scholarly journals The politicization of ill bodies in Campania, Italy

2017 ◽  
Vol 24 (1) ◽  
pp. 44 ◽  
Author(s):  
Ilenia Iengo ◽  
Marco Armiero

Abstract The communities affected by toxic contamination in Campania, Italy, have had to confront the challenge of proving a direct causal connection between exposure to pollutants and health issues, given a long history of mismanagement of waste. Medical studies have been conducted, but the social and political debate is static. In September 2014, the Italian Ministry of Health simply repeated earlier statements that Campania's increasing cancer rates are due to poor lifestyle habits. The article casts light on the politicization of ill bodies of Campania. We analyze three practices of political action and resistance which employed the subjectivization of physical bodies and illnesses to expose environmental injustice affecting communities. In the neighborhood of Pianura, Naples, people gathered medical records as evidence for a trial into 'culpable epidemics.' In the so-called Land of Fires, in the northern periphery of Naples, hundreds of postcards featuring pictures of children killed by rare pathologies were sent to the Italian Head of State and the Pope. Finally, in the town of Acerra, the blood of a dying shepherd became a political object to prove exposure to dioxin contamination in that area. The politicization of illness and bodies conflates the public and private, challenges the mainstream production of knowledge, and proposes an alternative narrative for affected communities and individuals. Nevertheless, the practices of this politicization have differed and are not always 'political', as we will show through the three cases. Key words: popular epidemiology, biopower, waste, Campania, political ecology of disease, private is political

2020 ◽  
Vol 65 (Special Issue) ◽  
pp. 87-103
Author(s):  
Noémi Bíró

"Feminist Interpretations of Action and the Public in Hannah Arendt’s Theory. Arendt’s typology of human activity and her arguments on the precondition of politics allow for a variety in interpretations for contemporary political thought. The feminist reception of Arendt’s work ranges from critical to conciliatory readings that attempt to find the points in which Arendt’s theory might inspire a feminist political project. In this paper I explore the ways in which feminist thought has responded to Arendt’s definition of action, freedom and politics, and whether her theoretical framework can be useful in a feminist rethinking of politics, power and the public realm. Keywords: Hannah Arendt, political action, the Public, the Social, feminism "


2020 ◽  
Vol 2 ◽  
pp. 1-18
Author(s):  
Tuncay Şur ◽  
Betül Yarar

This paper seeks to understand why there has been an increase in photographic images exposing military violence or displaying bodies killed by military forces and how they can freely circulate in the public without being censored or kept hidden. In other words, it aims to analyze this particular issue as a symptom of the emergence of new wars and a new regime of their visual representation. Within this framework, it attempts to relate two kinds of literature that are namely the history of war and war photography with the bridge of theoretical discussions on the real, its photographic representation, power, and violence.  Rather than systematic empirical analysis, the paper is based on a theoretical attempt which is reflected on some socio-political observations in the Middle East where there has been ongoing wars or new wars. The core discussion of the paper is supported by a brief analysis of some illustrative photographic images that are served through the social media under the circumstances of war for instance in Turkey between Turkish military troops and the Kurdish militants. The paper concludes that in line with the process of dissolution/transformation of the old nation-state formations and globalization, the mechanism and mode of power have also transformed to the extent that it resulted in the emergence of new wars. This is one dynamic that we need to recognize in relation to the above-mentioned question, the other is the impact of social media in not only delivering but also receiving war photographies. Today these changes have led the emergence of new machinery of power in which the old modern visual/photographic techniques of representing wars without human beings, torture, and violence through censorship began to be employed alongside medieval power techniques of a visual exhibition of tortures and violence.


Author(s):  
Samuel Llano

This chapter provides an account of how organilleros elicited public anger because their activity did not fit into any of the social aid categories that had been in place since the late eighteenth century. Social aid in Spain relied on a clear-cut distinction between deserving and undeserving poor in order to rationalize the distribution of limited resources and reduce mendicancy on the streets. Organilleros could not, strictly speaking, be considered idle, since they played music, but their activity required no specific skills and was regarded with suspicion as a surrogate form of begging. The in-betweenness of the organillero caused further anger as it challenged attempts to establish a neat distinction between public and private spaces. On one hand, organillo music penetrated the domestic space, which conduct manuals of the nineteenth century configured as female; on the other, it brought women into the public space, which those manuals configured as male.


1960 ◽  
Vol 2 (4) ◽  
pp. 440-451
Author(s):  
Hans Baron

An attempt at a synopsis of Mr. Becker's and Mr. Hicks' findings requires an enlargement of focus. They have much in common in their approaches: both are sympathetic to reactions in Italian scholarship against a school which had conceived the history of the Italian city-states chiefly in terms of social clashes caused by antagonistic economic class interests. About 1900 that had been the perspective shared by most students. During the late 13th century (it was then argued), the half-chivalric magnati, owners of landed property, were replaced by the capitalistic merchants and industrialists of the arti maggiori; these, in turn, by the middle of the 14th century were followed by the artisans of the arti minori who, for a short revolutionary period in 1378, opened the door for the laborers of the great textile industries, the Ciompi. After class struggle had thus sapped the public spirit, Florence and other cities were ripe for the heavy, but pacifying hand of despotism.


2018 ◽  
Vol 11 (3) ◽  
pp. 232-244
Author(s):  
Kyungmoo Heo ◽  
Yongseok Seo

Public interests in coming futures of Korea continue to be increasing. Fears on uncertainties and pending challenges as well as demands on a new but Korea-own development model trigger a quantitative increase of futures research and relevant organizations in both public and private. The objective of this paper is to review history of futures studies and national development plan and strategy linked with foresight along with its challenges and recommendations. This paper identifies drawbacks and limits of Korea foresight such as misapplication of foresight as a strategic planning tool for modernization and economic development and its heavy reliance on government-led mid- and long-term planning. As a recommendation, an implementation of participatory and community-based foresight is introduced as a foundation for futures studies in Korea. A newly established research institute, the National Assembly Futures Institute, has to be an institutional passage to deliver opinions of the public, a capacity-building platform to increase the citizen’s futures literacy, and a cooperative venue for facilitating a participation and dialogue between politicians, government officials, and researchers.


2015 ◽  
Vol 4 (3) ◽  
pp. 50
Author(s):  
Elizabete David Novaes

<p><strong>Resumo:</strong> O presente artigo busca evidenciar o papel social das mulheres nos movimentos sociais promovidos no decorrer da história. Para cumprir com tal propósito, discute o caráter patriarcal da ciência cartesiana; apresenta uma reflexão acerca da articulação entre o público e privado; elabora uma revisão teórica acerca da historiografia da mulher, ressaltando a ação da mulher em diferentes momentos da história, buscando evidenciá-la como sujeito ativo, capaz de integrar o público e o privado, participando da conquista de direitos. Para enfatizar as articulações existentes entre as dimensões pública e privada, este artigo defende que historicamente a mulher politiza vias não políticas do cotidiano, atuando em movimentos sociais promotores de reivindicações e manifestações sociais, de modo a superar limites ideologicamente traçados pelo viés patriarcal da ciência moderna, de base cartesiana, atuando na luta por direitos e participação política na história.</p><p><strong>Palavras-chave:</strong> gênero; historiografia; público e privado; movimentos sociais; direitos.</p><p><strong>Abstract:</strong> This paper describes evidences of the social role of the women inside different social movements occurred during our history. It began with a discussion the patriarchal character of Cartesian science, presents reflections about the public and private articulation, a theoretical review of the women´s historiography, emphasizing their action at different times in history and trying to emphazise them as active subject which is capable to integrate the public and private, participating of the conquer their rights. To emphasize all the previous articulations between the public and private dimensions, this manuscript argues that historically women politicize daily non-political pathways. Their actuations in social movements promote the demands and social manifestations in order to ideologically overcome the limitations set by the the patriarchal bias of modern science, acting in the the fight (ou struggle) for rights and political participation in history.</p><p><strong>Keywords:</strong> gender, historiography, public and private; social movement; rights.</p>


2021 ◽  
Vol 7 (1) ◽  
pp. 20-32
Author(s):  
Michael Lee Humphrey

In one of the foundational articles of persona studies, Marshall and Barbour (2015) look to Hannah Arendt for development of a key concept within the larger persona framework: “Arendt saw the need to construct clear and separate public and private identities. What can be discerned from this understanding of the public and the private is a nuanced sense of the significance of persona: the presentation of the self for public comportment and expression” (2015, p. 3). But as far back as the ancient world from which Arendt draws her insights, the affordance of persona was not evenly distributed. As Gines (2014) argues, the realm of the household, oikos, was a space of subjugation of those who were forced to be “private,” tending to the necessities of life, while others were privileged with life in the public at their expense. To demonstrate the core points of this essay, I use textual analysis of a YouTube family vlog, featuring a Black mother in the United States, whose persona rapidly changed after she and her White husband divorced. By critically examining Arendt’s concepts around public, private, and social, a more nuanced understanding of how personas are formed in unjust cultures can help us theorize persona studies in more egalitarian and robust ways.


Author(s):  
M.S. Parvathi ◽  

Burton Pike (1981) terms the cityscapes represented in literature as word-cities whose depiction captures the spatial significance evoked by the city-image and simultaneously, articulates the social psychology of its inhabitants (pp. 243). This intertwining of the social and the spatial animates the concept of spatiality, which informs the positionality of urban subjects, (be it the verticality of the city or the horizonality of the landscape) and determines their standpoint (Keith and Pile, 1993). The spatial politics underlying cityscapes, thus, determine the modes of social production of sexed corporeality. In turn, the body as a cultural product modifies and reinscribes the urban landscape according to its changing demographic needs. The dialectic relationship between the city and the bodies embedded in them orient familial, social, and sexual relations and inform the discursive practices underlying the division of urban spaces into public and private domains. The geographical and social positioning of the bodies within the paradigm of the public/private binary regulates the process of individuation of the bodies into subjects. The distinction between the public and the private is deeply rooted in spatial practices that isolate a private sphere of domestic, embodied activity from the putatively disembodied political, public sphere. Historically, women have been treated as private and embodied and the politics of the demarcated spaces are employed to control and limit women’s mobility. This gendered politics underlying the situating practices apropos public and private spaces inform the representations of space in literary texts. Manu Joseph’s novels, Serious Men (2010) and The Illicit Happiness of Other People (2012), are situated in the word-cities of Mumbai and Chennai respectively whose urban spaces are structured by such spatial practices underlying the politics of location. The paper attempts to problematize the nature of gendered spatializations informing the location of characters in Serious Men and The Illicit Happiness of Other People.


Author(s):  
Lucien Jaume

This chapter argues that traditionalists fail to realize the fact that for Tocqueville, the power of the people was above all a sociological and moral power, not an institutional one. Democracy in America offered an original conception of His Majesty the Majority, which was still called “the Public.” In Tocqueville's eyes, the various organs of decentralized government—the communes (dominated by great landowners) of which the monarchists dreamed, the associations of families in Lamennais, the “social authorities” exalted by Le Play and his followers—made sense only in this context. The Public was not a phantom conjured up by political dreams—a liberal illusion that in Le Play's view stemmed from “the so-called principles of 1789.” The Public was the new subject of history, or at any rate the quintessential totem of political action.


Author(s):  
Donald Cohen

This chapter focuses on the right wing's astonishingly successful efforts to privatize public goods and services. Privatization has been one of the highest priorities of the right wing for many years, and the chapter shows how it threatens both labor and democracy. Intentionally blurring the lines between public and private institutions, private companies and market forces undermine the common good. This chapter documents the history of privatization in the United States, from President Reagan's early efforts to Clinton and Gore's belief in private markets. Showing how privatization undermines democratic government, the chapter describes complex contracts that are difficult to understand, poorly negotiated “public–private partnership” deals, and contracts that provide incentives to deny public services. With huge amounts of money at stake, privateers are increasingly weighing in on policy debates—not based on the public interest but rather in pursuit of avenues that increase their revenues, profits, and market share. Privatization not only destroys union jobs but also aims to cripple union political involvement so that the corporate agenda can spread unfettered. Nevertheless, community-based battles against privatization have succeeded in many localities, demonstrating the power of fighting back to defend public services, public jobs, and democratic processes.


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