Suchergebnisse

AbstractThis paper challenges the commonly held belief that Southern Italy was a homogeneous, backwards region by reconstructing real wages in the kingdom of Sicily over three centuries. The findings suggest more than one divide in pre‐unitarian regions, with Sicilian living standards being structurally higher than the Italian average. This study has important implications for traditional debates in European and Italian economic history, such as the timing of the little divergence and the Italian economic downturn. Additionally, it raises new questions regarding the origins of the regional divide, highlighting a heterogeneous picture of regional trends and the need for broader spatial coverage in wage studies to avoid the potential bias of single‐city analysis.

AbstractThis Essay explores the sanction of "non-participation," which has been used against Russia following the start of the war in Ukraine. After mapping out the multifaceted instances of Russia's exclusion from international organizations, the analysis considers the legality of measures adopted that do not have an explicit basis in institutional rules. The Essay concludes with broad reflections on the use of international organizations as platforms to stigmatize and isolate the violator and outlines some consequences and functions that the sanction of "non-participation" has today.

The Cultural Non-human Animal. Analysing Italo Calvino's Italian Fairy Tales with Zoosemiotics. This article analyses traditional Italian fairy tales retold by Italo Calvino in 1956 and their relationships to nature and culture. Zoosemiotics, a branch of both semiotics and animal studies, argues that nature and culture are not separated and in contrast and that, instead, culture is a limited part of nature. This conceptual change envisions different relationships between humans and animals as well as more broadly the end of animal anthropomorphism. Methodologically, the article applies a zoosemiotic analysis to the Italian fairy tales retold by Calvino. The article concludes that some animals in the fairy tales are still anchored to the old view while others move towards the cultural terrain, showing cultural attitudes and inhabiting a cultural area usually reserved for human animals. This shift leads to an inverted semiotic destiny of humans and animals in fairy tales: while animals are traditionally represented as symbols, Calvino's rewriting turns them into icons, representing only themselves, marked by a neat individuality and independence from their species; while humans are, conversely, usually represented as icons, Calvino's stories turn them into symbols, such as ingratitude or jealousy. The article shows the usefulness of zoosemiotics and nature/culture in analysing non human-animals in fairy tales and adds to earlier studies considering non-human animals in Calvino's fairy tales as an epitome of Anthropocene.
Article history: Received 2 February 2022; Revised 5 May 2022; Accepted 24 May 2022; Available online 30 June 2022; Available print 30 June 2022.
REZUMAT. Animalul cultural non-uman. O analiză a poveștilor lui Italo Calvino cu ajutorul zoosemioticii. Articolul de față analizează povești italiene tradiționale repovestite de către Italo Calvino în 1956, precum și relația lor cu natura și cultura. Zoosemiotica, o ramură atât a semioticii cât și a studiilor despre animale, argumentează că natura și cultura nu sunt separate și nu se află în contrast, ci că, dimpotrivă, cultura este o parte limitată a naturii. Această schimbare conceptuală preconizează relații diferite între oameni și animale, precum și, în sens mai general, sfârșitul antropomorfismului animalelor. Metodologic, articolul aplică o analiză zoosemiotică poveștilor italiene repovestite de Calvino. Articolul conchide că anumite povești cu animale sunt încă ancorate într-o viziune mai veche, în timp ce altele se deplasează către un teren cultural, demonstrând atitudini culturale și populând aria culturală rezervată de obicei animalelor umane. Această schimbare conduce la un destin semiotic inversat al oamenilor și animalelor în povești: în vreme ce animalele sunt în mod tradițional reprezentate ca simboluri, rescrierea lui Calvino le transformă în icon-uri, ele reprezentându-se doar pe sine, marcate de o individualitate și de o independență distincte față de specia lor, în timp ce oamenii, de obicei reprezentați ca icon-uri, sunt transformați în povestirile lui Calvino în simboluri, de pildă ale ingratitudinii ori geloziei. Articolul arată utilitatea zoosemioticii și binomului natură/cultură în analiza animalelor non-umane în povești, și aduce contribuții la studiile anterioare despre animalele non-umane în poveștile lui Calvino ca întruchipare a Antropocenului.
Cuvinte-cheie: studii despre animale, povești, Italo Calvino, zoosemiotică, natură și cultură, antropomorfism, Motanul încălțat

AbstractThis article deals with a question foregrounded by historian Willem van Schendel in his seminal 2002 article 'Geographies of Knowing, Geographies of Ignorance': how do arms, arms flows, and associated regulatory practices reshape the geometries of authority and power in borderlands? The rich transdisciplinary literature on borderlands has fruitfully deployed van Schendel's insights to re-spatialise areas and states but has devoted scant attention to such question. Drawing from 'new materialist' scholarship in IR and the concept of scale in political geography, the paper argues that fluid and fractionally coherent combinations of weapons as technical objects that come from somewhere, rationalities, and techniques of arms control reproduce multiple scales of territorial authority and struggles over scaled modes of governing violence in borderlands. Such struggles of scales and about scale constantly reconfigure the territorial arenas of authority on violence at the edge of the state. Based on fieldwork in Ta'ang areas of northern Shan State, Myanmar, the article develops an empirical analysis of encounters between explosive devices/landmines and the subjects and spaces they target. Delving into the processes and practices of 'making' and controlling the 'landmine', I find that different socio-political orders confront themselves through rationalities, techniques, and practices of humanitarian arms control via which they navigate/jump across scales, forge new ones, or mobilise multi-scalar alliances. Different types of 'dead' and 'alive' landmines nonetheless defy these attempts at rescaling territorial authority over violence by acting in unforeseen manners at the scale of their own ecologies of violence.

In peacekeeping operations, private companies are frequently and increasingly engaged by the United Nations to carry-out a wide-range of activities that can potentially impinge on human rights. This article deals with two recent cases of misconduct committed by contractors whose activities, albeit not on the face of it involving the threat or (lethal or not-lethal) use of force, nonetheless caused harm to individuals. The first case-study relates to the mismanagement of sanitary waste, while the second case addresses the (mis)use of unarmed surveillance drones. Against this backdrop, the article purports to assess whether, and under what conditions, wrongdoing committed by private contractors gives rise to the international responsibility of the United Nations. The study explores, firstly, the question of the 'direct' attribution of such conduct to the United Nations, based on the qualification of the contractors as agent of the Organization, as understood in the Draft Articles on the Responsibility of International Organizations. It then analyzes the issue of the 'indirect' responsibility of the United Nations for failing to have sufficient oversight of the outsourced activities. In this respect, it highlights the crucial role played by internal accountability mechanisms, in particular the Office of Internal Oversight Services, in appraising the monitoring measures taken by the Organization with regard to the practice of contractors and in recommending remedial actions.