RISULTATI RICERCA

Radio has been used since the 1930s as a tool for popularizing all kinds of knowledge, agriculture included, with a substantially top down and centralistic approach, where the messages (either political and technical) were decided at the center (government or public research centers) and then diffused to the audiences. Only during the 1980s’, decentralization and communication for development have became new key words. Decentralization allows and simultaneously requires locally specific messages, while communication for development leads to favor participation and empowerment. Community radios are the most advanced evolution of this concept, because they are owned and managed by the communities, sometimes also in rural areas, to favor the elaboration and diffusion of information needed by the communities. In this paper, four rural community radios operating in Mali have been studied, all established within the framework of a FAO Project. The study reveals a composite picture: all radios are perceived by the people as an essential instrument and they receive a very high level of appreciation, although management and administration are not always optimal. Agricultural programs, although relevant, are not those most listened, because people prefer music and general news.

This paper discusses the results of a survey carried out in the summer of 2003 with the aim of gaining a deeper understanding of the attitudes of contemporary tourists towards mountain pastures. 829 visitors were interviewed in four areas in the provinces of Bergamo, Sondrio and Trento using a brief questionnaire. Besides enabling us to gather information about the basic demographic features of the tourist, the questions focused on the motivations for the visit and the attitudes towards specific aspects of pasture land such as landscape, grazing animals and local produce. The tourist profile which emerged from the bivariate analysis ascribed major relevance to the culture and environment associated with mountain pastures rather than the functional meanings. The age of the interviewees was the most significant variable in discriminating the answers: older people tended to appreciate the various different aspects to a greater extent.

This paper is about natural parks as tourist products. The tourist product is examined regarding its components: heritage, back region and artificial attractions. The case of Mont Avic regional park, in Aosta Valley (Italy), shows how is possible to conciliate tourist development of a park with tourist practice sustainability. The paper also explains how environmental tourists are interested in the enlargement of the tourist product represented by the natural capital and, above all, in the back region as tourist attraction.

This paper proposes two possible ways of analysing the relationship between poverty and urban space; in particular, poverty is intended as deprivation in the sub-system of economic resources. The first approach consists in localising poverty in macro-areas: this paper puts into evidence the limits of the available statistics on a national basis; it also deals with the problems involved in the delimitation of areas on the basis of which poverty thresholds are defined. The second approach, more micro, takes into account the territorial distribution of poverty in urban areas. In this case, the risks of a new labelling on a territorial basis are stressed; this kind of labelling is founded on a presumed homogeneity of the areas considered, an assumption which often results from a lack of field research.