- The condition of the Rom and Sinti peoples represents very well the contradictions present in European society and the problems that Europe has to tackle if it is to pursue the path of political integration. There are several million people in the Rom and the Sinti population, distributed in small communities all over the continent. Because of their lifestyle and different language and customs, they are in practice denied access to the civil, political and social rights due to other citizens, both in Italy and in the majority of other European countries. This denial of their cultural identity sometimes verges on racial discrimination: as they lie on the margins of civil society, the authorities often treat them in ways that are incompatible with the principles of freedom, equality and solidarity on which today's modern democracies are founded. What the institutions in the various states ought to do, on the other hand, is work together with the Rom and Sinti organisations and with the international organisations to safeguard a cultural identity that enriches Europe as a whole just as much as its national identities do, while at the same time contributing at making these people fully entitled European citizens. Eligio Resta, God and the Majority Award The history of the principle of majority is still a powerful indicator for interpreting contemporary developments in economic democracy and in political democracy. The work by F. Galgano that led to these notes illustrates a line of commentary about the form and the contents of the rule of the majority that is pursued right up to the decline perceived in the present day. Overwhelmed by the crisis afflicting the concept of representation today, the principle of the majority has come back to question us about the space reserved for deliberative democracy.
Anne Meis Knupfer. Food Co-ops in America: Communities, Consumption, and Economic Democracy. Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 2013. xiv +273 pp. ISBN 978-0-8014-5114-0, $29.95 (cloth).