Academic literature on the topic 'Italy, Southern – Social life and customs'

PurposeThe retail sector is not largely studied in Italy. The study offers a comparison between youth retail shift work in Milan and London. The aim of this paper is to contribute to the debate on the one hand on youth work and on the other hand to the debate on agency and structural factors in life planning, representation of the future and the transition to adulthood, observed in the United Kingdom's and Italian labour market. Even if the second one is a Southern European Country, these contexts are both characterised by a service-oriented economy and the widespread of precarious and flexible jobs.Design/methodology/approachQualitative methods were used: one year of ethnographic observation, 50 interviews and two focus groups were carried out between 2015 and 2018 with retail workers and trade unionists. The contexts are Corso Buenos Aires in Milan, Italy, and Oxford Street in London, United Kingdom. Analysing young workers' discourses, the author identifies narratives that allow to grasp their present agency and imagined future.FindingsObserving the crisis of the narrative (Sennett, 2020) allows to highlight the social consequences of working times on young workers' everyday life and future. The author argues that young workers struggle with the narrative of their present everyday life and the representation of the future. This relates to the condition of time alienation due to the flexible schedules and the fast pace of work in retail, both affecting the work-life balance.Originality/valueThe social consequences of flexible schedules in retail and fast fashion sector, which are new issues not yet sufficiently explored, are here investigated from the perspective of young workers. The study is focussed on the representations of young people working with customers in social and economic contexts characterised by flexible schedules and the deregulation of shop openings, the so-called 24/7 service society, not largely investigated in the sociological scientific literature, above all in the Italian context.

This paper seeks to discuss and identify indications for mobile pastoralism in Archaic southern Italy. Because of the perishable and seasonal nature of the material remains and therefore the difficulty of finding direct archaeological evidence for this kind of economy, indirect factors like social organization and social structure derived from cross-cultural ethnological comparisons are taken into account. Instead of solely focusing on the detection of material traces in the shape of objects, the paper tries to identify broadly shared social patterns typical for mobile pastoralism that is not only a special economy but also a way of life, demanding certain structures up into the most basic levels of societal organization. Based on a consideration of different historical and ethnologically observed pastoralist communities, it aims to identify a set of typical features shared by different kinds of mobile pastoralism. These observations will then be compared to the findings of a regional case study from Archaic southern Italy, looking for their possible traces in the archaeological record. Finally, further research prospects are discussed and possibilities for future investigations are highlighted, calling for an augmented attention to the topic in local projects as well as interdisciplinary research.

Agriculture, and the related food systems, represents one of the sectors that use most of the available water resources and is responsible for a large part of the greenhouse gases increase in Earth’s atmosphere. The aim of the present research was to estimate the three dimensions of sustainability—identified by the 2030 Agenda—of the olive oil supply chain in a typical production area within Campania Region (South Italy), through the analysis of seven different olive oil systems: four certified as organic, two of which irrigated (BIO1, BIO2, BIO-IRR1, BIO-IRR2); two integrated (INT1, INT2); and one hobbyist (HOBB). The novelty of the research was the broad-spectrum sustainability evaluation of these systems, through the estimation of their water and carbon footprints, and some economic and social aspects, to classify them in sustainability classes. So, the Life Cycle Thinking approach was used to quantify the environmental impacts and the social issues, as well as the costs of production of 1 litre of packed oil produced. Environmental impacts were assessed thought the life cycle assessment methodology, with a focus on the global warming and the water footprint, using the SimaPro 9.0 software and Hoekstra methodology, respectively. The cost production evaluation was performed by the life cycle costing methodology, while a primordial approach of social sustainability estimation was built identifying the stakeholders involved and suitable impact categories. Results showed that, per litre of oil, HOBB and BIO2 were the systems that emitted less CO2 eq (0.73 and 1.50 kg, respectively); BIO-IRR1 and BIO1 were the systems with the smallest water footprint (2.97 and 3.65 m3, respectively); HOBB and BIO1 were the systems with the lowest production costs (3.11 and 3.87 €, respectively). From a social point of view, INT1 and INT2 were the most pro-social systems. Overall, BIO1 was in absolute the most sustainable system under the various aspects considered. Hence the need to spread more and more (a) organic production methods, characterized by the use of self-produced fertilizers (on-farm compost); (b) more efficient machines use, for saving fuel; (c) balanced nitrogen fertilization to lower the water footprint.

The virus of violent, personal vendetta had poisoned the blood of elite society in Piedmont by the time the country was formally annexed to France in April 1802. The turbulent events of the period 1794–1801 had inflamed and then politicized a society ‘whose customs steadfastly retained something of the unruly and fiercesome’, as Sauli d'Igliano, the son of a petty count from Ceva, chose to describe it when writing of his childhood in the mid-1790s. The revolutionary process unleashed and, finally, entrenched that penchant for violence among ‘men of the second order’ that Giuseppe Baretti had informed the whole of Europe of a generation earlier in his widely read An account of the manners and customs of Italy: ‘they are withal so punctilious and so ready to draw the sword, that more duels are fought in Piedmont than in the rest of Italy taken together’. The venom of revolution mingled with the poison of personal vendettas and brought their ferocity to the centre of political life. It was a virus the French would strive to stamp out, but one that would malinger in the subalpine body politic throughout their own rule and long after they had gone. As late as 1813, a substantial landowner of Bene, in southern Piedmont complained of his patriot maire's ‘despotisme et ses actes arbitraires…sans nombre’.

Italian-American funeral practices have received little attention in the literature. This study deals with this gap by tracing the evolution of funeral practices from the Old World, preimmigrant culture of the southern Italian to the contemporary New World funeral practices of Italian-Americans reflective of the so-called American way of death. The article is structured around the thesis that the author's own family experience of the ritualistic observance of death had its roots in Old World customs and traditions, was subsequently modified by American social patterns, secularism, industrialization, and funeral customs, and was further shaped by particular psychosocial family dynamics. The concluding section compares the author's personal experience of Roman Catholic home funerals with the larger societal practices described.

The education system also aims to awaken a person in various areas of life as well as intellectual, psychological, and social thinking, values, ​​and behavior that focuses on the learning process through the good and perfect. This study aims to determine the culture of the Malay people of Pattani and the relationship with Education in southern Thailand. The research method used in this research is library research. The focal point of his research is to discover the various hypotheses, laws, recommendations, standards, or thoughts used to dissect and answer the described exam questions. The results of this study are the southern regions (provinces) of Thailand, including Yala, Pattani, and Narathiwat, where most of the population is displaced from Muslims. Muslims in this region prefer to send their children to study in religious schools. People’s religious schools are institutions that serve the needs of the community in this region in maintaining local culture and customs as well as Islamic cultural customs.

Abstract The growing interest in spirituality has enabled numerous avenues of pastoral counselling support, which can be a useful resource for improving quality of life in the context of significant social deprivation. The aim of this research was to investigate the role of the spiritual dimension of pastoral support interventions created to help the inhabitants of a strongly deprived territory in Southern Italy during the COVID-19 pandemic. Eight people between the ages of 28 and 67 took part in the study. A qualitative research design was applied via online interviews with the participants, who were operators of a pastoral counselling service located on the outskirts of a suburban town. The main emergent themes were the importance of religiosity and spirituality in the lives of the participants, the role that these two aspects play in the lives of those who carry out activities devoted to helping others, and the ways in which these dimensions are used within support programmes responding to the needs of an area characterized by socioeconomic and psychosocial problems. The interviews revealed how pastoral counselling can be useful in situations of stress in highly deprived areas.

Here we present the translation of two of the letters that Filippo Sassetti, the Florentine merchant and humanist of the 16th-century, sent from India to Italy with abundant and insightful observations about the religious beliefs, customs, languages, nature and social life of the subcontinent. This document ―little known and so far unpublished in Spanish (and apparently in other languages too)― is a valuable testimony of the complex process of Europe’s reception and interpretative representation of the ancient Indian culture. In this respect, Sassetti’s hermeneutic endeavours, to a large extent dependent on Florentine Renaissance humanism’s ideals, stand out. They help us understand the Indian Other beyond the stereotypes in vogue then (and now), as well as the difficulties to achieve that.

Social media has been a part of election campaigns for more than a decade. In this special issue, we combine longitudinal and cross-national studies of social media in election campaigns, expanding the time span as well as number of countries compared to former comparative studies. The four papers present examples of longitudinal studies, covering multiple election cycles from four different countries: Australia, the United States of America, Denmark, and Italy. By including the countries mentioned, we focus on countries considered to be “first movers” when it comes to the digitization and internetization of the political life. As such, they are “most similar cases.” However, they also have different political systems: the United States and Australia are characterized by a Westminster system dominated by a few large parties and a tradition of strong confrontation between government and opposition, whereas Denmark and Italy are multi-party systems with a tradition of collaboration and coalition governments. Technologically, the four countries might be similar, but politically and in terms of media systems, they differ; the United States is characterized by a commercialized American media system with little role for public service broadcasters, Denmark has very strong public service media, and Australia has elements of both these systems. Finally, Italy represents a Southern European media system with traces of clientelism as well as public service media. Thus, studies of the four countries form a diverse yet solid set of cases for exploring the growing (and changing) role of social media in national elections.

The first two chapters focus on the claims quarry workers make about the independence and unique status o f their work. The first chapter historically contextualizes and describes the organization of the production o f marble in Carrara. One of my main aims here is to illuminate the idiosyncratic features o f marble quarrying within a cross cultural perspective. The first half concentrates on the quarries, the history of the technology of marble production and the contemporary work process. In the second section I look more closely at the organization o f the marble industry and patterns o f ownership. The second chapter turns to a closer examination o f the labour force where I look at the processes o f recruitment, the division o f labour and work conditions. I conclude this chapter with a discussion o f the hierarchy o f skill and the continuing importance of notions of craft and skill to work identities, despite recent transformations in the work process. The third chapter deepens this discussion by further analysing workers’ perceptions o f their work and their cultural constructions o f work identity. In particular, I explore the ways in which quarry workers contrast practical knowledge and skills embodied through the work experience with the more technical and scientific knowledge o f outside experts. This leads to an examination o f quarry language as an expression o f work and gender identity, and an argument that the experience o f work itself is an important and often neglected arena o f social analysis in contemporary debates about work. The history o f occupational injury in the quarries is the focus o f chapter four. In detailing the risks of work and the high rate o f injury, I suggest that injury is a normal consequence o f the work process in an inherently dangerous work environment, but through an analysis o f labour rhetoric and the close examination o f an event known as the “ Bettogli Disaster” , I argue that the conditions o f risk are as much socially and culturally constructed ideas as material realities. In opposition to current sociological and psychological models o f occupational health and safety, I argue that the risks o f injury and body mutilation constitute an important arena for the construction o f work identities which in turn, contribute to apparently contradictory responses to questions of safety in the quarries. The chapter concludes with a discussion o f the experience o f death as an expression o f class and gender identity. This last theme is further explored in chapter five, which is broadly concerned with the relationship between home and work. Here I coin the term “ the economy of fear” to describe to the ways in which women emotionally manage fear, in a community where death and body mutilation is a frequent and catastrophic event. This chapter also analyses the roles of women within the household and the political culture of the village and examines the processes of female exclusion and domestic containment through constructions of femininity in a gendered work culture. The concluding chapter uses historical and literary texts to discuss the association of Carrara in the national imagination of Italy with a long tradition of anarchism. In these texts a causal relationship is often drawn between work in the marble quarries and the survival of anarchism as a political tradition. While not wanting to negate the empirical and historical reality of anarchism in Carrara, I conclude that some writers, Italian labour historians in particular, have misinterpreted the connections between the organization of marble production and anarchism.

For over forty years, at the turn of this century, the white settlers of Southern Rhodesia devoted considerable energy to the discussion and the regulation of inter-racial sexual relations. The settlers' worries about maintaining their position in power were expressed, in part, in the periodic outbreaks of 'black peril' hysteria, a term which well-captures white fears about the threat that African men were thought to represent to white women. Although voluntary sexual encounters between white women and black men were prohibited from 1903 onwards, no such prohibition existed for white men in their relations with black women. The white women made several attempts to have legislation passed prohibiting such liasons, and failed largely because in doing so they were perceived to be challenging the authority of the white men. The regulation of interracial sexual intercourse thus served to reinforce the white male domination of Rhodesian society.

Bibliography: pages 180-207.
Gender studies in various disciplines, particularly anthropology, have shown that the opposition of masculine : feminine is commonly used to structure other cultural contrasts, and that the representation of this opposition in cultural products is in turn implicated in the cultural construction of gender content. This bidirectional problematic, supplementing the more limited critique of gender 'bias' and masculinist models, is the focus of this research into archaeological materials. Rock art is the principal archaeological 'trace' analysed. Because the impetus to gender studies comes principally from the critical standpoint of feminism, analyses of gender and gendering in archaeological materials are evaluated in the context of gender issues in the present day, in terms of archaeological 'reconstructions' as legitimising the existing gender order. Theoretical influences include feminism, hermeneutics, marxism, (post)- structuralism, semiotics, and discourse theory. Aspects of language, and, particularly, the oral narratives of various San groups - the /Xam, G /wi, !Kung, Nharo, and others - are examined in order to establish the way in which masculinity and femininity are/have been conceptualised and differentiated by San peoples. This is followed by an assessment of the manner of and extent to which the masculine: feminine opposition informs narrative content and structure. The analysis of language texts permits an approach to the representation of this opposition in non-language cultural texts (such as visual art, space). Particular constructions of masculinity and femininity, and a number of gendered contrasts (pertaining to form, orientation, time, number, quality) are identified. Gender symbolism is linked to the themes of rain and fertility/ continuity, and analysed in political terms, according to the feminist materialist contention that, in non-class societies, gender opposition is potentially the impetus to social change. Gender(ing) is more fundamental to San cultural texts than has been, recognised, being present in a range of beliefs which are linked by their gender symbolism. I utilise a 'fertility hypothesis', derived from a reading of the ethnographies, in order to explain various elements of Southern African rock art, Well-preserved (thus relatively recent) paintings, principally from sites in the Drakensberg and south-western Cape, were selected. Features interpreted via this hypothesis include: images of humans, the motif of the thin red line fringed with white dots, 'elephants in boxes', therianthropic figures, and 'androgynous' figures, including the eland. The spatial organisation of the art, the significance of non-realistic perspectives, and the problem of the numerical male dominance of the art are also interpreted from this standpoint. The analysis permits critique, of the theorisation of gender and ideology in rock art studies, and of the biophysical determinism implicit in current rock art studies, in which attempts are made to explain many features of the art by reference to trance states, altered consciousness and neurophysiological constitution. Rain, rather than trance, is proposed as the central element of San ritual/religious practices. Finally, the treatment of (or failure to consider) gender(ing) in the archaeological record is situated in relatio.n to contemporary gender ideologies, in the contexts of archaeological theory and practice.

This thesis is based upon fieldwork carried out in the island of Apiao, in the archipelago of Chiloé, southern Chile. It is an ethnographic exploration of the way the small community of Apiao conceive of communication and interaction with both fellow human beings and supernatural creatures. The thesis describes details of every day life, with an emphasis on visiting as the main mode of social interaction. Through reciprocal hospitality the islanders enact balanced reciprocal exchange. Food and drink is offered and received; this is always returned in equal measure with a return visit. Visits between friends or neighbours are articulated according to a formal ritualistic etiquette based on asking. Balance is temporarily interrupted and small debts incurred when favors are asked. These must be reciprocated promptly. Momentary interruption of equilibrium perpetuates relations among people who describe themselves as being 'all the same'. Marriage equates to forming an independent, productive unit with a focus on inhabitants of households rather than on family in terms of decent or blood ties. Kinship terms are limited to the word mama and this refers to the grandmother, the focal role in raising children. Active memory as expression of love and care is what makes people related to each other. Kin ties must be kept active by constant love and care. Forgetful kin are in turn forgotten and slowly erased from memory. The thesis shows that religious beliefs are centered on exchange relationships with powerful entities that belong to the supernatural world. The dead and the miraculous San Antonio are powerful and ambivalent: they protect and help the living but can be revengeful and harmful if neglected by the living. Novenas are offered to the dead and the San Antonio in exchange for protection and miracles. Novenas represent a public and powerful ritual display of hospitality, enacting values of memory, solidarity and exchange.

Funded by Nellis Air Force Base (NAFB), my thesis research and analysis examined Native American knowledge of heritage foods and how diminished access to food resources has affected Native American identity and health. NAFB manages the Nevada Test and Training Range (NTTR), land and air space in southern Nevada, which includes Native American ancestral lands. During a research period of 3 months in the spring/summer of 2012, I interviewed members of Native American nations culturally affiliated with ancestral lands on the NTTR, the Paiute Indian Tribe of Utah (PITU) and the Bishop Paiute Tribe. My research included participant observation and 31 interviews with tribal members considered knowledge holders by tribal leaders. In dialogue with the literature of the anthropology of food, political economy, and Critical Medical Anthropology, my analysis focused on the role of heritage foods in everyday consumption, taking into account the economic, social, environmental, and political factors influencing heritage foods access and diet. My work explored the effects of structural forces and rapid changes in diet and social conditions on Native American health. I found shifts in concepts of food-related identity across ethnic groups, tribes, ages, and genders. I also found evidence of collective efforts to improve diet-related health at tribal and community levels. Through the applied aspects of my research, participants and their families had the opportunity to share recipes and food dishes containing heritage foods as a way to promote human health and knowledge transmission.

Thesis (MA (Afrikaans Cultural History))--University of Stellenbosch, 2001.
Elim, a mission station of the Moravian Church, was established in 1824. The settlement is situated 48 kilometres from the southern extreme of the African continent. Vogelstruiskraal farm, is a sparsely populated area, a unique community has developed where the congregation is the community and the community is the congregation. ...

Thesis (PhD (Public Management and Planning))--University of Stellenbosch, 2010.
ENGLISH ABSTRACT: Unless Africans and their leaders make a concerted effort to rid themselves of the harmful legacy of colonial spirituality by adopting new motives for living, entering into new relationships with themselves on the plane of beneficial values, Africa will not be able to escape the social, environmental, political and economic afflictions that currently beset her. The colonial forces that burst into Africa with violence from minds bent on foreign conquest were primarily driven by an ethos of covetousness that has come to characterize the existing international order. Stealing, not only of natural resources has continued side by side with the denuding of the very souls of people – as has happened so successfully in Africa – of their humanity. There is evidence that human existence has been beleaguered and governed by an unviable microphysical framework (mindset and spirituality). In the midst of what appears to be a bewilderingly dynamic, turbulent and complex world, this spirituality looms large, gaining a stronghold resulting in disconnectedness among self-worshipping humans and their environment. We now live in a world governed by a distructive innate iniquity that produces overwhelming inequity among humans and unprecedented damage in the natural environment that sustains us. This study draws from and connects the evidence provided by ancient history with current macro-physical endeavours to demonstrate that this micro-physicality still holds sway, albeit under various manifestations. Having been in a state of war with itself and its living environment, humanity has reached what observers have acknowledged as a crossroads. In the violence that has engulfed all humans since time immemorial, as evidenced in the co-existence of poverty and affluence, pandemics driven by a wide variety of illnesses, huge disparities in wealth within and between national economies, energy and environmental depletion and degradation that have earned us the unprecedented crisis of global warming, this crossroads has made itself very present. A particular kind of mentality and spirituality has taken us to this point. It is a spirituality that is obviously devoid and incapable of producing beauty of harmony and communion among us irrespective of our diversity, whether in race, culture, knowledge discipline or geographic space. The macro-physical condition we are experiencing cannot be viewed in isolation from the spirituality that produced it. We are now in an unsustainable world that must have been the fruit of an unsustainable spirituality. The answers to our global dilemma must fundamentally be sought not in any new technologies that emanate from the same mindset, but in a renewed mind and in a different pattern of spirituality. This study probes the dominant world mindest that directed the globally pervasive Western civilization and reviews some major historical and cultural trends that, it argues, have brought humanity to the zenith of its “world-hunt”-culture. This is a “world- hunt” of self-mutilation that manifested itself in Europe, the near-east, Asia and Africa over more than four millennia ago. The deforestation, land degradation, oppression of the poor, hunger, hatred that drives terrorist attacks, climate changes that drive natural disasters and the loss of species, are all the unmistakable bitter fruit of such a culture. It is a culture characterized and propelled by the absence of what this study coins as “aesthetic relational values”. This dominant mindset has strewn all over our globe various rule-based governance institutions characterized by an ethos of central control, manipulating people’s lives for self-centred gain. Though many of these institutions come in various garbs of apparent benevolence, faith-based, trade-based, knowledge/science-based and political governance bodies, all are adherents of the same worldview that is firmly grounded in a merciless and destructive pantheistic, and nature-worship belief system traceable to ancient Egypt. Many of these institutions, today, publicly claim to be proponents of sustainable development, the eradication of poverty and peace among the nations of the world, yet they are still clinging, esoterically, to a cosmological perspective of nature-worship that glorifies self-worship and disregards the well-being of others. The study contrasts this dominant spirituality with the Afrocentric one based on a knowledge system that propounds a belief in a compassionate and merciful Creator-God who is the source of all nature, including the human family, as illustrated in the daily lives of amaMbo peoples whose geographic origins are traced to ancient Ethiopia. As the former continues to make a nonentity of the Creator-God, Africans, realizing the spiritual bankruptcy of a self-glorification ethic that has polarised the people and ravaged their continent through rule-based institutions, are returning, in large numbers, to this knowledge system of their ancient fathers on which their social institutions of shared and consensus-based decision-making and governance, from the basic social unit as the family, to national political relations, were founded. In several encounters these patterns of spiritualities have produced unsavoury outcomes. In the Cape’s more-than-a-century long, bitter and protracted encounter between a branch of amaMbo called amaXhosa, that began with the seventeenth century arrival of the Western “world-hunt” culture through the Calvinist Dutch East India Company traders, Africa and the entire world have been provided, simultaneously, with indisputable evidence of the destructiveness of self-indulgent living on the one hand and the efficacy, on the other, of a relational aesthetic as a viable alternative out of the humanitarian and environmental crises that confront our globe. Views and principles regarding the harmonious living of life on earth have been advocated by many a great leader since antiquity. They have been vindicated in the lives of ancient Israelite patriarchs such as Abraham and Moses, who led his kinsmen out of the Egyptian bondage that lasted over four centuries; in the life of Tolstoy, who chose to be excommunicated from a society that regarded these principles with disdain; to that of Gandhi, on whom Tolstoy was a tremendous influence, and effectively applied them to unshackle a whole nation from British subjugation; and Dostoevsky, Tolstoy’s compatriot, who first referred to these as “aesthetic views”. These relational principles were embedded in the lifestyle of ancient Israel, lived and advocated later by the Jewish Rabbi called Jesus, whose very own people chose to shamefully murder Him rather that accept His teachings. These principles were taught, practised and handed down to His followers to influence humanity as never before. In their ancient setting these principles clashed with those of the pagan lifestyle of Egypt, Babylon, Medo-Persia, Greece and Rome, which culturally shaped the Western civilization that pervades our globe. The results were centuries of enslavements, dispossessions and persecutions. In the course of history pagan beliefs crept in and mingled with orthodox Jewish rites and worship, producing an adulterated Christianity and a plethora of what are known today as nature-based religions, which still uphold and advocate the individual gods to whom honour and worship is due rather than the Creator in the Hebrew and Afrocentric cosmologies. This study traces the effect of the absence of these relational values on the quality of the life of nations and their leaders. A remarkable trend and pattern characterized by self-mutilative living emerged among all such nations and people. Their efficacy and mutual beneficence, on the other hand, was unmistakable in societies such as that of amaXhosa, in their pre-colonial state in the Eastern Cape region of South Africa. As all of nature “groans” under the human self-mutilation caused by the impoverished spirituality in aesthetic relational values, this study argues that salvation lies in ibuyambo, the recalling of these under-appreciated relational values, and in ensuring the re-education of ourselves and our future leaders in them. The focus of the study is what these values are, the effect of their absence, how different they are to what are known as “social capital”, how they have been manifested and preserved in ancient African institutions such as the weekly memorial day of rest – the Sabbath in the creation narrative – in the lives of some individuals and people on our planet, particularly Africans and amaMbo, and the benefits they derived from respecting them. A vital observation in this study is that social systems that are driven by the motive of individual, corporate or national self-exaltation are invariably rooted in strife and discention. The conclusion is drawn that these under-appreciated relational values, aesthetic relational values, are not only a vital ingredient to the quest for and in all known facets of sustainability in development efforts, they hold the key to unlock the door to the mystery of “harmony” that has proven so elusive to individuals, families, communities, societies, nations and their governance systems. The study concludes, with Dostoevsky, that aesthetic relational values contain “a guarantee of tranquility” for all humanity and the natural environment that sustains them. The restoration, not only by all of Africa, of the lost spirituality of aesthetic relational values cherished by their ancient forebears, is key to the renewal of our world.
AFRIKAANSE OPSOMMING: under-appreciated relational values, and in ensuring the re-education of ourselves and our future leaders in them. The focus of the study is what these values are, the effect of their absence, how different they are to what are known as “social capital”, how they have been manifested and preserved in ancient African institutions such as the weekly memorial day of rest – the Sabbath in the creation narrative – in the lives of some individuals and people on our planet, particularly Africans and amaMbo, and the benefits they derived from respecting them. A vital observation in this study is that social systems that are driven by the motive of individual, corporate or national self-exaltation are invariably rooted in strife and discention. The conclusion is drawn that these under-appreciated relational values, aesthetic relational values, are not only a vital ingredient to the quest for and in all known facets of sustainability in development efforts, they hold the key to unlock the door to the mystery of “harmony” that has proven so elusive to individuals, families, communities, societies, nations and their governance systems. The study concludes, with Dostoevsky, that aesthetic relational values contain “a guarantee of tranquility” for all humanity and the natural environment that sustains them. The restoration, not only by all of Africa, of the lost spirituality of aesthetic relational values cherished by their ancient forebears, is key to the renewal of our world. op ons globale dilemma moet fundamenteel nie in enige nuwe tegnologieë gesoek word wat uit hierdie selfde geestesingesteldheid voortvloei nie, maar in ’n hernude sienswyse en in ’n ander spiritualiteitspatroon. Hierdie studie ondersoek die dominante wêreldingesteldheid wat die globaal omvattende Westerse beskawing gerig het en hersien ’n aantal belangrike historiese en kulturele neigings wat, volgens die argument, die mensdom tot by die toppunt van sy “wêreld-jag”-kultuur gebring het. Dit is ’n “wêreld-jag” van selfverminking wat sigself meer as vier millennia gelede in Europa, die Nabye Ooste, Asië en Afrika gemanifesteer het. Die ontbossing, grondagteruitgang, onderdrukking van die armes, hongersnood, haat wat terroriste-aanvalle aangedryf het en klimaatsveranderings, wat natuurrampe en die verlies van spesies laat toeneem het, is almal die onmiskenbare bitter vrugte van so ’n kultuur. Dit is ’n kultuur wat gekenmerk en voortgestu is deur die afwesigheid van wat hierdie studie “estetiese relasionele waardes” noem. Hierdie dominante ingesteldheid het verskeie reëlgebaseerde regeringsinstellings wat gekenmerk word deur ’n etos van sentrale beheer en die manipulering van mense se lewens vir selfgesentreerde gewin oor ons hele wêreld versprei. Hoewel baie van hierdie instellings in verskeie gewade van skynbare welwillendheid - geloofgebaseerde, handelsgebaseerde, kennis/wetenskapgebaseerde en politieke bestuursliggame - voordoen, is almal aanhangers van dieselfde wêreldbeskouing wat stewig in ’n genadelose en destruktiewe panteïstiese en natuuraanbidding-geloofstelsel gevestig is wat na antieke Egipte terugvoerbaar is. Baie van hierdie instellings maak vandag in die openbaar daarop aanspraak om voorstanders van volhoubare ontwikkeling, die uitwissing van armoede en vrede onder die nasies van die wêreld te wees, terwyl hulle nog, esoteries, vasklou aan ’n kosmologiese perspektief van natuuraanbidding wat selfverheerliking aanprys en die welsyn van ander verontagsaam. Die studie kontrasteer hierdie dominante spiritualiteit met die Afrosentriese siening wat op ’n kennissisteem gebaseer is, wat ’n geloof in ’n barmhartige en genadige Skeppergod voorstel wat die bron van alle natuur, met inbegrip van die menseras, is, soos blyk uit die daaglikse lewens van amaMbo-mense wie se geografiese oorsprong na antieke Ethiopië teruggevoer kan word. Terwyl die eersvdermelde steeds die niebestaan van die Skeppergod voorstaan, keer Afrikane – met die besef van die spirituele bankrotskap van ’n selfverheerlikende etiek wat mense gepolariseer het en hulle kontinent deur reëlgebaseerde instellings verniel het - in groot getalle terug na hierdie kennissisteem van hul voorvaders waarop hul sosiale instellings van gedeelde en konsensusgebaseerde besluitneming en regering, vanaf die basiese sosiale eenheid as die familie tot by nasionale politieke verhoudings¸ gevestig is. Hierdie patrone van spiritualiteite het in verskeie gevalle tot onaangename uitkomste gelei. In die Kaap se meer as ’n eeu lange, bittere en langdurige botsing tussen ’n tak van amaMbo bekend as amaXhosa, wat met die 17de-eeuse aankoms van die Westerse “wêreld-jag”-kultuur deur die Calvinistiese Nederlandse Oos-Indiese Kompanjie-handelaars begin het, is Afrika en die hele wêreld terselfdertyd voorsien van onbetwisbare bewys van die vernielsug van gemaksugtige lewe aan die een kant en, aan die ander kant, die doeltreffendheid van relasionele estetika as ’n lewensvatbare alternatief uit die humanitêre en omgewingskrisisse wat ons wêreld in die gesig staar. Sienswyses en beginsels omtrent ’n harmonieuse lewenswyse op aarde is al sedert die vroegste tyd deur vele groot leiers bepleit. Dit is gehandhaaf in die lewens van antieke Israelitiese patriage soos Abraham en Moses, wat sy stamverwante uit die Egiptiese slawerny van meer as vier eeue gelei het; in die lewe van Tolstoi, wat verkies het om verban te word uit ’n gemeenskap wat hierdie beginsels met minagting bejeën het; in dié van Gandhi, op wie Tolstoi ’n geweldige invloed gehad het, wat hierdie beginsels effektief toegepas het om ’n hele nasie van Britse onderwerping te bevry; en Dostojewski, Tolstoi se landgenoot, wat die eerste keer daarna as “estetiese sienswyses” verwys het. Hierdie relasionele beginsels is vasgelê in die lewenstyl van antieke Israel, en later uitgeleef en verkondig deur die Joodse Rabbi genaamd Jesus, wie se eie mense verkies het om Hom skandelik te vermoor eerder as om sy leringe te aanvaar. Hierdie beginsels is onderrig, beoefen en aan Sy volgelinge oorgedra om die mensdom te beïnvloed soos nog nooit tevore nie. Hierdie beginsels het in hulle antieke opset gebots met dié van die heidense lewenstyl van Egipte, Babilon, Medo-Persië, Griekeland en Rome, wat die Westerse beskawing wat oor die wêreld versprei is kultureel gevorm het. Die resultate was eeue van slawerny, onteienings en vervolgings. Met verloop van die geskiedenis het heidense gelowe ingesypel en met die Joodse rites en aanbidding vermeng, wat gelei het tot ’n verknoeide Christendom en ’n oorvloed van wat vandag as natuurgebaseerde gelowe bekend staan, wat steeds die individuele gode aanhang en verkondig aan wie eer en aanbidding toekom, eerder as die Skepper in die Hebreeuse en Afrosentriese kosmologieë. Hierdie studie belig die afwesigheid van hierdie relasionele waardes in die gehalte van die lewe van nasies en hulle leiers. ’n Merkwaardige verloop en patroon wat gekenmerk word deur ’n selfverminkende lewenswyse het by al hierdie nasies en mense te voorskyn getree. Hulle doeltreffendheid en wedersydse liefdadigheid is, aan die ander kant, onmiskenbaar in gemeenskappe soos dié van die amaXhosa, in hul voorkoloniale staat in die Oos-Kaapse streek van Suid-Afrika. Terwyl die hele natuur “kreun” onder die menslike selfverminking wat deur die verarmde spiritualiteit in estetiese relasionele waardes veroorsaak word, argumenteer hierdie studie dat die redding lê in ibuyambo, die herroeping van hierdie onderwaardeerde relasionele waardes, en deur seker te maak dat ons onsself en ons toekomstige leiers daarin heropvoed. Die studie konsentreer op wat hierdie waardes is, die uitwerking van die afwesigheid daarvan, hoe dit verskil van wat as “sosiale kapitaal” bekend staan, hoe dit in antieke Afrika-instellings soos die weeklikse gedenkdag van rus – die Sabbat in die skeppingsverhaal - gemanifesteer en bewaar is in die lewens van party individue en mense op ons planeet, veral Afrikane en amaMbo, en die voordele wat hulle trek uit die nakoming daarvan. ’n Belangrike waarneming in hierdie studie is dat sosiale stelsels wat deur die motief van individuele, korporatiewe of nasionale selfverheffing aangedryf word, sonder uitsondering aan onenigheid en verdeeldheid gekoppel is. Die gevolgtrekking word gemaak dat hierdie onderwaardeerde relasionele waardes, estetiese relasionele waardes, nie slegs ’n noodsaaklike onderdeel in die soeke na en in alle bekende fasette van volhoubaarheid in ontwikkelingspogings is nie, maar dat hulle die sleutel is tot die ontsluiting van die misterie van “harmonie” wat so ontwykend vir individue, families, gemeenskappe, samelewings, nasies en hul regeringstelsels geblyk het. Die studie kom, saam met Dostojewski, tot die gevolgtrekking dat estetiese relasionele waardes ’n “waarborg van kalmte” bevat vir die hele mensdom en die natuurlike omgewing wat ons onderhou. Die herstel deur meer as net die hele Afrika van die verlore spiritualiteit van estetiese relasionele waardes wat deur hulle antieke voorgeslagte gekoester is, is die sleutel tot die vernuwing van ons wêreld.

El presente estudio se centra sobre el análisis de la creencia en la bilocación registrada en el área centro-meridional de Cerdeña. Sobre la base de los datos recogidos en el curso de un trabajo de campo, describo la creencia según la cual ciertas personas culpables frente a la comunidad eran condenadas en vida a salir en espíritu como si fuesen almas en pena ante mortem. Los protagonistas de esta creencia eran los ricos propietarios cuyas culpas eran principalmente las de haber explotado al pobre sin medios para defenderse, la avaricia, la práctica de la usura, la incorporación de tierras de manera ilícita y deshonesta y los abusos contra las sirvientes. Con este trabajo se intenta analizar la creencia en la bilocación de los ricos terratenientes sobre la base de las afirmaciones directas de los informantes e interlocutores entrevistados. A través de sus relatos fue posible describir la figura del condenado en su preciso contexto, que remonta a mediados del siglo pasado. El análisis de los acontecimientos políticos y económicos que caracterizaron la historia de la isla principalmente en los últimos tres siglos, permitió entender la creencia como una forma precisa de contestación hacia los cambios traumáticos impuestos por la política reformista de los Saboya, dirigida a la abolición de los usos comunitarios de amplias porciones de tierra. La nueva clase social de propietarios que surgió de la aplicación de las nuevas leyes acumuló posesiones practicando abusos que provocaron una desaprobación generalizada, con rebeliones e insurrecciones. Asimismo, relacionando la condena del propietario explotador con ciertas formas de regulación social características de las zonas más centrales de la isla, logré entender de manera más compleja el principio de causa y efecto que rige la estructura conceptual, en que la condena encuentra su coherencia y racionalidad específica. Comparando la creencia en la bilocación del rico terrateniente con otras creencias en que el tema de la salida del alma es central logré destacar sus peculiaridades, y la forma como se constituye en un vehículo de significados cuya complejidad indica en los portadores de estas creencias, un alto nivel de conciencia de si mismo y de sus derechos, garante de una dignidad que sigue siendo percibida como inviolable.

This research investigates particular ways that memorialising and mourning can be made manifest through public commemorative objects and spaces such as memorials and through smaller scale personal mementos. It also examines ways that these physical reminders can act as repositories and markers for memory, and as metaphors for identity. In particular the research is focussed on Traditional Southern Italian customs, reflecting on the ways that keepsakes and the cenotaph can provide allegories for declining cultural practices of Southern Italian migrants in Australia. The data collected for this thesis is based partly on participant observation, and on informal conversations with migrants from Southern Italy, regarding their funerary practices and stories told about the rural areas left behind in Italy. Research of visual and published material in the area of memorialising and memorial object are examined in order to gain an understanding of the language of death. The thesis also examines the use of Catholic religious objects in what anthropologist Per Binde has coined 'transactional acts', during supplication and remembrance and during times of mourning. An exploration of memorial and memento objects, by contemporary practitioners including Christian Boltanski, Lindy Lee, Julie Blyfield and Maya Lin has also been included. Inclusion of contemporary artists reflects on how memorials continue to play an important role in today's society as well as being integral in reflecting identity and maintaining connections with the past. Investigation of this genre is expressed through the research document and a body of studio-based research connected to the traditions of Memorialising. The studio research is expressed in the exhibition 'In Black' through the language of Catholic religious objects, memory boxes, personal mementos and cultural signifiers in wax, metal, and installation. These works, as time capsules are filled with significant representations of individuals and events that evoke memories through depictions of life, significant places and words descriptive of time and place.

This chapter investigates whether social investments improve labour market flow by focusing on work–family reconciliation policy and women's labour market participation. It provides an overview on which institutional configurations one should consider to understand how the labour market flows during women's life cycles. The chapter then analyses Italy, Spain, Japan and South Korea and their institutional configurations. By investigating social investment latecomers in East Asia (Japan and Korea) and Southern Europe (Spain and Italy), the chapter reveals that social investment reform itself does not automatically lead to higher female employment rates, because the effectiveness of work–family reconciliation policy hugely depends on the institutional context. Ultimately, the chapter asserts that social investment strategies should be context-sensitive and tailored to different structural and institutional configurations if they are to be suitable and effective. It claims that, in order for social investment reform to be successful, complementary institutional reform is required.

This chapter reviews how material conditions improved in Italy, Spain, Portugal, and Greece over many decades from the postwar period to the onset of the Eurozone crisis and the Great Recession; how Southern Europe lost ground in the 2010s; and how changes in living standards affected different population groups. The chapter unfolds in 15 short sections. Section 4.1 sets the scene by briefly discussing similarities and differences between the four countries. Section 4.2 recounts how life in Southern Europe was transformed since the mid-20th century in terms of material well-being. Sections 4.3–4.14 look at changes in gross domestic product, consumption, investment, labour productivity, employment, education attainment, population health, social spending, income inequality, poverty and social exclusion, the distribution of wealth, and life satisfaction. Section 4.15 concludes.

According to the German philosopher Jürgen Mittelstraß, the concept of nature is complex for at least three reasons: 1) nature is constantly evolving; 2) at least in terms of history, it had and still has different meanings in different cultures (and in different periods); 3) nowadays it has become part of the artificial world created by science and technology. The texts of the dialects of the Southern Aukštaitians, some of which can be considered stories of collective memory, while others are personal experience stories, reflect the most diverse aspects of the relationship and interaction between nature and man: mythical, pragmatic, psychological, aesthetic, value, moral, and others. However, the term nature is not explicated there, and the word is rarely used. The living and inanimate worlds are conceptualized through the concepts of specific phenomena and their expression. Although there is nothing insignificant in nature and everything is interconnected, however, some images (the moon, sun, thunder, rain, snake, grassland, etc.) are deeper entrenched in the worldview of the Southern Aukštaitians. Nature evokes a variety of feelings for the Southern Aukštaitians: fear, respect, pity, concern, and so on. The semantic meanings encoded in names, comparisons, and other means of linguistic expression still associate the modern worldview with the mythical and archaic world. However, social and cultural changes, science and technology are gradually changing not only the way of life, faith, traditions or customs of the Southern Aukštaitians, but also the worldview in general, the relationship with nature and values. For instance, attempts are made to explain rationally phenomena that earlier were considered mystical and supernatural; the belief in the effects of folk remedies on humans and the effects of the natural bodies on agriculture is not so strong; old beliefs and customs are told in a fragmented, not always in an accurate way. Even language is changing: part of the lexicon on natural themes is retreating to the periphery or disappearing altogether, the rows of synonyms are becoming shorter, and so on.

The Southern Europe regional outlook presents a comparative assessment of the historical development of the healthcare system, health politics, and selected health-related indicators for Cyprus, Greece, Italy, Portugal, and Spain. The politics of democratic consolidation has influenced the development of healthcare systems; in some periods, healthcare policies have been central to the institutional consolidation and legitimation of existing regimes, but they have also been negatively affected by the political, administrative, and financial shortcomings of these governments. All of these countries have witnessed late transitions from social insurance healthcare systems based on occupation (with fairly developed means-tested programs) to universal and mostly tax-financed national health services: Italy and Portugal made this shift in the 1970s, Spain and Greece in the 1980s, and Cyprus after 2000. As the chapter argues, the central issue in Southern Europe concerns expanding healthcare access in the context of economic vulnerability. According to indicators such as infant mortality, life expectancy, and declines in treatable mortality, health outcomes in Southern Europe are largely favorable, but austerity politics have taken their toll.

The various studies of Byzantium’s social history in the eleventh century presented in this volume, each with its specific topic (regional, thematic, archaeological), are placed in a wider context. A head-on challenge is made to the long-standing view, promulgated by George Ostrogorsky, that Byzantium’s rapid descent from its apogee in the middle of the eleventh century had two prime causes, a deliberate run-down of the military by the ascendant civil party in the administration, and the absorption of the peasantry into large, aristocratic estates with a consequent weakening of a fiscal and military system founded in the peasant village. Different aspects of eleventh-century history are covered: (1) the accelerating cultural revival, sponsored by emperors, and an attendant growth in numbers and importance of the intelligentsia; (2) evidence, primarily numismatic and archaeological, for demographic and economic growth, and its beneficent effect on town life; (3) a re-examination of the documentary and other evidence for the decline of the independent peasantry, which concludes that predatory landowners encountered serious resistance from tight-knit village communities and the justice system and that the process of social change in the countryside had not advanced as far as Kostis Smyrlis suggests; (4) finally, it is accepted that attitudes changed, that the interior provinces were demilitarized, but not that there was a deliberate attempt to reduce spending on the army, now confined to the imperial periphery—the defeats and losses suffered are attributed primarily to the strengths of Byzantium’s chief adversaries, Turks and Turkmen in the east, Normans in southern Italy.

The hilly area of Central Italy represents one of the most original characteristics of Italian agrarian system distinguished by a particular form and technique of land management, la Mezzadria (sharecropping), which was a contract stipulated between a landowner and the farmer, reflected in the construction of open space as well as artifacts. The structure of rural settlements typical of sharecropping is a mosaic of terrains with scattered farmhouses (case coloniche), connected by a dense road network. The architecture of these structures is always the same with only slight variations articulated by the form of the terrain and in relationship with their use and the road pathways, and is characterised by a rectangular plan with the rooms dispersed on two floors and an external staircase which is the prevalent distinguishing trait. Sharecropping rural heritage represents an important case study for the analysis and cataloguing of vernacular architecture since artifacts come from precise needs linked to the social and cultural life of the farming family. This paper investigates vernacular rural architecture in Central Italy, particularly in the mid-Adriatic in the southern Marche Region, by building up an investigative and categorization method: selecting precise geographical areas where the original farmhouses have first been identified by studying historical maps of the 19th century before moving on to in situ exploration. Photography has also been a useful instrument for constructing the taxonomy of rural ruins which today are in a state of total abandonment; showing the photographs next to each other allows us to more clearly identify and understand subtle differences and suggest a reuse of the buildings.

"The idea of Internet use as a way to face psychosocial malaise is growing in the scientific literature about Problematic Internet Use (PIU). The present study, assuming the Semiotic Cultural Psycho-social Theory (SCPT) (Salvatore, 2018) as theoretical framework, postulates and emphasizes that the context in which the subject is embedded provide the symbolic resources, which ground the way adolescents perceive, experience, and therefore deal with the material and social world, including the likelihood of using the Internet as a way to facing life problems and difficulties. SCTP adopts the term “Symbolic Universes” (SU) to denote affect-laden assumptions concerning the world which may (or not) promote adaptive responses. Specifically, the present study aimed to test a mediation model in which each Symbolic Universes (i.e. independent variable) is associated with the psychosocial malaise in terms of social anxiety, loneliness, and negative emotions (i.e. mediator variable), which in turn has effects on PIU (i.e. dependent variable). Measures of PIU (GPIUS), symbolic universes (VOC), negative affect (PANAS), social anxiety (IAS), loneliness (ILs) among a total of 764 Southern Italy youths aged from 13 to 19 (mean age =15.05 ± 1.152). A Multiple Correspondence Analysis (MCA) was firstly run to detect SU; a Partial Least Squares Structural Equation Modelling (PLS-SEM) was then performed on R for testing the hypothesized mediation model. The results demonstrated that Symbolic Universes characterized by anomie and unreliability of the social context are associated with adolescents’ PIU though the mediation of social anxiety, loneliness, and negative emotions. Overall, findings suggest that within an anomic and unreliable scenario, PIU might acquire the meaning of a way to face life in an environment that seems meaningless, uncertain, and detrimental. On the plane of intervention, this points to the need for programs that address social and cultural influences in youths’ Internet use."