance in the Italian sociology and criminology. Ethics and purposes of social research are discussed, in the light of the existing relationships between scholars and external forces structuring the field of social investigation (public and private granting organ...
1950s: Oil appears in Sicily, and the population welcomes the petrochemical plants. Sicily as Texas', is what common people think. Fifty years later, the cost of the dream is apparent: malformations, industrial diseases, devastation of water sources, organized crime. Gela is one of the Italian capitals of the petrochemical industry: the resistance...
This article presents the results of an ethnographic research on the Romanian heterosexual prostitution carried out in the city of Messina. By employing a number of different sources, the author relates the local and national levels, and claims that current policies implemented by the Italian authorities do not aim to contrast prostitution. Rather,...
Sicily hosts three areas (Gela, Priolo-Augusta and Milazzo) that have been declared, by means of current legislation, highly exposed to environmental crisis. These areas are characterized by profound alterations of the ecological balance in water bodies, atmosphere and soil, in such a manner to represent a risk for the health of the residing popula...
This paper discusses the findings of an ethnographic study on the relationships between Italian and immigrants in their work environments and outside. The study was carried out in Sicily and Le Marche in the period 2002-2004. In particular, the cases of Mazara del Vallo and Urbino are analysed. The observation shows that for the Italians it is not...
Sicily hosts three areas (Gela, Priolo-Augusta and Milazzo) that have been declared, by means of current legislation, «highly exposed to environmental crisis». These areas are characterized by profound alterations of the ecological balance in water bodies, atmosphere and soil, in such a manner to represent a risk for the health of the residing popu...
This paper discusses the results of a qualitative analysis aimed at collecting new and useful elements for a questionnaire prepared to be submitted to a representative sample of the population residing in the industrial areas of Sicily. The study employed four focus groups and addressed adults selected among the population living in the area called...
Decisioni globali e problemi locali. Uso del territorio "non voluto" e movimenti di protesta. La guerra in Sudan, gli sbarchi a Lampedusa. La deriva securitaria ed il MUOS di Niscemi. Le minacce al calciatore Beckham e lo spettro del fondamentalismo islamico. Le scelte razionali delle migranti che esercitano la prostituzione. Bush e Obama. La Sicil...
Since the emanation of the Treaty of Maastricht in 1992, EU aims to standardize Member States' legislations and internal organizations by means of its Directives or the promotion of intergovernmental and European Agreements. The purpose of this process is the creation of a common framework of procedures, rules, and socioeconomic organization. Altho...
The article discusses the evolution of an occupational cohort study carried out in a polluted site. The authors highlight the need to define goals for the epidemiological characterization of polluted sites: a) retrospective health impact assessment, b) contribution to the definition of priorities for remediation activities, c) definition of epidemi...
This paper discusses the results of a qualitative analysis that deployed focus groups, involving individuals selected among the population of the "Valle del Mela" (that is, the area of Milazzo, in Sicily) in order to investigate customs, images, and perception of risks related to the living condition in a complex industrial area. This survey is par...
The paper discusses the functionalist and structuralist approaches for the study of immigration, which are two of the most popular categories available to the scholars. Specifically, the author criticizes both the rationalist paradigm that drives these two approaches and the ambition of their followers to build Grand Theories. The author claims tha...
The paper discusses the functionalist and structuralist approaches for the study of immigration, which are two of the most popular categories available to the scholars. Specifically, the author criticizes the rationalist paradigms that drive these two approaches and the ambition of their followers to build Grand Theories. The author claims that set...
The article focuses on the popularization of the term ‘bullying’. The author claims that the phenomenon is not new, and that the alarms generated in the past few years by a number of scholars, associations, and the media are exaggerated. Moreover the author argues that it is not possible to explain the growth in the number of social programs addres...
This paper examines how legal science can provide new perspectives and instruments of analysis for understanding how action is produced by legal rules in a given system. By treating legal rules as a factor of explanation in perceiving political action, the authors aim to use them as a means that reflects whether there is a normative determination t...
The article presents the early results of research conducted in Spring 2002 at Mazara del Vallo, Sicily, in one of the most widespread communities of North Africans in Italy. The investigator employs an ethnographic, constructivist approach using participant observation techniques besides interviews with informants and expatriates residing in the t...
The article starts from the debate about the change in citizenship that has been affecting the sociological and politological panorama in recent years and then moves on to ponder legal change and how slowly it takes place, compared to the rapid flow of migration, in a perspective that combines elements of legal formalism and sociological realism, i...
One of the subjects that sociological theory must address is the variabili-ty of institutions between nation-states. 1 Unfortunately, however, the fac-tors responsible for this variability are difficult to investigate. The difficul-ty exists for two reasons. First, nation-states are not numerous and therefore constitute a relatively small universe...
Il presente studio è stato utilizzato quale background paper per l'indagine realizzata dal CeSPI sulle modalità di gestione del risparmio e di trasferimento delle rimesse da parte dei lavoratori tunisini in Sicilia. Il lavoro si inserisce nella linea di ricerca sulla Finanza per lo sviluppo e si collega all'iniziativa di ricerca interdisciplinare M...
