Italian Perspectives on Pandemic Responses: Tracing Early Critiques from Europe’s First Lockdown

Author(s):  
Andrea Fumagalli ◽  
Sara Gandini ◽  
Cristina Morini

Abstract This paper is a translation of three early critiques of the responses of the Covid-19 pandemic in Italy, each addressing a unique facet and different perspective of Europe’s first lockdown. Through bringing together these memorial traces, the article captures the heterogeneity of discussions taking place on the left at the very beginning of the pandemic, destabilizing a totalizing framing of Covid responses through simple binaries such as health vs economics or individual rights vs the collective good. Crisitina Morini addresses the ambivalences around the term ‘care’ (in Italian meaning both ‘attention’ and ‘cure’). Grounded in feminist economics, she argues for the establishment of a self-determination income envisioned as an unconditional and universal income, not linked to working positions. Sara Gandini ponders the possibility of turning anger into a political force and questions what forms this could take. Highlighting the problems related to turning a public health issue into one of national security, Gandini probes the politics of acceptability around Covid-related deaths against non-Covid related deaths, particularly deaths precisely exacerbated by confinement strategies. She speaks also of the silencing and policing of dissent when one tries to raise such issues in the public space. Lastly, Andrea Fumagalli uses the idea of crisis as an opportunity to rethink social and economic issues. These include readjusting the balance between private and public healthcare, (especially as Covid treatments are not very profitable), the implementation of a major European investment plan relating to social infrastructure and the environment, which will relaunch the European economy. Though these critiques were formulated at the start of the pandemic. many of the arguments and questions the authors asked themselves at the time remain highly topical: the role of welfare and income, the regulatory devices (including gender) that risk passing using the fight against the pandemic; all of which are central to maintaining a lucidity of analysis and to be resistant witnesses, politicizing anger to turn it into an agency that takes advantage of this difficult experience to build a slightly better world.

2014 ◽  
Vol 48 (1) ◽  
Author(s):  
Friedrich W. De Wet

After almost two decades of democratic rule in South Africa, patterns of withdrawal and uncertainty about the complexities involved in defining the contents, rationality and impact of the public role of the church in society seem to be prevalent. As unabated levels of corruption and its sustained threat to sustainable development point out, a long-awaited reckoning should take place – at least in the circles of South African churches from reformed origin – regarding its rich tradition of critical and transformational prophetic involvement in the public space. In this article, the author places different models for the public role of the church in the field of tension that is generated when the private and public spheres meet each other. The author anticipates different configurations that will probably form in this field of tension in the cases of respectively the Two Kingdoms Model, the Neo-Calvinist Approach and the Communicative Rationality Approach.Die rol van profetiese prediking in publieke teologie: Die implikasies vir die hantering van korrupsie in ‘n konteks van volhoubare ontwikkeling. Na bykans twee dekades van demokratiese regering in Suid-Afrika blyk dit dat patrone van onttrekking en onsekerheid oor wat die inhoud, rasionaliteit en impak van die publieke rol van die kerk in die samelewing presies behels, steeds voortduur. In ‘n situasie waaruit dit blyk dat daar geen werklike teenvoeter is vir die hoë vlakke van korrupsie asook vir die bedreiging wat dit vir volhoubare ontwikkeling inhou nie, is dit hoog tyd dat die kerk, ten minste in die geval van die Suid-Afrikaanse kerke van reformatoriese oorsprong, diep oor sy profetiese rol in die samelewing moet besin. Hierdie kerke kom uit ‘n ryke tradisie van kritiese en transformerende betrokkenheid in die publieke sfeer. In hierdie artikel plaas die outeur verskillende modelle vir die publieke rol van die kerk in die spanningsveld wat gegenereer word wanneer die private en publieke sfere mekaar ontmoet. Die outeur antisipeer verskillende konfigurasies wat waarskynlik na vore sal tree in hierdie spanningsveld in die gevalle van onderskeidelik die Twee Koninkryke Model, die Neo-Calvinistiese Benadering en die Kommunikatiewe Rasionaliteit Benadering.


Coronaviruses ◽  
2020 ◽  
Vol 01 ◽  
Author(s):  
Saeed Khan ◽  
Tusha Sharma ◽  
Basu Dev Banerjee ◽  
Scotty Branch ◽  
Shea Harrelson

: Currently, Coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) has transformed into a severe public health crisis and wreaking havoc worldwide. The ongoing pandemic has exposed the public healthcare system's weaknesses and highlighted the urgent need for investments in scientific programs and policies. A comprehensive program utilizing the science and technologydriven strategies combined with well-resourced healthcare organizations appears to be essential for current and future outbreak management.


Author(s):  
Pierre Pestieau ◽  
Mathieu Lefebvre

This chapter looks at the role of the public versus the private sector in the provision of insurance against social risks. After having discussed the evolution of the role of the family as support in the first place, the specificity of social insurance is emphasized in opposition to private insurance. Figures show the extent of spending on both private and public insurance and the chapter presents economic reasons to why the latter is more developed than the former. Issues related to moral hazard and adverse selection are addressed. The chapter also discusses somewhat more general arguments supporting social insurance such as population ageing, unemployment, fiscal competition and social dumping.


Author(s):  
Aga Skrodzka

This article argues for the importance of preserving the visual memory of female communist agency in today’s Poland, at the time when the nation’s relationship to its communist past is being forcefully rearticulated with the help of the controversial Decommunization Act, which affects the public space of the commons. The wholesale criminalization of communism by the ruling conservative forces spurred a wave of historical and symbolic revisions that undermine the legacy of the communist women’s movement, contributing to the continued erosion of women’s rights in Poland. By looking at recent cinema and its treatment of female communists as well as the newly published accounts of the communist women’s movement provided by feminist historians and sociologists, the project sheds light on current cultural debates that address the status of women in postcommunist Poland and the role of leftist legacy in such debates.


BIOEDUKASI ◽  
2019 ◽  
Vol 17 (2) ◽  
pp. 75
Author(s):  
Oktofa Setia Pamungkas ◽  
Henny Ayu Nirwala ◽  
Dina Mala Pardede

Nearly 90% of people spend their time in both private and public indoor spaces. Bank is one of the public indoor spaces accessible to the community, as well as a place for some workers spending time every day. This study was conducted in 6 banking sectors in Samarinda, East Kalimantan, focusing on the existence of microorganisms such as bacteria and fungi/mold. The purpose was to investigate the number of microorganisms, both bacteria and fungi, contained in indoor areas of several bank offices in Samarinda. The results showed that the number of bacteria and fungi at several sampling points in 6 offices were above the standard of Permenaker RI No. 5 the year of 2018 and Permenkes RI No. 48 the year of 2016, i.e.,>700 cfu/m3 for bacteria and >1000 cfu/m3 for fungi.


Author(s):  
Luciano Cupelloni

AbstractThe theme is the urban re-qualification, applied in particular to the architectural heritage and the public space. The goal is the ongoing challenge of outlining a new perspective aimed at “common good” and sustainability. The instrument chosen is the “environmental technological design,” understood as a cultural, scientific, and social position, that is, as a position on the role of architecture. The contribution reiterates the urgency of restoring the transformative power of the design mission to the project, too often reduced to a set of technical compilation procedures. In the best cases, a position that is lost in the complication of procedures, in the extension of time, in the waste of economic and human resources. A crisis of the project as “anticipation” of progressive scenarios, precisely in the most acute, ever more serious phase, of the urgency of the reorganization of urban systems, with a view to environmental, social and economic sustainability. Not a recent urgency, today only brought to light, dramatically, by the reality of the SARS-CoV-2 pandemic. Among the solutions, the design experimental research, well beyond the objective of flexibility, up to the notion of “functional indifference,” understood not as shapeless neutrality, but as the maximum functionality of spatial, architectural and urban quality.


2020 ◽  
Vol 1 (2) ◽  
pp. 70-89
Author(s):  
Ahmad Yasid ◽  
Moh Juhdi

Abstract   Islam, religion of tolerance and love of peace is one of Habiburrahman El Shirazy’s, it is a study indicating the values ​​of love and tolerance of Islam in the modern public space area. This study used the underlying theory of the values ​​of love and tolerance as well as the role of Islam in modern times that has been developing in the public discourse that in the history of human civilization there are several things that must be understood that humans have the sense to differentiate between humans and other creatures. From this reason humans can do something to explore and explain things that are not known by others. The method that is used in data collection technique is documentation technique, because this study is descriptive qualitative. This study examines several things including the values of love and tolerance because accepting differences is a distinct pleasure for each particular societies in other words, not seeing other people as deviants or enemies but as partner to complement each other by having an equal position and equally valid and valuable as a way of managing life and living life both individually and collectively. Acceptance of differences demands changes in the legal rule in people's lives so that the role of religion in the modern public space area becomes a middle way to build diversity and a nature that must both appreciate and respect one another, this diversity is seen in the portrait of everyday life which then creates peace, and harmony in interacting with all elements of society.    


Author(s):  
Sariffuddin Sariffuddin ◽  
Hadi Wahyono ◽  
Brotosunaryo Brotosunaryo

This paper aims to understand the role of urbanization in the emergence of in urban area street vendors. In the case of Semarang, more than 54% of its street vendors come from its hinterlands. These sectors turn to development dichotomy that have a positive and negative impact. Positively, this area becomes peoples economic resilience. In the negative side, more than 60% of vendors make their stall in the public space. This research uses a mix-method approach taking 271 samples, Focus Group Discussion (FGD) and in-depth interview. From this study, it can be concluded that urbanization has led to the outbreak of street vendors through (1) rural-urban migration, and (2) social change as a result of gentrification. Working as street vendors turned out to be an alternative way of life to adapt to global economic uncertainty. Also, there are 71.6% of street vendors open their stalls in 2003-2009, or about 6-7 years after the monetary crisis (1997). It shows that the financial crisis is not the primary trigger for the outbreak of street vendors. Another interesting finding is that there is a new phenomenon in the form of the intervention of the middle class who took part in this business.


IG ◽  
2021 ◽  
Vol 44 (4) ◽  
pp. 328-335
Author(s):  
Hartmut Marhold

The European Union (EU) invests huge resources in overcoming the pandemic crisis and does so as a learning system: The Union learned lessons from the previous, the financial, economic and state debt crisis after 2008, in many ways. The EU assumes now definitely the role of an active player in the economy, leaving behind the neoliberal doctrine; she suspends the restrictive budgetary policy, which prevented already in 2008 and the following years adequate solutions; she reshaped the control over its financial aid programmes so that harsh conflict between member states („troika“) are mitigated; the Union further refined the public private partnership mechanisms established unter the aegis of the European Investment Bank (EIB); the European Central Bank (ECB) assumes now a role still disputed after 2008; the flexibility clauses of the Lisbon Treaty, just put into force after 2008, are now extensively applied; and, more than anything else, the Union aims at a change of paradigm by putting the NextGenerationEU programme at the service of sustainable development (enshrined in the Green Deal).


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