Antropologia Pubblica

Editoriale

Marco Bassi — 2024-12-09

“The Death of a Bear”

Dario Novellino — 2024-12-09

Scholarly works have proposed that human-carnivore coexistence is a multi-faceted issue that requires an in-depth understanding of the diverse attitudes and perspectives of the communities living with large carnivores (Glikman, et al. 2019), as well of the social, economic and interpersonal dimension of conflicts (Ciucci, Boitani 2005; Linnell, Cretois 2020; Salvatori, et al. 2020). However, as of now, the debate over the coexistence of large carnivores (LCs) and extensive grazing systems has become so highly polarized, to the extent of preventing different actors from seeking alternative interpretations and actions. In trying to identify the social context and the circumstances surrounding the killing of a bear, this research assesses the production and reproduction of different discourses by multiple actors, on Human/LCs coexistence and how these have come to permeate an entire society’s understanding of people-nature relations (Descola, Pálsson 1996; Igoe, et al. 2010). It also argues that the presumed ontological supremacy and universality of nature, which underlies the emerging discourse on rewilding is further contributing to reinforcing well-established mechanisms of power and knowledge and a kind of relativism, which neglects local epistemologies and pastoralists’ perceptions of landscape. Overall, research findings suggest that any significant advance in facilitating coexistence between extensive grazing systems and LCs requires a comprehensive examination of the ontologies of those who work within, and ultimately shape rangelands. Such a scrutiny, in turn, can empirically inform and promote a genuine power shift towards inclusive LCs management and conservation (Ciucci, Boitani 2009).

Faglie di rischio. Delocalizzazioni, spaesamenti e appaesamenti alle pendici del Monte Etna

Mara Benadusi — 2024-12-09

Between 2023 and 2024, the Department of Political and Social Sciences at the University of Catania, in collaboration with the National Institute of Geophysics and Volcanology (INGV) and the Commissioner’s Office for the Reconstruction of the Etna Area (SCRAE), launched an experimental project on disaster anthropology. This research focused on the relocation processes affecting households in nine municipalities on the eastern slope of Mount Etna, impacted by the severe seismic event of December 26, 2018. Local authorities adopted a selective relocation strategy, moving only families whose homes and productive activities were located near the fault line, marking a notable departure from traditional post-seismic reconstruction strategies in Italy. The project explored the experiences of forced displacement and the evolving dynamics of homemaking that followed. Key findings included the role of economic incentives in fostering acceptance of institutional decisions, the positive impact of negotiation mechanisms employed by the reconstruction agency, and the gradual reshaping of local perceptions about living in an area frequently exposed to moderate, yet potentially devastating, seismic events.

Ripensare l’emergenza. Denaturalizzare l’approccio emergenziale nella prima zona rossa italiana durante il Covid-19

Domenico Maria Sparaco — 2024-12-09

The article analyzes the establishment of Italy’s first red zone during the Covid-19 pandemic, focusing on the Lower Lodi region, and specifically Codogno. It examines the legal frameworks that enabled the implementation of this red zone and delve into immunization protocols, law enforcement, and their socio-political implications. Beyond the official narrative, the article incorporates ethnographic insights, highlighting the lived experiences of those subjected to the red zone’s regulations. The fieldwork reveals the limitations of this governmental intervention, challenging its effectiveness and prompting a reconsideration of emergency management strategies. The study ultimately calls for a critical rethinking of the politics of red zones, advocating for approaches that move beyond the constraints of traditional emergency governance.

Unfolding San Siro. antropologia, didattica sperimentale e spazio urbano

Stefano Pontiggia — 2024-12-09

The contribution reflects on anthropology’s role in experimental educational courses aiming at investigating the urban. The contribution will describe an experimental educational experience to train architects, planners, and professionals involved in building inclusive cities for migrant populations. The course was blended in nature, partly online and partly through two intensive workshops of one week each in two marginal neighbourhoods in Milan and Berlin. The Milan workshop took place in the ERP neighbourhood of San Siro. It was based on a didactic device to elaborate alternative forms of narrative and intervention alternative to those that insist on the territory.
In this distinctly interdisciplinary didactic context, the anthropological gaze can fruitfully interact with other knowledge at least two different levels.
On the one hand, some of anthropology’s research techniques can be creatively applied to educational paths of studying the city. Walking, interviewing, observing, and stimulating the ethnographic relationship through performative events are some techniques implemented in the workshop.
On the other hand, the anthropological gesture is also self-reflexive, implicated in the places in which it unfolds and building connections and comparisons between places and levels of analysis. In the specifics of the Milan workshop, these dimensions of anthropological gesture were translated into specific teaching tools with which students were confronted daily.
The paper will critically examine the relationship between anthropology and urban-applied didactics. On the other hand, Practices of Urban Inclusion shows possible futures for the anthropological study of the city in terms of methods of inquiry and socialization of research data.

Il CPR dell’Ortica. Etnografia di un rimosso urbano in un quartiere in via di riqualificazione

Barbara Russo — 2024-12-09

This present study aims to investigate the evolution of the relationship between the Administrative Detention Center of Milan, now referred to as CPR and located in Via Corelli, and the neighborhood in which it is located, the Ortica area in Lambrate, in the eastern suburbs of the city. Through an examination of this relationship and its temporal evolution, it is possible to develop an analysis of the interplay between the Centers designated for administrative detention and the social and economic dynamics of the surrounding territories. This investigation reveals how changes in urban dynamics correspond to shifts in the local role of the Center and its perception by the longstanding residents of the neighborhood.
To conduct this analysis, we will integrate two levels of research. On one hand, we will review the history of migrant housing in the Lambrate neighborhood from the 1990s to the present, tracing a trajectory of progressive confinement of migrant populations from informal living spaces to an initial reception center and subsequently to the current CPR in Via Corelli. On the other hand, we will contextualize this phenomenon within the urban planning and socio-economic history of a former Fordist periphery and a district undergoing requalification. This involves associating the identified stages in the management of migrant presence in the neighborhood with significant moments in the transformation of spatial valorization processes within the urban territory.

Listening to the Lived Experience of Black People in Italy. Subjectivity, Digital Representation, and Identity

Andrea Ruben Pomella — 2024-12-09

The article aims to explore the forms of representation and identity formation among the so-called second generations of migrants in Italy, particularly young Afro-descendants. By considering them as ephemeral cultural artifacts, and through the analysis of digital content created by certain public profiles on social platforms such as TikTok, we can gain a better understanding of the new identity processes embedded in the contemporary Italian social fabric. For these notes on digital ethnography, the extensive philosophical and political tradition of Blackness studies serves as a valuable archive to explore. Additionally, by listening to the lived experiences of two young Black individuals, I found that in opposition to what I call the microphysics of racism, there is a subjectivity aware of representing something new. Something they termed: “New generation”.

Fare e disfare territori. Percorsi urbani e futuri alternativi negli usi di sostanze

Giulia Nistri — 2024-12-09

This paper, based on my PhD research, reflects on different ways of crossing areas and spaces of life to explore possibilities of urban and existential transformations. Ethnography, drawing connections between places and people, was carried out involving consumers and users of substances and workers of health and outreach Services. Walking through the city with informants helps to perceive organizations and textures of spaces, feeling also rhythms that tend to circumscribe territories and regulate forms of lives. Lives that, sometimes, flowing, can trace trajectories capable of blurring boundaries and fences, creatively subverting entrances and exits.
Recalling surrealistic aesthetics and practices of montage, the article tries to explore the ways different movements and heterogeneous assemblages and productions, make and unmake territories. Following the intertwining of urban and existential trajectories, the text aims to trace a cartography moving through the potentialities of transformation and connections of the intensive and extensive experiences that take shape in the daily lives of the people I walked with. Experiences of movements, stories, and experiments that turn central for an ethnography that try to grasp ways and possibilities of carving out niches of life, sometimes amidst suffering and impasse, and picking up hints, sometimes residual, of the realization of alternative futures.

Vivere il proprio corpo nel presente. Temporalità e invecchiamento attivo in un Caffè Parkinson

Francesco Diodati — 2024-12-09

This article analyses the relationship between temporality and active ageing in a Parkinson Café. Drawing on ethnographic research, I discuss the functioning of discursive devices and bodily practices that revolve around what I define as the model of the “body in the present”. It is a set of discourses and practices that convey a positive and active vision of age by ascribing meaning to the relationship with one’s body in the present. Discursive practices and musicotherapy allow participants to detach from a biomedicalised way of living the ageing body that is always oriented to the future decline. Living the body in the present means in that context to positively live with ones ‘own physical limitations and being able to relate with other people. However, the efforts of participants and the psychologist was necessary to avoid that active ageing would have become an unrealistic idealized model which would have discriminated the people in the worst health conditions. This article contributes to the study of the relationships between active ageing, temporality and normativity in old age. It shows active ageing not only a dominant discourse but also an embodied experience which can be present-oriented rather than future-oriented. I argue that active ageing can effectively promote social integration, but relational and community work is needed to prevent active and positive visions of active age from reproducing social marginalization among older adults.

Le zampe bugiarde del drago Tarantasio. Stratificazione di un immaginario mitografico tra estrattivismo energetico, iconografie aziendali e arte politica

Marco Rossi — 2024-12-09

This paper explores the interplay of mythological imaginaries in Lodi’s territorial memories. It examines the myth of Lake Gerundo’s disappearance and dragon Tarantasio’s role, linking it to Eni’s post-war developments and highlighting debates in critical anthropology of heritage and ethnographic analyses of energy companies’ communication strategies. It also analyzes an artistic project which aims to manipulate this cultural heritage in order to promote awareness of political ecology practices. The work seeks to trace a cultural history of the relationships between inhabitants and their territory, emphasizing tensions surrounding the climate crisis and demonstrating how these can be addressed through artistic and cultural production. Tarantasio transitions from a local mythological entity to an emblem of extractive capitalism’s harmful impact. This transformation fosters both popular associations between Eni and Tarantasio and counter-hegemonic representations critiquing energy companies’ roles in the climate crisis. The paper underscores the convergence of energy companies, popular epistemologies and artistic endeavors in leveraging cultural heritage, understood as a source to be questioned and manipulated for respective rhetorical strategies.

Disputed Waters. Improving communities’ capacity to manage their water resources in Central Tanzania

Guido Nicolas Zingari — 2024-12-09

The report focuses on the issue of water resource management in the rural context of the central Dodoma region of Tanzania, seeking to understand, through Participatory Visual Research-Action, how community water management works. The legal framework regarding water resource management in Tanzania has evolved over the past 20 years. The Water Resource Management Act and Water Supply and Sanitation Act of 2009 define the establishment of community-based organizations in rural areas, promoting decentralization, financial autonomy and citizen participation in water resource management. The recent history and the political ecology of the micro-context in consideration highlights the growing vulnerability of soils and water resources since colonial time, the forms of resilience, and the organization of local communities in managing the present and the future. Analysis of the water environment reveals a strong link between water resources, social practices and ‘invisible infrastructure’ present in the daily lives of communities. The research shows how in this cultural context water sources are often considered sacred places, intertwined with beliefs, rituals or social practices that regulate the access to and the use of this resource. The observations intertwining highlight the vivid interactions that occur around domestic water points, transforming these public spaces into vital centres of socialization, information exchange and collaboration among community members. However, challenges related to plumbing problems, suspicions of corruption and tensions between residents and institutions also emerge, underscoring the need for greater transparency, community involvement and coordination between local actors and development organizations.

Paesaggi rurali II. Prospettive di ricerca per l’antropologia

Simonetta Grilli — 2024-12-09

Neoruralismo critico: una proposta di definizione

Maddalena Burzacchi — 2024-12-09

Il caso di Maridiana alpaca: market makers e non market takers!

Alessandra Persichetti — 2024-12-09

Politiche pubbliche e frizioni sociali nel sistema degli alpeggi rendeneri

Nicola Martellozzo — 2024-12-09

Ego-ecologie di un paesaggio che cambia. Trasimeno, il lago coltivato

Cinzia Marchesini — 2024-12-09

Paesaggi rurali, resilienza e innovazione. Antropologi ed antropologhe a supporto delle Comunità

Fabio Malfatti — 2024-12-09

Qui passa il treno. L’Alta Velocità a sud di Eboli: il paesaggio agrario alla prova delle infrastrutture

Simone Valitutto — 2024-12-09

Pratiche visuali

Valeria Luongo — 2024-12-09

Recensioni

Fabio Bertoni — 2024-12-09