Tesi sul tema "Fascism – social aspects – italy"

Evidence on comparative quality of life and housing of Italians at origin, and emigrants in two destinations was gathered from field research, and from three surveys: one, of residents of the town of origin (n = 153), Larino, in the province of Campobasso, and the other two, of residents of major destinations of Larinesi emigrants--Montreal (n = 118), and Milano (n = 73). The main working hypothesis was tested that the best quality of life is found among emigrants living in Montreal. The research also explicated the historical connection between policies of migration and housing concerns in Canada and in Italy.
Quality of life was measured using a battery of structural, objective and subjective indicators that were calibrated for relative comparisons between the two cities of destination by the re-analysis of two large surveys (Milano n = 966; Montreal n = 461), and by the use of of official statistics.
Multivariate analysis results showed that in comparison to the town of origin, Montreal produced the best and most distinguishable socio-demographic context and Milano the best geographic context. The objective indicators based on the ratios of income to need and those based on income relative to each city, are most influential in Montreal. Subjective indicators such as attitudes and lifestyles are more consistently related to levels of education than to place of residence.
High rates of house ownership among the Larinesi in Montreal, and changes in their patterns of use of space which accompany permanent resettlement--especially those regarding the use of an extra kitchen--were found to be explainable in terms of the "housing culture" of the town of origin.

In this study, I examine the existing literature and carry out a qualitative exploration in order to formulate a better understanding of the dynamics that influence the lives of 2nd generation Italian Muslims. Although monumental social and political challenges remain in confronting integration of the Muslim population and for achieving greater acceptance of Islam within the Italian public sphere, the evidence suggests that the process for integration has slowly begun. Additionally, this study examines the intellectual framework of the existing literature which addresses the issues impacting Muslim integration in Northern Italy. This issue has induced new debates within Italy on multiculturalism, national identity, human rights, while more importantly raising the question--"to what extent do we allow Muslim integration into Italian society and the further insertion of Islam into Italy's spiritual geography?" This study argues that the convergence of contemporary international affairs with religion calls for a new lens for interaction. In Italy the events following 9/11, combined with a resurgence of Islamophobia and the impact of the Global War on Terror, have drawn the issue of Muslim immigrants into a negative spotlight. Mainstream attitudes in Europe, following 9/11, have generated a rift in Muslim-West relations and have caused confusion and anxiety among Muslims and non-Muslims alike. The research hypothesis for this thesis suggests that there are multiple factors impeding the efforts for Muslims to achieve equal footing within the Italian religious landscape and inclusion within Italian society. Among these are divisions found within the Muslim community itself, a growing mistrust of Islam in mainstream Italian society, sponsored by negative media stereotyping and xenophobic political movements, and underlying everything else, the privileged position of the Catholic Church and its unwillingness to accommodate Islamic identity within the social framework. The chosen methodology employed in this study is qualitative, theoretical contextual analysis combined with interviews plus questionnaires used to construct a case study were applied. Beyond engaging in seven interviews with the 2nd generation Italian Muslims, this study was informed by the relevant academic literature from the fields of conflict resolution, history, sociology, cultural studies, Islamic studies and political science. Finally this study contextualized the dynamics generating this conflict and examined the discontinuities this situation has created in the lives of Muslims in Italy. The exclusion of the Muslim population, coupled with the complex relationship between this cultural group and state, has led to the exploration within Italy of different models for integration. The findings of this study indicate that inequalities exist for the Muslim population of Northern Italy in their relation with the host nation and society. This further hampers the process of integration and generates further exclusion. Only profound rethinking of the Italian approach to integration will serve to adequately meet the needs of this marginalized population and fully incorporate them within Italian society.

This thesis is based on an ethnographic study of entrepreneurs of the construction business in Lombardy, Northern Italy. The aim is to gain some understanding of this business, of entrepreneurialism, and of individuals in a non-stereotypical light through a full and complex account of their daily lives. The aim is to reveal the thoughts, actions and strategies of particular local actors in their everyday contingency and contradictoriness. No attempt is made to simplify the complexity of their understandings and practices for the sake of producing a single encompassing and consistent image. Many similarities were found between the practices of entrepreneurialism and those of the discipline of anthropology. Knowledge and information are constantly sought after but are recognised as emerging in unexpected places and times and as being socially negotiated. Apprenticeship is often used as a methodology, and learning often happens through experience. Contextual application of knowledge is seen as essential. In order to exchange information and knowledge, to collaborate with other businessmen or to simply get a job, trust is fundamental and constantly negotiated. Personal relationships and trust become particularly important in an uncertain market situation, as ways to face risk. Trust is acquired slowly and accorded contextually, through face-to-face interaction and cultivated relationships, but also through positive recommendations or simply a feeling of sympathy. Knowledge, apprenticeship, trust and risk are key themes of the thesis. The blurred borders between the distinct individual personalities of my informants and their collective identities and commonalities are also discussed. The personality of an entrepreneur is seen as ideally complex, in which many (possibly contradictory) characteristics can be expected to be present, but also ideally balanced, each manifesting itself in specific situations. The ethnography also explores the fragility of the entrepreneur, in apparent contradiction to their strong and charismatic personalities. It is seen to be despite and because of their positions of power that they also feel vulnerable: their discourse is imbued with their fears for their businesses in a difficult period of economic crisis. Finally, through a ubiquitous desire to control markets and the future, we also encounter forms of corruption; corruption that is often condemned verbally but nevertheless is present in the business world and amplified by public and media discourses. The mechanisms by which work that is put out to tender is subject to possible manipulation are examined, and the ideas of the entrepreneurs about these practices are described—again demonstrating how thoughts and practices are often self-contradictory in their contextual relevance and application.

Dante Alighieri is, undoubtedly, an enduring feature of the cultural memory of generations of Italians. His influence is such that the mere mention of a ‘dark wood’ or ‘life’s journey’ recalls the poet and his most celebrated work, the Divina Commedia. This study, however, seeks to examine the construction of the medieval Florentine poet, exemplified by the above assertion, as a potent symbol of the Italian nation. From the creation of the idea of the Italian nation during the Risorgimento, to the Liberal ruling elite’s efforts after 1861 to legitimise the new Italian nation state, and more importantly to ‘make Italians’, to the rise of a more imperialist conception of nationalism in the early twentieth century and its most extreme expression under the Fascist regime, Dante was made to play a significant role in defining, justifying and glorifying the Italian nation. Such an exploration of the utilisation of Dante in the construction of Italian national identity during the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries aids considerably in an understanding of the conceptualisation of the Italian nation, of the issues engendered by the establishment of the Italian nation state, and the evolution of these processes throughout the period in question. The various images of Dante revealed by this investigation of his instrumentalisation in the Italian process of nation-building bear only a fleeting resemblance to what is known of the poet in his medieval reality. Dante was born in 1265 to a family of modest means and standing in Florence, at that time the economic centre of Europe, and one of the most important cities of the Italian peninsula. His writings disclosed, however, that he was little impressed by his city’s prestige and wealth, being instead greatly disturbed by its political discord and instability, of which he became an unfortunate victim. The violent partisan conflict in Florence and the turbulent political condition of the Italian peninsula in the late thirteenth century had a decisive influence on Dante’s life and literary endeavours.

The present dissertation investigates the role of television advertising in shaping the cultural values of the Italian society in the circular process of mirroring pre-existing societal values yet inducing new ones, thus contributing to its evolution. It questions its role within the society, its relationship with families, women and youngsters, the kind of language used in communicating, between 1957-1977, the age of Carosello programme. A corpus of two thousand five hundred television adverts was viewed and filed, of which a hundred were selected according to the more frequent themes, their cultural and semiotic relevance, and twenty-two analysed by a semiotic approach, together with some more considered alongside. Chapter One deals with methodology, an overview of the main concepts and tools of applied semiotics and the socio-semiotic perspective adopted. Chapter Two, then, contextualizes television advertising into its broader socio-cultural milieu and the history of television. The following three chapters analyze the selected adverts according to five main recurring themes: Chapter Three, the first steps of TV advertising, its auto-referentiality and its language; Chapter Four, the family and its inner relationships, the couple and the institution of marriage; Chapter Five women‘s emancipation, the new generation of youngsters and new myths. Commercials are analysed by shots and sequences from a narrative and visual perspective in search of their deep underlying generative values. The approach is a holistic one, adapting itself to the prevailing characteristics of every occurrence, although the peculiar nature of the ads of the period entails a prevailing narratological model. All findings are then connected together to identify the main semantic areas indicating cultural values present in the Italian society of the period. The end findings consist of a set of interesting cultural values identified. At first a self-assertiveness of advertising as a way to popularity; then its preferred mode of communication through verbal language rather than pictures; a representation of families according to either the patriarchal or the consumerist model; a fundamental disbelief in marriage and a sexist attitude to women‘s representation; finally, a mistrust in the values of the new generations. All of these eventually pointing to the main semantic area of tradition, an index to the fundamental conservative yet contradictory role of the Carosello adverting which, while contributing to preserve traditional values, it also tended to replace them with its only main consumerist value. At a higher level, on a socio-semiotic perspective it is the role of that semiosphere which, while drawing from society it also contributes in shaping it.

La thèse traite de la couverture médiatique des sports dans les journaux et notamment, de la dimension sociale du phénomène sportif dans ces médias. Le sport bénéficie d'une couverture médiatique massive. Cependant, et bien que l'étendue du sport médiatique permette de présenter, en principe, une multiplicité de sujets et d'angles d'analyse, la couverture des sports a tendance, en réalité, à se concentrer sur un éventail relativement limité de sujets (les athlètes les mieux payés, les tournois les plus lucratifs, etc.). A partir de cette préoccupation centrale, à savoir si la couverture médiatique des sports reflète ou non l’ampleur du phénomène sportif, l'étude a été consacrée à l'élaboration d'une taxonomie de thèmes qui permette de définir cette plus ample “dimension sociale” dans la couverture médiatique du sport. Cette taxonomie, conçue à la fois comme un outil conceptuel et opérationnel, est au cœur de l'étude. L'analyse s'est ensuite centrée sur les résultats de l’analyse de contenu de plus de 6.500 pages de journaux, en prenant la presse italienne comme étude de cas. L'analyse a été menée en vue de comparer l'analyse sociale du sport dans la couverture des journaux généralistes avec celle des journaux sportifs. Cette approche constitue également une contribution significative à la connaissance, les journaux sportifs n'étant pratiquement jamais considérés comme une catégorie à part entière. L'Italie a été choisie, entre autres, pour la présence de plusieurs journaux sportifs. Enfin, compte tenu de la chute de la diffusion des journaux, la thèse s’intéresse aussi au potentiel commercial – ou “business case” – de l’analyse sociale dans la couverture des sports, en montrant pourquoi celle-ci est susceptible d’attirer, de manière peut-être inattendue, de nouveaux lecteurs
This thesis focuses on the coverage of sport-related matters of social relevance in daily newspapers. Sports benefit from massive media coverage but even though the extent of sports reporting allows to deliver, in principle, a multiplicity of subjects and angles of analysis, the coverage of sports tends, in reality, to focus on a limited span of topics (the wealthiest sports and athletes, the most lucrative tournaments, etc.). Moving from the concern about whether or not the coverage of sports reflects the full extent of the sporting phenomenon, the study has engaged in the elaboration of a new taxonomy of topics to define the wider “social dimension”, or social analysis, in the media coverage of sports. This taxonomy, intended as both a conceptual and operational tool, is at the core of the study. The thesis has then engaged in the content analysis of over 6,500 newspaper pages, taking the Italian press as a case study. The analysis has been conducted with a view to compare social analysis in the coverage by general-interest newspapers with that in sports-specialised newspaper. This approach also constitutes a significant contribution to knowledge, as sports newspapers are hardly ever examined as a category in its own right. Italy was chosen, among other reasons, for the presence of multiple sports newspapers. Finally, considering the current decline of press circulation, the thesis also shows the business potential – or “business case” – of social analysis in the coverage of sport, and why this can attract, perhaps unexpectedly, new readers

Orientador: Andréia Galvão
Dissertação (mestrado) - Universidade Estadual de Campinas, Instituto de Filosofia e Ciências Humanas
Made available in DSpace on 2018-12-07T17:47:48Z (GMT). No. of bitstreams: 1 Schembri_Elena_M.pdf: 2426969 bytes, checksum: 4919eed98a6c166ce73deb8fbae659e9 (MD5) Previous issue date: 2014
Resumo: As teses sobre o desaparecimento do campesinato se revelaram incorrectas embora seja necessário afirmar que a ofensiva neo-liberal, os tratados de livre comércio e as imposições de algumas empresas multinacionais com a cumplicidade dos governos, hoje, certamente, afetam com maior profundidade a produção agrícola e as comunidades rurais de todas as partes do mundo, impondo um único modelo ao qual é muitas vezes difícil escapar. As respostas dos camponeses a estes tipos de problemas é a organização que pode acontecer de maneira similar e diferente ao mesmo tempo. A análise de duas experiências de resistências camponesas em países distintos, a cooperativa brasileira Copava e a associação italiana Campi Aperti, pode ajudar na compreensão dos tipos de problemas específicos de cada realidade política, econômica e social, enquanto oferece uma visão sobre as consequiências da mundialização em curso. O 1995, ano de fundação da Organização Mundial do Comércio (OMC), marca uma data fundamental, com a liberalização do comércio dos produtos agrícolas. A análise do desenvolvimento do agronegócio no Brasil, particularmente ápos a crise europeia de 2008 que viu muitos investidores transferir seus capitais na América Latina, e a terceira crise agrícola que afeta a Europa, junto com o contexto histórico e político, ajudarão na compreensão das dinâmicas empreendidas pela Copava e por Campi Aperti que lidam com as mudanças do contexto no qual agem. Agroecológia, agricultura biológica, reforma agrária popular proposta pelo Mst e economia solidária, serão os temas conclusivos que ajudarão entender qual é o projeto levado para frente por essas duas organizações para responder ao lema "Um outro mundo é possível?"
Abstract: The thesis about the disappearance of the peasantry proved incorrect although we must say that the neo-liberal offensive, the free trade agreements and the charges of some multinational companies with the complicity of governments, today certainly affect more depth agricultural production and rural communities in all parts of the world, imposing a single model that is often difficult to escape. The responses of farmers to these types of problems is the organization that can happen in a similar way and different at the same time. The analysis of two experiences of peasant resistance in different countries, the Brazilian cooperative Copava and the Italian association Campi Aperti, can help in understanding the types of problems specific to each political, economic and social, while providing an insight into the globalization of consequiências ongoing. The 1995 founding year of the World Trade Organization (WTO), marks a key date, with the liberalization of trade in agricultural products. The development of agribusiness in Brazil, particularly after the European crisis of 2008 that saw many investors transfer their capital in Latin America, and the third agricultural crisis affecting Europe, along with the historical and political context, will help in understanding the dynamics undertaken by Copava and Campi Aperti dealing with the context of changes in which they act. Agroecology, organic farming, popular agrarian reform proposed by Mst and solidarity economy, will be the conclusive issues that will help understand what the project brought forward by these two organizations to respond to the slogan "Another world is possible?"
Mestrado
Ciencia Politica
Mestra em Ciência Política

Cette thèse a pour objectif d'étudier le monde journalistique turinois sous le régime fasciste, et en particulier lors de la deuxième décennie du régime. Cette période, coïncidant avec la montée et la consolidation du consensus (1929-1936) avant une remise en question progressive (1936-1940), est pour le journalisme italien celle de l'instauration progressive du contrôle de la profession par le régime. La répression, puis la mise au pas de la presse nationale et régionale, la création de structures de contrôle, particulièrement avec le Syndicat national fasciste des journalistes et son albo ou le ministère de la Culture populaire, l'uniformisation et l’institutionnalisation de la presse, notamment pour des usages propagandistes, bouleversent le monde journalistique et ses acteurs. Il s'agit dès lors de se focaliser sur les parcours collectifs et individuels de ces journalistes, en prenant comme laboratoire d'étude la ville de Turin. Les influences politiques, sociales et culturelles font en effet de cette ville un lieu particulier pour le fascisme, difficile à « normaliser ». Turin possède par ailleurs deux des plus importants journaux du pays (la Gazzetta del Popolo et La Stampa). L'étude prosopographique des 278 journalistes identifiés permet de mettre en perspective des caractéristiques sociales particulières, notamment en terme d'origine géographique ou de niveau d'instruction. De même, en s’intéressant aux liens avec le monde politique local et national, elle éclaire les frontières mouvantes entre politique et journalisme et permet de replacer la question du journalisme dans le cadre plus large du régime fasciste et particulièrement de ses ambiguïtés, entre contrôle, surveillance et répression d'un côté et les limites du totalitarisme de l'autre. L'étude prosopographique met également en évidence une continuité certaine, en terme de rédacteurs, entre le journalisme de l'époque libérale et celui de l'époque fasciste, remettant en question l'image d'une « épuration » sévère et totale de la profession. Dès lors, la question de la place nouvelle génération de journalistes, formés techniquement et imprégnés d'idéologie fasciste et dont la création était chère à certains hiérarques fascistes, Ermanno Amicucci en tête, prend tout son sens. Enfin, la seconde partie de la thèse s’intéresse à quelques parcours singuliers et itinéraires comparés, permettant d’illustrer une partie de la diversité des attitudes des journalistes turinois confrontés au régime fasciste et à sa volonté d'instituer un « nouveau modèle de journalisme ». Ces parcours se proposent ainsi d'éclairer plus spécifiquement certains aspects centraux de l'univers journalistique durant le régime, abordant notamment l'épuration des années 1927-1931 (avec par exemple Gino Pestelli, Leo Galetto ou Santi Savarino), les liens avec le monde politique local (Angelo Appiotti, Leo Rea) ou même la question des lois raciales (Deodato Foà). Entre relative résistance et renoncement, entre acceptation et tractations, entre illusions et pragmatisme, ces trajectoires biographiques mettent alors au jour des postures diverses dont les croisements, les stratégies, les contenus s'insèrent dans un cadre bien plus large, celui du ventennio fasciste et de ses tragédies
This work studies the turinese journalistic world during fascist system, especially the second decade. This decade coincide with the rise of the consensus (1929-1936) before the first time of contestation (1936-1940). The italian journalism is more and more controlled by the political authorities. The repression of the national and regional papers, and then the organization, standardization and institutionalization of the press, change drastically the journalism background. In view of this, this work focuses on collective and individual trajectories, with Turin as study place. The political, social and cultural influences of Turin make this city a particular place for the fascism, hard to “normalize”, and which possess two of the principal papers of the country (the Gazzetta del Popolo and La Stampa). The prosopographical study of the 278 identify journalists allows to put in perspective social characteristics (geographical origins, level of schooling etc...). The national and regional political connections light up the moving mark between politic and journalism and allow to replace the journalism question in the ampler setting of fascist regime and his ambiguities (between control, surveillance and repression, on one hand, and limits of totalitarianism of the other hand). The prosopographical study shows also a clear continuity of journalist between liberal and fascist periods, which questions the image of a harsh and total “purge” of the profession. In this context, the question of the place of the new journalistic generation, technically formed and permeated of fascist ideology, like Ermanno Amicucci and other fascist figures wanted, is central. Finally, the second part of the study takes an interest in a few singular trajectories and compared itineraries, which allows to illustrate a part of the diversity of turinese journalist attitudes, confronted with a regime who wants to institute a “new journalism model”. This trajectories intend to light up more specifically some of central aspects of journalistic world during the regime, like the purge of the years 1927-1931 (with for example Gino Pestelli, Leo Galetto or Santi Savarino),, the connections with local politic world (Angelo Appiotti, Leo Rea) or the racial laws and their impact (Deodoato foà). Between opposition and resignation, acceptation and negotiation, illusions and pragmatism, this biographical trajectories expose some varied positions, insert into a ampler context, which is the fascist ventennio, and his tragedies

Defence date: 28 November 2017
Examining Board: Professor Fabrizio Bernardi (Supervisor), European University Institute; Professor Jonathan Gershuny, University of Oxford; Professor Martin Kohli, European University Institute; Professor Maria Letizia Tanturri, University of Padua
The thesis consists of three empirical studies which explore the origins of various social inequalities arising at early ages. Italian Time Use Survey data from 2003 and 2009 is used. First, the educational and developmental gradients in childcare are under observation. More educated parents are expected not only to spend more time with children, i.e. the education gradient in child care, but also to alter their childcare time in order to cater children´s developmental needs more, i.e. the developmental gradient in childcare. The empirical results show that: (i) highly educated mothers alter the composition of active childcare time to suit children´s developmental needs more than less educated mothers; (ii) the developmental gradient in fathers´ childcare time only exists for certain activities and child ages; (iii) interesting time-use patterns of compensation emerge for couples with different educational backgrounds. Second study compares the time use of children from single-mother and intact families, using propensity score matching. The time diaries of children between age 3 and 10 years are scrutinized. Given the multitude of literature on the negative aspects of witnessing parental break-up, and being raised by a single-mother, the results are somewhat surprising. No systematic and large differences in the use of free time between the treatment and the control group. The greatest difference concerns daily meals with parent(s) that are about a quarter of an hour shorter in single-parent families. Third empirical study adds the perspective of different parental investments by children´s birth order which serves as an indicator of relative disadvantage. The analytical sub-sample consists of families with two and three children aged from 3 to 11 years. The contribution to available studies is (i) connecting the diaries of both parents and all children in the family by place codes, which enables to (ii) scrutinize the link between birth order and parental childcare investments by parental education. Results indicate that each day second-born children receive on average 88 minutes and third-born children 114 minutes less interactive care compared to their first-born sibling, while controlling for children´s age, gender, and other characteristics. The disadvantage arising from birth-order is about 47 minutes smaller if mother has secondary or tertiary education. Siblings fixed effects models underline that the differences in investing time in children are greater between families than inside families.
Chapter 2 'Double advantage or disadvantage? the effect of parental education on child care' of the PhD thesis draws upon an earlier version published as an article 'Double advantage or disadvantage? Parental education and children's developmental stages in Italy' (2015) in the journal 'Electronic International Journal of Time Use Research (eIJTUR)'

Defence date: 13 December 2005
Examining board: Prof. Peter Wagner (supervisor, European University Institute, Florence) ; Prof. Giandomenico Amendola (co-supervisor, Università degli Studi di Firenze) ; Prof. Franco Bianchini (De Montfort University, Leicester) ; Prof. Bo Strath (European University Institute, Florence)
PDF of thesis uploaded from the Library digitised archive of EUI PhD theses completed between 2013 and 2017

Defence date: 8 July 2010
Examining Board: Maurizio Ambrosini (Univ. Milan); Margarita Gomez-Reino Cachafeiro, UNED, Madrid); Virginie Guiraudon (CERAPS-CNRS, Lille Centre for Politics) (External Co-Sipervisor); Peter Mair (EUI) (Supervisor)
PDF of thesis uploaded from the Library digital archive of EUI PhD theses
In the early 1990s, Italy and Spain, traditional labor exporters, started to acknowledge their new position as ‘immigration countries’. This dissertation examines how both states have coped with the consequences of this rapid and unexpected shift. Combining discourse and policy analysis, we look mainly at political elites’ (parties and their members) discourses and practices, during the first decade of the immigration turn (from early 1990s until the early 2000s). The literature has often treated Italy and Spain as examples of the same ‘Mediterranean’ group, also usually assuming that they have followed a very similar route towards immigrants’ criminalization and a populist mobilization of the immigration theme. Adopting an innovative analytical perspective, this thesis arrives at an original understanding of both immigrants’ representation and immigration politics in Italy and Spain. The predominant categories mobilized by Spanish and Italian political elites in the construction of the immigration ‘problem', as well as the strategies used to seize the (political) opportunities offered by the immigration theme are more diverse than they seem. While in Italy a ‘grammar’ of insecurity has been reiterated and institutionalized by nearly all political groups throughout the 1990s, in Spain, parties have mostly treated immigration as a matter (problem) of social integration, politicizing (‘criminalizing’) the issue quite late in the decade. This dissertation concludes moreover that the rising influx of immigrants during the 1990s has triggered a revival of particular ways of framing the Italian and Spanish ‘nations’ and nationhood, which have strongly marked political actors’ approach to immigrants and immigration politics. In this way, while in Italy the post-Fascist idea of a bounded Italianità, grounded on family ties and blood connections, have underlie immigration policy-making; the post-Franquist conception of a ‘new’, open and plural Spain has overruled in Spain. We show how these different national ‘mythologies’ were instrumental for legitimating quite similar (restrictive) policies.

Defence date: 9 December 2014
Examining Board: Professor Hanspeter Kriesi, EUI; Professor Rainer Bauböck, EUI; Professor Ruud Koopmans, Humboldt University; Professor Laura Morales, University of Leicester.
This research focuses on the politicization of immigration as an issue in local electoral campaigns, comparing the cases of three Italian cities. Based on the idea that immigration must not be understood as a one-dimensional category that parties endorse or dismiss, support or oppose, I investigate its multidimensional nature, and the importance of local factors and opportunities in determining public debates. Focusing on the dimensional choices and framing strategies of competing electoral actors, I propose an account of the different constitutive dimensions of immigration debates, and suggest that parties - next to competing over different issues - also compete with one another by selectively and strategically emphasizing different aspects of the same social reality. In particular, I identify three main dimensions of the immigration issue - the socioeconomic, cultural and religious, and law and order dimension - and seven specific frames corresponding to the arguments and justifications mobilized by political actors to articulate support and opposition to immigration. The construction of public agendas in electoral campaign periods is measured through an empirical content analysis of the coverage of local elections by newspapers and of local parties' electoral manifestos across two campaigns in the cities of Milan, Rome and Prato (2004-2011). The results show not only that debates in different local settings deal with immigration in substantively different ways, but also that parties' electoral strategies rely upon the thematic structure of the issue, exploiting immigration dimensions in order to increase the accessibility and resonance of their messages among local electorates. The results of this dissertation offer one of the first comprehensive analyses of an issue that has too often been considered "emerging" in party competition, showing that when the issue cannot be dismissed, actors compete on its constitutive dimensions by mobilizing aspects on which they enjoy a strategic advantage. These findings pave the way to connect this field of research with other promising areas within the social and political sciences, such as public opinion research and the study of mediatization and communication in party politics, providing new insights into electoral politics and campaigning.

The purpose of this thesis is to explore the current linguistic situation of the Venetian language (a minority language spoken in the northeastern Italian region of Veneto) and its relationship with Italian, the official language of Italy. This is a study of Venetian people and how they are reacting to the changes occurring to their language. To research the situation, I traveled to Italy, to the region of Veneto. My objective was to investigate and determine whether or not Venetian is, in fact, a language. If it is, is it on the verge of disappearing, or is there a chance that it might be maintained? Will Venetians shift completely from speaking their vernaculars to using only Italian? To gather data, I used qualitative research including participant observation, open-ended unstructured interviews with consultants, as well as internet and archival research in order to be able to glimpse the situation as seen by those who live it. Because I speak Italian and have relatives in the region, I was allowed to take part in many situations where I was able to observe familial language use, as well as the public attitudes concerning Venetian. I analyzed the Venetian situation by examining the ways in which we look at the words "language" and "dialect" from the linguistic, political and sociolinguistic perspectives, I looked at the situation through anthropological and socio-psychological theories of language choice, and how we understand the indicators of language loss, ethnicity, ethnic group strategies, and changes in identity as they relate to language shift. Although Venetian is a dialect in the political sense, subordinate to the official language, Italian, I found that the Venetian language is not derived from Italian, and so does not fit the linguistic definition of a dialect. However, it has been labeled a dialect and is understood as such by most Italians, including Venetians. This labelization has encouraged negative stereotyping and a measure of disuse. However, the recent secessionist movement has highlighted some of the linguistic issues, and brought more attention to the possibility of preserving Venetian. I recommend changes that alter the negative attitudes towards Venetian and other vernaculars, changes that include focusing on encouraging new and innovative utilization of local languages (art, literature and plays, etc.) and establishing and implementing curricula in the educational system that emphasizes the regional history and its contribution to the present day Italy. Changes such as those mentioned should encourage more acceptance of others and encourage the usage of local languages as well as increase peoples' pride in their ethnic heritage.
Graduation date: 2003

Defence date: 4 June 2013
Examining Board: Professor Martin Kohli, EUI (Supervisor); Professor Joan Bestard Camps, University of Barcelona (External Co-supervisor); Professor Fabrizio Bernardi, EUI; Professor Enric Porqueres i Gené, EHESS.
PDF of thesis uploaded from the Library digital archive of EUI PhD theses
The phenomenon of people crossing regional and national borders to seek assisted reproduction occurs in many countries across the world and involves different actors, including patients, doctors, fertility clinic practitioners, law-makers, donors, surrogates, children, brokers, and others who take part in the globalised industry of assisted reproductive technologies. This dissertation focuses on the experience of Italian reproductive travellers who seek donor conception treatments outside national borders, as a reaction to Italian regulations on assisted reproduction banning gamete donation in Italy. Through the qualitative analysis of the narrations and practices of heterosexual couples, same-sex couples and single women, this work explores the ways in which people face different reproductive itineraries with the aim of achieving reproduction through donor conception in a context of law evasion. In particular, it takes into account the process that leads people to choose donor conception abroad and investigates the ways in which people make sense of this choice in relation to their understanding of kinship formation. The feelings that accompany this process, the concepts that people mobilise to make both law evasion and donor conception practice coherent with their reproductive goals, and the strategies that they employ to "kin" their donor-conceived children are presented and analysed. This study highlights the fact that Italian CBRC travellers who seek donation treatments abroad mainly consider their reproductive experience as a transgressive act, because by doing so they circumvent laws that forbid those treatments locally. They tend to support the moral validity of their choices by arguing that it aims to accomplish what they perceive as a "normal" goal (having a child). Nonetheless, the recourse to such a reproductive experience challenges existing cultural understandings and the social organisation of kinship.

Defence date: 18 April 2016
Examining Board: Profesor Luca Molà, European University Institute, Florence; Profesor Stéphane Van Damme, European University Institute, Florence; Profesor Tim Carter, University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill; Profesor Carmen Sanz Ayán, Universidad Complutense de Madrid.
Many scholars have shown the importance of musical education for noblemen in late Renaissance Italy. For both individuals and groups, music could be used as a tool for process of self-identity, helping them to construct their aesthetical forma del vivere. In fact, along with a sum of literate and aesthetical knowledge, music was an integral element of the culture of la conversazione. Noblemen and noblewomen displayed a large variety of artistic and literary virtues in courtly, academic and private-exclusive gatherings, in order to create distinctive spaces of sociability and self-fashioning. However, could the printing of music, composed by noblemen, affect or contradict their socio-cultural rules of distinction, exclusiveness and discretion? To address this issue, my dissertation will focus on the period between 1570 and 1620, in the Italian peninsula; where there was a major accumulation of composers who identified themselves as nobili or gentiluomini on the covers of their books. Through the case of count Alfonso Fontanelli, from Reggio Emilia, the aim of this thesis is to explore the role of musical composition in nobles' cultural sociability (incorporated in friendly and patronage networks) and the processes of construction of Fontanelli's cultural selfprestige. Fontanelli's biography provides a variety of socio-cultural experiences and interactions in the three different cities where he displayed his musical virtues: Ferrara, Rome and Florence. Hence, this case study allows us to compare the diverse functions of music for the nobility of these three cities (considering their respective socio-political and cultural particularities) as well as to contrast Fontanelli with other noble composers of the time. Finally, the results of this thesis will offer interesting reflections about the plasticity of noble culture and its relation with music, the diversity of socio-cultural strategies through musical practices, and the complex social dynamics involved in the concept of "authorship" in printed music.

Defence date: 19 April 2001
Examining Board: Eugenia Casini Ropa (DAMS, Università di Bologna, Supervisore esterno) ; Mark Franko (University of California, Santa Cruz) ; Luisa Passerini (Istituto Universitario Europeo, Supervisore) ; Barbara Sparti (Roma)
First made available online on 4 May 2018

Public diplomacy is understood as the public and interactive dimension of diplomacy. Listening has long been considered a core public diplomacy activity; however, the introduction of social media platforms like Twitter and Facebook have challenged and altered this activity. This thesis investigates how public diplomacy actors are (re)articulating their practices with the introduction of social media. It further considers how social media can be used more effectively to advance listening and engagement (with both foreign and domestic publics) in public diplomacy. To develop the theoretical foundations for this study, I connect public diplomacy scholarship with a new wave of literature that has argued that listening is a critical and previously neglected component of dialogic engagement. In the theoretical part of the thesis I develop the idea of a ‘spectrum of listening’, conceptualising listening as a set of diverse communicative choices and practices that are available to public diplomacy actors. Using this spectrum, this thesis endorses active listening and the embedded concept of dialogic engagement as a concrete yardstick by which to assess successful public diplomacy listening on social media. To explore ways in which social media can extend and enrich listening practices in public diplomacy, I focus my empirical research on Twitter. I argue that quantitative Twitter analytics represent an opportunity to conduct large-scale listening to foreign and domestic publics. However, I argue that such analytics, while useful, do not provide comprehensive insights about the quality of listening and engagement. In order to address this, I propose an innovative mixed method approach that combines ‘thick’ (focused and contextualised) and ‘thin’ (largescale) analysis. To develop and test this methodological approach, the study investigates two international events as exploratory case studies: the 2014 G20 summit in Australia and Expo 2015 in Italy. These cases exemplify the involvement of domestic and foreign publics in discussing and debating important global issues on social media, and the ways in which public diplomacy actors do and do not listen. In summary, I consider listening to be a representational force: a public and active response to publics who are increasingly demanding not only to participate, but also to be listened to. The findings demonstrate that thick and thin listening and, in particular, being seen to listen, are the condition sine qua non for conducting successful digitally mediated public diplomacy.

Defence date: 23 February 2001
Examining board: Franco Angiolini, supervisor (Università di Pisa) ; Lorenzo Bianconi (Università di Bologna) ; Hans-Erich Bödeker (Max-Planck Institut, Göttingen e IUE ; Iain Fenlon (Università di Cambridge)
PDF of thesis uploaded from the Library digitised archive of EUI PhD theses completed between 2013 and 2017

Defence date: 28 September 2015
Examining Board: Professor Giulia Calvi, EUI and Università di Siena (Supervisor); Professor Bartolomé Yun-Casalilla, EUI and Universodad Pablo de Olavide; Professor Sandra Cavallo, Royal Holloway-University of London; Professor John Henderson, Birkbeck College, London.
Scholarship on the history of early modern madness agrees on the fact that madness was largely a family matter during the period. Not only confinement was used as a last resort, but the range of public provisions to respond to mental afflictions were eminently temporary. Furthermore, although medical practitioners developed increasingly relevant contributions in the field of diagnosis and treatment of mental afflictions, during the eighteenth century madness was still primarily identified, experienced and managed by the families. Building on these arguments, this dissertation is concerned with how early modern understandings of and responses to madness were negotiated between families, medical and legal professionals, authorities and the communities. Intersecting the history of madness and medicine with legal history, the history of the family and gender and the history of emotions, the dissertation examines the spaces in which madness made an appearance in eighteenth-century Tuscany, paying particular attention to the circulation of languages, both across legal and institutional spaces, and between lay society, medical practitioners and magistrates. Through its study of the itineraries of madness, the dissertation suggests that litigants and witnesses adapted their notions of mental affliction and changed their language according to each space of appearance. The core of the discussion is based on interdiction procedures, the civil law inquiries into mental capacity handled by the Magistrato dei Pupilli et Adulti, which are examined against criminal procedures, hospital records, medical consultations, and records of the police. The dissertation argues that the Tuscan legal framework provided open and deliberately vague categories of madness and mental incapacity derived from a long legal tradition which remained mostly unchanged. However, while in terms of legal vocabulary long-term continuities seem to predominate, eighteenth-century records show a shift in the meanings of madness, opening to new social concerns and to new codifications of familial conflict. Initially bound primarily to patrimony and financial mismanagement, the understandings of madness became increasingly open to the emotional and relational dimensions of insanity, suggesting an interesting interplay between lay and medical notions of deviance.

Thesis explores the ways in which Information and Communication Technology (ICT)use, specifically that of telephones and the Internet, impacts the lives of Eritrean refugees in Rome, Italy. Informal interviews, semi-structured interviews, and participant observation were carried out in a 'center of second reception.' Results show that information obtained through the use of ICT acts on the imaginations of refugees, encouraging or discouraging movement to alternative locations. ICT use can help maintain a sense of emotional "closeness" to family members abroad for some, but not for others. Limitations in access to ICT exist for the refugees and their families in Eritrea that crosscut multiple socio-demographic categories. Finally, surveillance, enacted through ICT use, negotiates power between the Eritrean state and its subjects in the diaspora.
Graduation date: 2012

Defence date: 15 April 1999
Examining Board: Prof. Alberto De Bernardi, Università di Bologna ; Prof. Tommaso Detti, Università di Siena ; Prof. Olwen Hufton, Merton College, Oxford (supervisor) ; Prof. Luisa Passerini, Istituto Universitario Europeo
PDF of thesis uploaded from the Library digitised archive of EUI PhD theses completed between 2013 and 2017

This thesis examines the convergence of neoliberal rhetoric across popular media, academic, and institutional discourses, and draws connections between contemporary women's travel literature and common scripts in study abroad promotion. Finding such narratives to be freighted with ethnocentric constructs and tacit endorsements of market-based globalization, I critique the mainstreaming of neoliberal attitudes that depict travel as a commodity primarily valuable for its role in increasing the worth of U.S. American personhood. I question both the prevailing definitions of "global citizenship" and the ubiquitous claims that study abroad prepares students for "success in the global economy" as ideological signifiers of a higher education system that is increasingly corporatized. Utilizing a postcolonial and transnational feminist theoretical framework, the thesis offers a literary analysis of contemporary women's travel memoirs, examining patterns of narcissism and "othering" in their depictions of cross-cultural encounter, and connects these neoliberal trends to consumerism in higher education, study abroad, and post-second wave feminism. Shared themes in the representation of privileged U.S./Western women abroad and the student-consumer model in higher education bespeak a movement toward individual international engagements that reinforce corporate motives for travel and endorse the commodification of global environments, cultures, and people. In hopes of contesting this paradigm, I argue for the reassertion of a social justice-oriented definition of global citizenship and for educational models that foster self-criticism and the decolonization of knowledge.
Graduation date: 2012