Flavia Schiavo
Year: 2023;
Series: Geographies of the Anthropocene
Pages: 276;
Language: Italian;
Format: e-book;
Description
The book explores New York City, from the Industrial Revolution to present-day. Analyzing conflicts, transformations, cultural and biotic exchanges and the concepts of democracy, not just in political terms, but looking at the relationship between urban Natures and urban Cultures. Divided into 5 Sections and 8 Chapters, the volume reflects on the different forms of urban organization and practices, comparing the democracy of Nature, in urban areas, to the urban democracy, exploring the role and interaction of anthropic activities with natural dynamics.
The book does not discuss the city and nature as aesthetic form but explores the conflictual-collaborative intersection between Urban Nature and Urban Cultures, in relation to historical events and to several contemporary aspects, to learn from the nature and the relationship between nature and culture. The first Section discusses on urban transformation through the skyline, a “comprehensive landscape”; the second Section explores the urban parks and gardens and their historical evolution, conflicts between groups and gentrification processes, dealing with some opportunities provided by new laws that address climate issues and the revitalization of the city. The third Section looks at the American Botanical Gardens, reflecting on their role in the urban environment. The fourth Section studies the relationship between city and food, in relation to social and symbolic topics, while the fifth Section returns a specific contemporary drama, connected to the Covid-19, narrating the pandemic effects on the social structure and on the New Yorkers homeless.
Federico Volpe
STORIA UMANISTICA DELLA NATURA
UN’ANTOLOGIA LETTERARIA, ARTISTICA E MUSICALE
ISBN 979-12-80064-43-1
Year: 2023;
Series: Geographies of the Anthropocene
Pages: 190;
Language: Italian;
Format: e-book;
Description
The present volume aims at reconstructing the history of man-nature relationship among the various forms of art. The studies about the Anthropocene era, always more developed during the last years, led to some important and accurate researches on the presence and the impact of man on Earth. These studies include all the vast and complex considerations about pollution, climate, energy and so on. But every discourse that focuses on the features and the problems of the Anthropocene has maybe at its base a fundamental theme, a fil rouge from which it cannot be separated: the relationship between man and nature. The evolution of this relationship among the centuries influenced and, in turn, was influenced by the innovations that marked the history of homo sapiens from a scientific and technological point of view. Nevertheless, man-nature relationship has always been a central theme also in the artistic and literary production of man himself, who ‘dedicated’ to nature an endless list of texts, poems, pictures, sculptures, and musical compositions. What this volume wants to do is to retrace the evolution of the nature and of the relationship between man and nature in the history of the arts, that is to analyse how man represented the nature in the figurative arts, in the music, and in the literature, considering the so-called “western” world. In order to do that, the volume will cross the centuries and will focus on the various themes and concepts that man associated to the nature — from love to religion, from humour to death. In this way, hopefully, it will be possible to offer some points for reflection on the culture of the contemporary world too, in which there is the constant return of themes and leitmotifs that accompanied man and his art since the origin of the art itself.
Eleonora Gioia
LE PROSPETTIVE GEOGRAFICHE DELLA RIDUZIONE DEL RISCHIO DISASTRI: COMUNITÀ, GOVERNANCE, SOSTENIBILITÀ AMBIENTALE E RISORSE ECONOMICHE
ISBN 979-12-80064-42-4
Year: 2023
Series: Geographies of the Anthropocene
Pages: 203
Language: Italian
Format: e-book
Description
Disaster Risk Reduction (DRR) requires community empowerment and participation, through coordination mechanisms in all sectors and at all social and institutional levels. However, DRR strategies usually focus on a few or single elements, due to a series of barriers, mostly institutional, but also cognitive, economic, and social, which lead to the lack of a decisive overall vision for risk management. This monographic work presents a DRR analysis methodology called “CO.G.EN.S.” and tested through the European Life Project “PRIMES”. This system of indicators assesses the achievement of flood risk reduction objectives in four thematic areas that share a geographical perspective: community engagement (CO), governance capacity and institutional compliance (G), environmental sustainability (EN) and economic resources (S).
The analysis showed that the involvement of the local population and the cooperation between the institutions have improved thanks to the Project, thus increasing flood risk awareness and social cohesion. However, the Project activities did not have direct effects on the environmental and socio-economic areas. To improve flood risk reduction efforts, it is suggested to enhance the involvement of all community actors, with a role of coordination and homogenization of warning procedures by institutions, the integration of climatological data by scientists and technicians, and the education of citizens regarding flood risk and adaptation to climate change. The CO.G.EN.S. indicator system has proven to be effective and comprehensive, with an objective, transversal and multidisciplinary assessment of risk reduction. The methodology is also modular and easily replicable in other contexts, potentially suitable for comparing DRR strategies applied to different types of risk and at different territorial scales.
Charlie Galibert
ANTHROPOCÈNE ET ESTHÉTIQUE DE LA DOMINATION
Le nu et le corps dans l’art
ISBN 979-12-80064-31-8
Year: 2022
Series: Geographies of the Anthropocene
Pages: 381
Language: French
Format: e-book
Description
The Anthropocene unfolds its generalized domination and exploitation of the world through internal exclusion (what is not man) and external exclusion (nature, the non-human). This episteme of the objectification of humans, non-humans and the World, passes through language, writing, the male gaze as a Vision of the world promoted to universality. Domination is expressed in art by a violence that does not say its name by draping itself in candid nudity, the image of beauty and naturalness, thus making art the very place of its most beautiful lie. The aesthetics of domination makes the Anthropocene an anthropoScene, in which gendered functioning gives the body a central role. The historical examination of this aesthetics of domination disguised as the domination of aesthetics (painting, sculpture, happening, writing) and its questioning by the opposition/feminine and feminist demarcation of the 60s-70s and beyond, leads, by following the evolution of contemporary art, to the proposal of a possible elsewhere of the gendered heart of the functioning of the Anthropocene, by the call for a new alliance between the Human (post gender) and the Living (animated and inanimate nature) by providing some keys for the construction of the Human-as-counter-project in the Anthropocene, shared with the Living and the Planet by respecting and meeting all otherness, internal and external.
Livio Perra
IL GENOCIDIO CULTURALE
ISBN 979-12-80064-32-5
Year: 2022
Series: Geographies of the Anthropocene
Pages: 103
Language: Italian
Format: e-book
Description
This monograph analyses the cultural genocide. It is perpetrated through the direct attack on cultural heritage with the intent of destroying a human group. The category of cultural genocide, although foreseen in the first formulation of the definition of genocide, does not have much luck. In international texts aimed at preventing and punishing genocide, only physical and biological genocide are mentioned. Nevertheless, interest in this category does not cease to exist. The phenomenon is analysed by the doctrine in numerous writings. The Supreme National Tribunal of Poland, in the 1946 judgment, defining the Poland v. Greiser, qualifies certain acts as cultural genocide. More recently, in 2016, the International Criminal Court condemns Al Mahdi for the destruction of cultural properties, applying the discipline established at the international level for the protection of cultural property in armed conflicts. In 2015, the Truth and Reconciliation Commission of Canada, in its final report, defines the policies implemented by the Canadian government regarding indigenous peoples and, in particular the phenomenon of residential schools, as cultural genocide. The author, after having outlined the category of cultural genocide, comes to the conclusion that using this category can allow to contrast the direct attack on cultural heritage perpetrated with the aim of destroying a human group.
Andrea Nocera
VERDE MERAVIGLIA
IMMAGINARE UN NUOVO MODO DI ABITARE
ISBN 979-12-80064-23-3
Year: 2021
Pages: 142
Language: Italian
Format: e-book
Description
«What kind of world has a place for us and for everything else both now and for future generations? What does it mean for such a world to carry on? How can we make it happen?»
Green Wonder: imagining a new way of dwelling charts the path from anthropologist Tim Ingold’s questions. Queries that involve everyone, present and future generations, humans and non-humans, in a kind of network in which individuals are threads that knot and diverge weaving life on planet Earth.
The volume is structured in two parts. In the first one it investigates the current Human-Nature relationship, a conflictual condition in which an arrogant human being tries to abstract himself from his earthly origin. A way of dwelling, therefore of being in the world, which has left indelible marks on an Earth that warns us to change course in the era of the Anthropocene, Capitalocene, Eremocene. The thesis proposes to co-imagine new ways of being in the world towards a symbiosis of humans-non-humans, where plants are the first cohabitants and cities are the places of action and change.
The second part proposes three case studies in the cities of Turin, Lisbon and Matera. The studies conducted between 2018 and 2020 call into question the projects Green Crown of the Piedmont Region, Lisbon European Green Capital 2020 and Matera European Capital of Culture 2019.
The final canvas reveals the multispecies garden, an ideal and material place that cultivates wonder and allows life to flourish.
Maurizio Indirli, Vito Di Maio, Lucia Martinelli
AN ANALYSIS OF ITALIAN RESILIENCE DURING COVID-19 PANDEMIC: FIRST PHASE FROM JANUARY TO JUNE 2020
ISBN 979-12-80064-21-9
Year: 2021
Pages: 310
Language: English
Format: e-book
Description
This work adopts the concept of resilience and its attributes (safety, robustness, adaptive capacity, sustainability, governance, and anamnesis) to analyze the COVID-19 pandemic, with specific reference to Italy during the first phase, from January to June 2020. The aim is to assess the main features of this pandemic and suggest a suitable tool to evaluate the capability of the Italian system to manage such catastrophe. Before discussing the Italian situation, a general overview about the current COVID-19 outbreak is presented, with special focus on selected countries worldwide, which adopted different intervention strategies such as exclusion, elimination, suppression, mitigation, and no substantive strategy.
With regard to Italy, a Global Resilience Index (GRI), suitable to provide a sense of direction (built or reduced resilience) is also calculated. In our analysis comes again the fork between ‘engineering resilience’ (homeostatic) and ‘ecological resilience’ (autopoietic): will the humanity be able to govern the next changes or shall withstand a new mass extinction, leading to a drastic collapse of the Earth biodiversity?
Livio Perra
I SISTEMI DI PROTEZIONE AMBIENTALE DI ECUADOR E BOLIVIA E L’AFFERMAZIONE DEI DIRITTI DELLA NATURA
ISBN 979-12-80064-20-2
Year: 2021
Pages: 151
Language: Italian
Format: e-book
Description
This monograph aims to analyze environmental protection systems of Ecuador and Bolivia. In these systems, there is a transition from anthropocentrism to biocentrism. In particular, nature becomes a subject of rights. These systems are the result of the reflections that emerged in political and legal debates, due to the entry of the values of the indigenous peoples’ culture, where nature is of considerable importance. The author investigates the genesis of these environmental protection systems and how the cultures of the peoples who make up the States found equal space to express their values. The environmental protection systems of Ecuador and Bolivia appear as complete: legal systems recognize nature as a subject, affirm its rights and there is a wide range of judicial instruments and actions to claim in respect of them. After analyzing these systems in all their parts, the author addresses the issues that emerged. From the analysis carried out in this monograph, the fact that emerges is that the rights of nature constitute an effective way to defend the environment. Culture becomes the key to dealing with current environmental questions and contributes to the evolution of law. Law is able to renew itself, abandon anthropocentric logics, rethink categories and build two new and complete environmental protection systems.
Eleonora Gioia
Fausto Marincioni
Maurizio Ferretti
MODELING LANDSLIDE HAZARD IN THE ESINO RIVER VALLEY (CENTRAL ITALY)
ISBN 979-12-80064-11-0
Year: 2021
Pages: 206
Language: English
Format: e-book
Description
Modeling landslide hazard is among the forecast activities of the Civil Protection system. Usually, scientific literature that aims to determine rainfall thresholds for the possible occurrence of landslides, tends to rely on two main separate approaches: empirical and physical models. This research contributes to such debate by adopting both the approaches, after integrating some of the each other features. This novel methodology has been applied to the landslides affecting the eastward Esino River Valley, located in the Marche region (central Italy). Post-orogenic quaternary sediments, with approximatively similar hydrogeological properties and prone to rainfall-induced shallow landslides, characterize this 550 km2 wide area.
This volume is divided in four sections focusing on: i) the validation of the correlation between historical landslides and rainfall series; ii) the application of empirical models, namely the cumulative event – duration, the maximum intensity – duration, the mean intensity – duration, and the Bayesian methods; iii) the application of the US Geological Survey’s Transient Rainfall Infiltration and Grid-based Regional Slope-stability (TRIGRS) physical model; iv) the testing of all the above models, during a rainfall event that affected the study area on 2-4 May 2014 and triggered several landslides.
Results of this research are proposed as possible decision support tools for landslide warning.
Charli-e Galibert
L’HOMME DU MONDE
ou « NOUS AUTRES »
Pour une nouvelle alliance entre les vivants
ISBN 979-12-80064-05-9
Year: 2020;
Pages: 152;
Language: French;
Format: e-book;
Publication: December 2020
Description
Western humanism is constituted (anthropologically, historically, philosophically) on a double differentiation-minimization-worsening: internal (managing intrahuman differences: give / men, them/us, whites/blacks, civilized/primitive), and external to the separation from the non-human: (natural nature, Being, the animal …). The COVID-19/lockdown crisis highlights the limits of our neoliberal system of world domination and management, even in our way of thinking. To exit the crisis, there must be a transformation of our relationship with the world, re-thinking the position of humans on the planet. The unconditional hospitality of all human and non-human beings is the possibility to change our attitude towards all beings while facing the announced apocalypses of the Anthropocene. Philosophy, anthropology, epistemology, genre, art are all summoned for a New Alliance. The artist Armand Scholtès embodies the image of the new “man of the world”.
Cristina Casareale
Fausto Marincioni
DECONSTRUCTING THE
COSTA CONCORDIA ACCIDENT
New ways to improve
safety at sea
ISBN 979-12-80064-01-1
Year: 2020;
Pages: 192;
Language: English;
Format: e-book;
Publication: May 2020
Description
Accidents have been part of the maritime industry since its beginning. Early attempts to reduce accidents were engineering in nature, even though since the early 1990s the focus has shifted progressively on the role of human behavior and how that behavior factors into casualties. This research approaches the human factor in maritime accidents from multiple perspectives considering interactions among individual, organizational and regulatory levels, to propose eventually a new leadership model for maritime emergency management. This volume is divided in three sections focusing on: i) the multilevel interactions that lead to the Costa Concordia accident and affected the unfolding of the emergency; ii) the rupture of the communication flows consequent to the failure of the chain of command, iii) weaknesses and strengths of current leadership and communication procedures. The proposed alternative leadership model, corroborated also through a focus group discussion organized at the Cyprus Institute of Marketing, is a combination of the current command and control vertical structure with a more horizontal leadership in which responsibilities, during a maritime emergency, are shared between the captain and other top officers.
Fausto Marincioni
L’EMERGENZA CLIMATICA IN ITALIA
Dalla percezione del rischio alle strategie di adattamento
ISBN 978-88-94327-57-1
Year: 2020;
Pages: 198;
Language: Italian;
Format: e-book;
Publication: February 2020
Description
The changes in the Earth’s climate observed in recent decades have increased the frequency and intensity of certain natural hazards, exposing an increasing number of people to serious risks. To be effective, prevention and mitigation measures, in addition to the control and containment of these hazards, must include organizational and functional aspects of communities at risk. There is no doubt that adaptation is the key word for the correct balance between humans and their environment. This essay discusses the results of a research project about risk perception of local communities in Italy involved in the European project “Preventing flooding RIsks by Making resilient communitiES” (www.lifeprimes.eu).
Particular attention was paid to the perception of climate hazards and adaptation processes of such communities, highlighting similarities and differences related to geographical location. Results show a significant improvement in flood resilience for those communities involved in public meetings, exercises and other participatory processes. The study constitutes a strong theoretical basis from which to extend the analysis to other territories, providing the elements for a better management of climate risk in Italy.
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