RISULTATI RICERCA

In this article, it is argued that: 1) Aristotle’s use of moral exemplars is not a mere practical empiricism;; 2) moral exemplarity counts as a legitimate tool for practical knowledge. At first glance, the moral exemplar looks like a mere empirical substitute for a scientific knowledge of the Good, which, strictly speaking, would be impossible. In that respect, the exemplar looks like a particular case, by contrast with real practical norms. Consequently, Aristotle’s exemplarism seems, at best, to lead to a sort of relativistic particularism. However, Aristotle’s use of examples and exemplars have a significant part in moral conduct, where the virtuous person stands for the human standard of good action. Moreover, Aristotle puts the emphasis on the notion of "measure" (metron). By doing so, he constructs a consistent conception of moral exemplarity. The wise person is the ‘measure’ of moral conduct, and this means that he is neither an absolute model to be imitated, nor a mere particular case to be consider.

L’autore prova a ricostruire l’evoluzione del referendum nell’Italia repubblicana del secondo dopoguerra sulla base degli studi esistenti. Lo strumento è stato utilizzato per importanti passaggi politici e istituzionali, diventando progressivamente un elemento centrale della vita politica italiana. Nonostante ciò, l’autore ritiene che sia stato poco considerato da una prospettiva storica: in particolare non sarebbe stata analizzata in modo accurato la relazione tra referendum e sistema dei partiti, gli effetti politici dello strumento sul sistema, e la tendenza ad utilizzarlo in una prospettiva plebiscitaria e anti-establishment. L’autore, facendo dialogare studi politici, giuridici e storici sull’argomento, tenta di focalizzarsi su questi specifici argomenti di analisi.

La stagione storiografica sugli studi mediterranei inaugurata nel 2000 con la pubblicazione di The Corrupting Sea di Peregrine Horden e Nicholas Purcell ha aperto nuove prospettive che criticano l’idea di unità dello spazio mediterraneo proposta da Braudel. Nuove ricerche applicano queste prospettive anche al Mediterraneo d’età contemporanea in relazione alla formazione dei nazionalismi e degli imperialismi. Questa rassegna descrive i recenti volumi di Claudio Fogu, The Fishing Net and the Spider Web: Mediterranean Imaginaries and the Making of Italians, e di Valerie McGuire, Italy’s Sea. Empire and Nation in the Mediterranean, 1895-1945, inquadrandoli storiograficamente all’interno degli studi post-braudeliani. Entrambi i saggi, pubblicati nel 2020, sottolineano l’importanza della questione mediterranea nell’immaginario nazionale italiano.

The paper starts with a definition of the system of shooting known as ‘volley fire’. It was a remarkable tactical innovation of early modern warfare, which until now has generally been considered a late-sixteenth-century Dutch "invention" or "discovery". This notwithstanding, a plurality of scholars found occurrences of similar fighting techniques both in Europe and Asia. Such an outcome seems problematic and even contradictory. For this reason, the paper adopts a different approach, resorting to the anthropology of technology and adhering to the concept of «technical tendency» conceived by André Leroi-Gourhan (1911-1936). A new perspective emerges, shedding light on the sources, some of which are mentioned here for the first time. Muzzle-loading firearms already had a deterministically oriented trend, based on their intrinsic nature as objects, and volley fire was merely its materialization.

Il presente saggio affronta le vicende genetiche e l’evoluzione del Movimento sociale italiano con una prospettiva dal basso, presentando il caso di studio della regione Toscana dagli anni del secondo dopoguerra fino al congresso nazionale di Viareggio del 1954. Attraverso l’analisi di fonti rintracciate negli archivi locali e nazionali, l’autore tratteggia la storia del partito nel contesto di una regione cosiddetta «rossa», ricostruendone la nascita e l’articolazione periferica, fornendo una prima profilazione dei quadri intermedi e della base militante, delineandone i rapporti con le proprie associazioni fiancheggiatrici. Prendendo le mosse dalla dimensione regionale, il contributo mira a ricollegarsi a tendenze e problematiche di carattere nazionale, mettendo in risalto la capacità del partito e dei suoi militanti di adattarsi alle specificità regionali proprie della realtà toscana, come pure gli elementi di comunanza rispetto a tendenze riscontrabili nel resto d’Italia.

La spedizione di Jose Borges (settembre-dicembre 1861) fu uno degli eventi più seguiti della guerra per il Mezzogiorno. Sulla stampa egli divenne uno dei personaggi più noti tra i legittimisti stranieri schieratisi a favore di Francesco II. L’autore sostiene che Borges fu il soggetto di una campagna mediatica il cui fine era renderlo una personalità emblematica del legittimismo duosiciliano, cioè una figura utilizzabile mediaticamente e politicamente, sulla scia di quanto fatto dagli italiani con Garibaldi. L’intero progetto fu gestito dai pubblicisti e dai giornali filoborbonici francesi, responsabili della creazione del personaggio dell’intrépide Borgès, che di fatto doveva essere il "Garibaldi" borbonico. Un fenomeno analogo ma più effimero coinvolse successivamente il legittimista Rafael Tristany, somigliante a Borges nel vissuto e perché connazionale. Se Borges fu elevato a eroe dai legittimisti, per gli italiani fu invece una importante arma comunicativa, utile per smontare la narrazione duosiciliana e per attaccarla alla radice.

Obiettivo di questo contributo è osservare alcuni aspetti della transizione dal governo feudale a quello regio avvenuta nei territori sequestrati al principe di Salerno, Antonello Sanseverino, in seguito alla Congiura dei Baroni. La documentazione a disposizione permette di effettuare un confronto tra la struttura istituzionale del feudo alla vigilia della confisca e quella monarchica impiantata da Ferdinando I, in modo da poterne metterne in luce analogie e differenze. Particolare attenzione è dedicata allo studio dei capitani: ufficialità impiegata nei centri urbani del Regno con prerogative giurisdizionali e di governo. Il profilo socioprofessionale degli uomini scelti dal sovrano, chiamati a sostituire totalmente il precedente personale feudale, si presenta come l’elemento più significativo di questa transizione. Emerge il quadro di un corpo di ufficiali esperto e legato al tessuto demaniale regnicolo, la cui nomina sembra sia stata al centro delle strategie messe in atto dalla Corona per subentrare al governo di questi territori.

Genetics and predictive tests are changing breast cancer prevention, both in terms of subjective experience and risk reducing practices. The aim of the article is to address two main research questions: What does the genetic information mean for subjects? How does prevention and risk-reducing practice change in relation to genetic information? Through qualitative research on breast cancer experience conducted in Italy at the National Cancer Institute of Rome, it was possible to answer these questions by including women who received a genetic response for the BRCA mutation. What emerges is that the genetic information shapes risk-reducing prac-tice, fostering genetic responsibilities within the family. This seems to encourage woman to perceive radical risk-reducing strategies such, as a mastectomy or oophorectomy, as the main - and often mandatory - solution to face breast cancer risk thereby underestimating the health risks and psychological burden involved in preventive surgery.

Our hypertechnological civilization, obsessed with attempting to control and predict every event and every aspect of our lives, has not yet understood that emergency is a connotative element of complexity and of the complex systems that we call "life". This means that emer-gency, like error, is an intrinsic part of our lives and can never be predicted, prevented or managed, much less eliminated. Seeking solutions by delegating carte blanche to technology, stak-ing all on know-how, speed and simulation, is the "great mistake" of today’s digitalized society and of its educational institutions. In dealing with emergency, rather than rationalizing our inadequacies and those of our authorities and experts by using the age-old metaphor "black swan" (Taleb, 2007; 2012), students and teachers alike need to be empowered to inhabit complexity, to expect unpredictability, and to tackle emergency through creativity and self-organization, in order to be able to fully comprehend how emergency can become emergence.

This essay aims to verify the existing combination of low levels of sustainable peace and the SARS-CoV-2 pandemic. The hypothesis we want to support is that the aforementioned panemic wouldn’t have become a world crisis had there been greater investments in social and environmental issues, which are the sources of sustainable peace. The applied methodology is preceded by a brief description of the different meanings of and the interdependencies between sustainable development and peace, a reflection on the main reports, both national (Italian Min-istry of Health, Italian National Statistical Institute) and international (UN, UNPD, IMF, WHO, IEP) and a quantitative supplementary analysis of their guidelines insofar as pandemic-related sustainability and sustainable peace are concerned. Our goal is to prove how much needed and no longer deferrable is a reading able to reconcile factors that are different from each other when it comes to their nature and content. Such factors are environmental pollution, climate change, cultural and structural violence, inequalities within individual States and be-tween States.

Even before the Covid-19 pandemic, young people had a peculiar position in Italian public and institutional discourses. On the one hand, their complex living conditions nourished preoccu-pations and calls for intervention to save an "endangered" social group. On the other hand, young people’s behaviours were constantly placed under scrutiny as potentially dangerous for themselves and society. Through an analysis of public and institutional discourses on youth and youth policies elaborated during the pandemic, the article analyses the interplay of these competing narratives in political and policy choices during the Covid-19 emergency exploring how young people’s (un)deservingness has been framed. In doing so, the article asks what understanding of youth sustains recent institutional choices in terms of resources distribution and what institutions have learnt on (and from) young people during the pandemic.

The aim of this study is to offer a sociological communication’s reflection in calamity society, divided into two closely integrated and mutually consequential parts. The first part will consid-er why a sociological approach to cyclical disasters is appropriate, and the possible application of this approach will then be outlined, leading us to the second section of this work. The sec-ond part of the essay dwells on issues concerning risk communication, considering that communicative processes play a priority role in the selection of risks, through a slow process of social construction that begins with what Beck calls the staging of risk through a metamorphic process. In this context, a decisive role is played by communication, intended here as a phenomenon affecting the risk management process.