scholarly journals Ordinary Exemplars: Cultivating “the Everyday” in the Birthplace of Fascism

Author(s):  
Paolo Heywood

Abstract This paper examines the ways in which “ordinariness” can come to be exemplified as a virtue. It does so by comparing the status of ordinariness in historical and present-day Predappio, the town in which Mussolini was born and is buried. It describes the ways in which Predappio was mobilized by the Fascist regime as an exemplar of an ordinary Italian town, rendered extraordinary by its wholesale reconstruction as a jewel in the crown of Fascist urban planning. In similar fashion, Mussolini’s ordinary rural upbringing was mobilized in the service of propagandizing his extraordinary and exemplary leadership. In contemporary Predappio, by contrast, ordinariness is what locals reach for to contest understandings of their home as irrevocably associated with the extraordinary Fascist heritage they have inherited. One of the ways in which they do so is to celebrate a local exemplar of this ordinariness, Giuseppe Ferlini, the town’s first postwar mayor. In contrast to Mussolini, Ferlini’s ordinariness is not a backdrop to future greatness, but exactly the quality for which he is celebrated. I assert that these cases demonstrate the need for vigilance in analytic usage of the category of “the ordinary,” which sometimes tacitly assumes the existence of “the ordinary” as a scale in itself, independent of human action. I argue instead that “the ordinary” may be the object of ethical labor, rather than its site, and that exemplification may be a form of such labor, in both our accounts and the lives of those we study.

Ars Adriatica ◽  
2015 ◽  
pp. 67
Author(s):  
Josip Belamarić

It can be said that the town statute of Split and the stipulations concerning the everyday life in this medieval town are not characterized by the aim to create an ideal city and, in this, they are far from the long-range urban planning contained in the statute of Dubrovnik. The fact that less than five per cent of the stipulations in the statute of Split relate to urban planning ought to be understood as indicating that the town, set in Diocletian’s Palace and determined by its structures, had already been defined to a large extent and that it functioned well and fulfilled the needs of its inhabitants. Thirty chapters of the statute deal with different aspects of the development of medieval Split and its everyday maintenance. This article focuses on the relationship between the local government and private property, that is, with the cases of private spaces being transformed into public spaces and the ‘ritualistic erasures’, that is, the demolition of houses whose owners committed treason and broke the law. This phenomenon of demolition as setting example was not limited to medieval Split but was recorded in other Dalmatian communes (in Omiš and Dubrovnik as late as the eighteenth century) and this discussion of it is based on the examination of a wider set of primary sources.


Ars Adriatica ◽  
2015 ◽  
pp. 67
Author(s):  
Josip Belamarić

t can be said that the town statute of Split and the stipulations concerning the everyday life in this medieval town are not characterized by the aim to create an ideal city and, in this, they are far from the long-range urban planning contained in the statute of Dubrovnik. The fact that less than five per cent of the stipulations in the statute of Split relate to urban planning ought to be understood as indicatingthat the town, set in Diocletian’s Palace and determined by its structures, had already been defined to a large extent and that it functioned well and fulfilled the needs of its inhabitants. Thirty chapters of the statute deal with different aspects of the development of medieval Split and its everyday maintenance. This article focuses on the relationship between the local government and private property, that is, with the cases of private spaces being transformed into public spaces and the ‘ritualistic erasures’, that is, the demolition of houses whose owners committed treason and broke the law. This phenomenon of demolition as setting example was not limited to medieval Split but was recorded in other Dalmatian communes (in Omiš and Dubrovnik as late as the eighteenth century) and this discussion of it is based on the examination of a wider set of primary sources.


Author(s):  
Janusz Adam Frykowski

SUMMARYNon-city starosty of Tyszowce was located in the province of Belz and received the status of royal land in 1462. Its territory included the town of Tyszowce and villages: Mikulin, Perespa, Klatwy and Przewale. In the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries the starosty suffered from a significant increase of various negative phenomena. The crown lands had bitterly tasted devastating fires, epidemics, contributions, requisitions, robberies and field devastations. All these disasters were caused mainly by war and military activities. Marches of soldiers and quartering of troops greatly contributed to the situation and were usually associated with the need of maintaining the soldiers. The requisitions of food, alcohol, cattle, horses and poultry were particularly burdensome for the people. The greatest economic devastation as regards the resources of the starosty and its people was caused by monetary contributions, usually several times higher than the financial capacity of the town and its inhabitants. This work focuses on damages to the starosty caused by the royal cavalry. According to the literature, it is clear that the behavior of the troops in Tyszowce Starosty was not different from the behavior of soldiers in other areas of Poland. It must be admitted that the reprehensible behavior of the army was influenced by many conditions, from the recruitment of people from backgrounds often involving conflict with law, as well as foreigners, to the accommodation system under which the soldiers were forced to supply themselves “on their own.”


2019 ◽  
Author(s):  
Grazianne-Geneve V. Mendoza ◽  
Christie Sio

Filipino:Sa loob ng mahabang panahon, ang mga metodong pampananaliksik na ginagamit sa Sikolohiyang Pilipino (SP) ay hango sa pang-araw-araw na pakikipag-ugnayan ng mga Pilipino. Ngunit makalipas ang higit 40 taon simula nang unang itatag ang SP, malaki na ang pinagbago ng pakikipag-ugnayan at pakikitungo ng mga Pilipino sa isa’t isa dahil sa modernisasyon at pag-unlad ng teknolohiya. Gayundin, dumarami na rin ang mga iskolar ng SP na kumikilala sa kahalagahan ng pagsasakatutubo-mula-sa-labas upang higit pang mapayaman ang disiplina. Kabilang dito ang pag-aangkop ng mga lapit at metodong pampananaliksik. Bilang tugon sa mga pagbabagong ito, tinatampok sa kasalukuyang pag-aaral ang experience sampling method (ESM), isang metodong malaki ang potensiyal ngunit hindi pa nagagamit sa kontekstong Pilipino. Kumpara sa mga tradisyunal na metodo, may kakayahan ang ESM na suriin at pag-aralan ang karanasan ng tao, kabilang na ang kaniyang damdamin, saloobin, at kilos, habang nangyayari ito mismo sa kasalukuyan. Upang higit na mailapit ito sa araw-araw na buhay at gawi ng mga kalahok, marami nang mga smartphone applications o apps na magagamit sa pagsasagawa ng ESM. Sa papel na ito, tinasa ang kaangkupan ng ESM bilang metodong pampananaliksik sa SP sa pamamagitan ng paggamit nito sa pag-aaral ng mga emosyonal na karanasan ng mga Pilipinong kalahok. Batay sa mga obserbasyong nakalap mula sa pag-aaral, masasabing mayroong natatanging kontribusyon ang ESM sa pag-unlad ng SP dahil tugma ito sa layunin ng disiplina at malapit ito sa araw-araw na pamumuhay ng mga Pilipino sa makabagong panahon. Iminumungkahi ang paggamit ng ESM katuwang ng iba pang metodong kasalukuyang tinatanggap sa SP upang higit na mapalalim ang pag-unawa sa karanasang Pilipino.English:For the longest time, the research methods used in Sikolohiyang Pilipino (SP) are those derived from the day-to-day manner of communication among Filipinos. However, more than 40 years since SP was first established, modernity and rapid advancements in technology have greatly changed the way Filipinos interact and communicate with each other. At the same time, scholars have increasingly recognized the importance of indigenization-from-without to further enrich the study of SP, including the adoption of non-indigenous approaches to research. In response to these changes, the current study features the Experience Sampling Method (ESM), which, though currently underutilized in the Filipino context, has great potential in the study of it. Compared to traditional research methods, ESM allows researchers to study people’s experiences, including their emotions, thoughts, and behaviors, as they occur in the present. Furthermore, ESM smartphone applications or apps have been created to facilitate the use of ESM in obtaining a more representative sample of the everyday lives of participants. This paper aims to evaluate the appropriateness of ESM as a research method to be used in the study of SP. To do so, ESM was used to study the emotional experiences of Filipino participants. The observations derived from the study lend support to the unique contribution of ESM to the advancement of SP because it coincides with the goals of the discipline and simulates the day-to-day lives of Filipinos in the modern age. As such, ESM is recommended to be used with other methods currently used in SP to further deepen our understanding of the lives of Filipinos.


Religions ◽  
2021 ◽  
Vol 12 (1) ◽  
pp. 36
Author(s):  
Kholoud Al-Ajarma

The Muslim pilgrimage to Mecca (Hajj) is one of the five pillars of Islam and a duty which Muslims must perform—once in a lifetime—if they are physically and financially able to do so. In Morocco, from where thousands of pilgrims travel to Mecca every year, the Hajj often represents the culmination of years of preparation and planning, both spiritual and logistical. Pilgrims often describe their journey to Mecca as a transformative experience. Upon successfully completing the pilgrimage and returning home, pilgrims must negotiate their new status—and the expectations that come with it—within the mundane and complex reality of everyday life. There are many ambivalences and tensions to be dealt with, including managing the community expectations of piety and moral behavior. On a personal level, pilgrims struggle between staying on the right path, faithful to their pilgrimage experience, and straying from that path as a result of human imperfection and the inability to sustain the ideals inspired by pilgrimage. By ethnographically studying the everyday lives of Moroccans after their return from Mecca, this article seeks to answer the questions: how do pilgrims encounter a variety of competing expectations and demands following their pilgrimage and how are their efforts received by members of their community? How do they shape their social and religious behavior as returned pilgrims? How do they deal with the tensions between the ideals of Hajj and the realities of daily life? In short, this article scrutinizes the religious, social and personal ramifications for pilgrims after the completion of Hajj and return to their community. My research illustrates that pilgrimage contributes to a process of self-formation among pilgrims, with religious and non-religious dimensions, which continues long after Hajj is over and which operates within, and interacts with, specific social contexts.


2021 ◽  
Vol 69 (2) ◽  
pp. 484-499
Author(s):  
Helen Traill

The question of what community comes to mean has taken on increasing significance in sociological debates and beyond, as an increasingly politicised term and the focus of new theorisations. In this context, it is increasingly necessary to ask what is meant when community is invoked. Building on recent work that positions community as a practice and an ever-present facet of human sociality, this article argues that it is necessary to consider the powerful work that community as an idea does in shaping everyday communal practices, through designating collective space and creating behavioural expectations. To do so, the article draws on participant observation and interviews from a community gardening site in Glasgow that was part of a broader research project investigating the everyday life of communality within growing spaces. This demonstrates the successes but also the difficulties of carving out communal space, and the work done by community organisations to enact it. The article draws on contemporary community theory, but also on ideas from Davina Cooper about the role of ideation in social life. It argues for a conceptual approach to communality that does not situate it as a social form or seek it in everyday practice, but instead considers the vacillation between the ideation and practices of community: illustrated here in a designated community place. In so doing, this approach calls into focus the frictions and boundaries produced in that process, and questions the limits of organisational inclusivity.


1951 ◽  
Vol 45 (1) ◽  
pp. 1-17 ◽  
Author(s):  
James K. Pollock

In presenting my valedictory to this distinguished Association which has honored me by selecting me as its President, I should like to point out by way of introduction what has happened to this office, and therefore to me, during the past year. I have heard of one of my distinguished predecessors some twenty-five years ago who had little else to do as President of this Association than work all year on his presidential address. This was important work and I have no word of criticism of it. But the Association has changed, and today it leaves to the harried wearer of its presidential toga little time to reflect about the status of political science and his own impact, if any, upon it. An active Association life, now happily centered in our new Washington office, is enough to occupy the full time of your President, and universities as well as this Association might well take note. Therefore, in presenting my own reflections to you this evening in accordance with the custom of our Association, I do so without the benefit of the generous time and scholarly leisure which were the privileges of some of my distinguished predecessors.Nevertheless I do base my presidential address today upon my own active participation in the problems of government, as well as upon my scholarly experience. I have extracted it in part from the dynamics of pulsating political life. It has whatever authority I may possess after having been exposed these twenty-five years to the cross-fire of politics, domestic and foreign, as well as to the benign and corrective influences of eager students and charitable colleagues.


2015 ◽  
Vol 32 (9) ◽  
pp. 1358-1378 ◽  
Author(s):  
Katherine Brickell

This article examines victims’ purported complicity in the judicial failures of domestic violence law to protect them in Cambodia. It is based on 3 years (2012-2014) of research in Siem Reap and Pursat Provinces on the everyday politics of the 2005 “Law on the Prevention of Domestic Violence and the Protection of the Victims” (DV Law). The project questioned why investments in DV Law are faltering and took a multi-stakeholder approach to do so. In addition to 40 interviews with female domestic violence victims, the research included 50 interviews with legal and health professionals, NGO workers, low- and high-ranking police officers, religious figures, and local government authority leaders who each have an occupational investment in the implementation and enforcement of DV Law. Forming the backbone of the article, the findings from this latter sample reveal how women are construed not only as barriers “clouding the judgment of law” but also as actors denying the agency of institutional stakeholders (and law itself) to bring perpetrators to account. The findings suggest that DV Law has the potential to entrench, rather than diminish, an environment of victim blaming. In turn, the article signals the importance of research on, and better professional support of, intermediaries who (discursively) administrate the relationship between DV Law and the victims/citizens it seeks to protect.


2013 ◽  
Vol 44 (2) ◽  
pp. 244-261 ◽  
Author(s):  
Amedeo Giorgi

Abstract Whenever one reads internal histories of psychology what is covered is the establishment of a lab by Wundt in 1879 as the initiating act and then the breakaway movements of the 20th Century are discussed: Behaviorism, Gestalt Theory, Psychoanalysis, and most recently the Cognitive revival. However, Aron Gurwitsch described a perspective noted by Cassirer and first developed by Malebranche, which dates the founding of psychology at the same time as that of physics in the 17th Century. This external perspective shows the dependency of psychology upon the concepts, methods and procedures of physics and the natural sciences in general up until the present time. Gurwitsch argues that this approach has blocked the growth of psychology and has assured its status as a minor science. He argued that the everyday Lifeworld achievements of subjectivity are the true subject matter of psychology and that a phenomenological approach to subjectivity could give psychology the authenticity it has been forever seeking but never finding as a naturalistic science. Some clarifying thoughts concerning this phenomenologically grounded psychology are offered, especially the role of desire. The assumption of an external perspective toward the history of psychology fostered the insights about psychology’s scientific role.


2018 ◽  
Vol 100 (2) ◽  
pp. 62-63
Author(s):  
Joshua P. Starr

Phi Delta Kappa’s CEO, Joshua Starr, points out that while school boards may tell their newly hired superintendents to be bold, visionary leaders, the job tends to include built-in incentives — such as a pension system that rewards longevity — to play it safe. If district leaders aim to challenge longstanding patterns of inequity in their local schools, they must be willing to take a stand against those who benefit from the status quo, even if that eventually costs them their job. Of course, not everybody can afford to do so.


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