Forthcoming article, included in the special issue of the peer-reviewed journal 'Studi Magrebini' based on the panel 'Ordinary people, resistance and the politicization of urban spaces and environment in the MENA region' at the 2019 annual conference of the Societa' degli Studi del Medio Oriente, Turin, Jan 31th-Feb 1st. The panel coordinators were Prof. Renata Pepicelli and Dr. Azzurra Sarnataro. ; This project has received funding from the European Union's Horizon 2020 research and innovation programme under the Marie Skłodowska-Curie grant agreement No 752547.
Forthcoming article, included in the special issue of the peer-reviewed journal 'Studi Magrebini' based on the panel 'Ordinary people, resistance and the politicization of urban spaces and environment in the MENA region' at the 2019 annual conference of the Societa' degli Studi del Medio Oriente, Turin, Jan 31th-Feb 1st. The panel coordinators were Prof. Renata Pepicelli and Dr. Azzurra Sarnataro. ; This project has received funding from the European Union's Horizon 2020 research and innovation programme under the Marie Skłodowska-Curie grant agreement No 752547.
Forthcoming article, included in the special issue of the peer-reviewed journal 'Studi Magrebini' based on the panel 'Ordinary people, resistance and the politicization of urban spaces and environment in the MENA region' at the 2019 annual conference of the Societa' degli Studi del Medio Oriente, Turin, Jan 31th-Feb 1st. The panel coordinators were Prof. Renata Pepicelli and Dr. Azzurra Sarnataro. ; This project has received funding from the European Union's Horizon 2020 research and innovation programme under the Marie Skłodowska-Curie grant agreement No 752547.
AbstractNeoliberal urban interventions are perceived as authoritarian by the people affected—regardless of whether they are implemented by an autocrat, a dynastic king or an elected government—because they are supported by narratives designed and imposed from outside which contrast with local perceptions of space and social life. Fieldwork reports from two displacement processes implemented by an authoritarian state—Morocco—are compared with similar observations in two allegedly 'democratic' countries—Italy and Spain. In all cases, the residents respond with counter‐narratives that highlight the importance of local social structures based on strong personal ties and the collective use of resources that enable them to survive neglect and stigmatization. A common trope is the idea of a 'big family' of neighbours struggling against a state that refuses to acknowledge the dignity and value of local social life, thus betraying and alienating its own citizens.
David Graeber, anthropologist and political activist born in New York, prematurely passed away in the Fall of 2020. His ability to communicate to a broader audience, his courage in tackling the 'great questions' of classical social science, and his pragmatic approach to anarchism as a political horizon for the present, made him an inspiring figure for scholars, activists, and public intellectuals worldwide. This article focuses on his ground-breaking theoretical contribution to the fields of economic and political anthropology, which I consider an antidote to the intellectual paralysis that dominates contemporary radical thought.
Account on the 'right to stay put' against gentrification-induced displacement, applied to Southern European countries and especially Italy. ; This project has received funding from the European Union's Horizon 2020 research and innovation programme under the Marie Sklodowska-Curie grant agreement No. 752547
David Graeber, anthropologist and political activist born in New York, prematurely passed away in the Fall of 2020. His ability to communicate to a broader audience, his courage in tackling the 'great questions' of classical social science, and his pragmatic approach to anarchism as a political horizon for the present, made him an inspiring figure for scholars, activists, and public intellectuals worldwide. This article focuses on his ground-breaking theoretical contribution to the fields of economic and political anthropology, which I consider an antidote to the intellectual paralysis that dominates contemporary radical thought.
This an account for an Italian magazine of the policy of urban displacement, that tries to trace its diffusion from the US and UK to Southern Europe. The hypothesis is that Marshall's plan has been crucial in popularizing an idea of large-scale movements of people that had its roots in the post-war massive population transfers.
This is a divulgative article about urban renewal, gentrification and planned shrinkage in the Roman neighborhood of San Lorenzo, one of the field sites of MC project 'SDD-752547'. ; This project has received funding from the European Union's Horizon 2020 research and innovation programme under the Marie Skłodowska-Curie grant agreement No 752547.
ABSTRACT: In the 2000s Barcelona's City Council initiated the demolition of the working-class neighborhood of Bon Pastor as part of a 'participatory' urban plan aimed at integrating a deprived population into the city. However, the residents' narratives show that tearing down the traditional one-story houses built in 1929, and relocating people into new and taller buildings nearby, disrupted the social forms crucial for the cultural, social, and political identities of residents. The physical verticalization of space dispossessed people not only of the old horizontal (one-story) houses they rented for many decades, but also of the practice of horizontal, face-to-face interactions in the streets, which mediated conflicts, prevented social and ethnic tensions, and kept out unwanted intrusions from the authorities. These techniques were rooted in the anarchist counterculture of Barcelona's working-class neighborhoods of the 30s, when street life was considered a tool of the workers against the State, and which had been crucial in the urban resistance to Francisco Franco's military regime. For these reasons, the demolition of Bon Pastor, although upheld through a progressive rhetoric of citizens participation which allowed most residents to remain in the neighborhood, severed the links between people and the streets, and as a result fragmented a community whose historical recalcitrance towards the State had been a defining feature since before the Spanish war. ; This project has received funding from the European Union's Horizon 2020 research and innovation programme under the Marie Skłodowska-Curie grant agreement No 752547.
Accepted manuscript, forthcoming in the special issue of ACME journal based on the panel 'Narrating displacement' at the 2015 AAG (American Association of Geographers) conference in San Francisco, USA. ; This project has received funding from the European Union's Horizon 2020 research and innovation programme under the Marie Skłodowska-Curie grant agreement No 752547.
"Repensar Bonpastor - Concurso de ideas para una remodelación participativa y con cero desalojos de un barrio popular de Barcelona", promovido por la Alianza Internacional de Habitantes y organizado por un grupo independiente de técnicos de Barcelona, recibió 45 propuestas desde todo el mundo. El artículo explica como la lucha vecinal de las "casas baratas de Bon Pastor" llegó a entrelazarse con la antropología aplicada, la solidaridad internacional, la historia oral, la arquitectura social, el activismo autogestionario, para intentar construir colectivamente una nueva manera de "hacer ciudad": en que los habitantes sean los verdaderos artífices y protagonistas de las transformaciones, y en que los técnicos (antropólogos en particular) garanticen el respeto hacia los significados y valores que la ciudad representa para sus habitantes. ; "Repensar Bonpastor - a Competition of ideas for a participative and zero-eviction urban renewal of a popular neighbourhood in Barcelona", promoted by the International Alliance of Inhabitants and organized by an independent group of technicians from Barcelona, received 45 proposals from all over the world. The article explains how the local struggles of the neighbours of the "casas baratas de Bon Pastor" succeeded in gathering applied anthropology, international solidarity, oral history, social architecture, political activism, into a shared attempt to find a new way of "making the city": where inhabitants are the leading actors of the transformations, and technicians (especially anthropologists) guarantee respect towards the meanings and value that the city represents to its inhabitants.
