Preliminary Material -- Introduction -- A Historiographical Problem: -- Natural and Human Endowments -- The Organization of the Neapolitan Market -- Changes in the Pattern of Production and Trade: -- Changes in the Pattern of Production and Trade: -- Expanding State Jurisdiction -- The Kingdom's Population in Figures -- Maritime Transport from the Correspondence of the Sommaria, 1461–1516 -- Grants of Toll Franchise to Individual Towns -- Regional Fairs in Southern Italy, c. 1200–1550 -- Livestock Trade at the Land Customs of Abruzzo, 1446–1504 -- Note on Currency and Measurements -- Maps -- Bibliography -- Index.
The largest part of the existing literature with regard to Islamophobia in Greece focuses primarily on the policies, activities and discourse of politicians and political groups of the extreme right, Orthodox Church figures, state authorities, the media and the Internet. The purpose of this article is to cast light on an aspect which is frequently neglected in the study of Islamophobia, i.e., the role of public intellectuals, through a series of questions: Where do public intellectuals in Greece stand with regard to Islamophobia? What are the main themes in their public discourse with regard to Islam and Muslims? What is the role they play in the reproduction of Islamophobic views? Having in mind the debates over the concepts of Islamo-Fascism, Islamo-leftism, Islamophilia and Islamophobia, this article builds on the literature about the role of intellectuals in society with a special focus on their views about Islam. Analysing the discourse of three public intellectuals, the main argument is that Islamophobia in Greece is not an exclusive element of the extreme-right or the Orthodox Church. Self-proclaimed progressive or liberal intellectuals, through their public discourse, also contribute to the reproduction and entrenchment of the fear and moral panic about Islam.
The article explores the "fear of Islam" through a specific series of political debates about Islam and the future of the Greek-Orthodox national identity. The analysis is based on the method of qualitative content analysis, which makes use of thematic categories and draws on the proceedings of the Greek parliament. The main questions the article will try to address are: How have Greek political parties reacted to public demand for the construction of a mosque? What have been the rhetorical tropes they use? How have they capitalized on current and old fears about Islam? What have been the implications of this discourse on state policies toward Islam? Have there been any differences in this discourse over time? The analysis highlights the role of historical interpretations of Greek national identity and contemporary problems related to new waves of migration due to Greece's place on the border with Turkey and with the broader Islamic world.
The aim of this article is to study the personal stories of female converts from Greek Orthodox religion to Islam as these are presented on the Internet. In particular, I focus on the way some Greek Orthodox women who live in Greece or who are from a Greek Orthodox background but live abroad are self-presented via a website authorized by the Muslim Association of Greece. The main questions are: How did these women decided to change their religion? What problems did they face in their effort? How did their family react to their decision? What kind of relations did they have with their families after their conversion? This is an attempt to find out how their digital religious identity is crystallized, assuming that internet, as a quasi-neutral and protected public space, provides them with the opportunity to narrate their stories and opinions without the immediate surveillance of the Greek Orthodox society.
AbstractLife Cycle Assessment of Energy Systems: Closing the Ethical Loophole of Social SustainabilitybyNikolaos SakellariouDoctor of Philosophy in Environmental Science, Policy, and ManagementUniversity of California, BerkeleyProfessor Alastair T. Iles, ChairThis dissertation investigates the historical and normative bases of what contemporary engineers consider to be the embodiment of sustainability: Life Cycle Assessment (LCA). It explores the interplay among technology ethics, energy systems, and how engineering cultures foster sustainability by adopting normative assumptions and problem-solving practices—particularly LCA—as part of their professional identities. Specifically, I provide a broad conceptual analysis of "sustainability engineering" in the US (1989-present) to unpack its history, epistemology and politics. I first show that the 1990's produced two distinct engineering ideologies of sustainability—one emphasizing engineering creativity and innovation, and the other emphasizing normative ethics and socio-cultural change. I find that the dialectic between sustainability and engineering has been defined largely by an ideology of technological change. I argue that engineering ideologies of sustainability not only affect how professionals imagine LCA as a medium of technological and environmental transformation, but also how they conceptualize sustainability as a vehicle to renegotiate engineering knowledge and identity in addressing some of the most pressing existential dilemmas facing their discipline. Next, I investigate the politics of engineering identity formation in relation to social, political, regulatory and community pressure to reshape the ethics and boundaries of LCA. I show that starting around 2000, a small group of engineers and, vitally, companies and consulting firms with an eye to addressing technology's "social impacts" have laid a basis for developing an interesting sustainability tool called Social Life Cycle Assessment (SLCA). SLCA, I argue, is an ideological hybrid where there are many spots of dissent and disagreement but also some surprising fundamental alignments between those who see engineering as technics and those who believe that engineering needs to be socially contextualized. SLCA attests to a messy, ongoing tussle between different viewpoints, where the dominant engineering ideology and culture begins to morph into a more open-ended approach. Finally, I focus on two case studies of sustainable energy system building—solar and wind project development in California's West Antelope Valley (WAV)—to understand in more detail the politics and ethics of LCA in energy systems. I describe how LCA became embedded in narratives and decision-making concerning renewable energy in the US—in their design, as well as in their regulatory, economic and environmental planning. California's inaugural utility scale solar and wind projects were trumpeted as conforming to principles derived from LCA. At one level, I show, the siting of solar PV projects in the WAV was predicated on a mechanism linking legitimacy and life cycle thinking. At another level, along with projects' contentious permitting and pre-construction phases, the interrelated questions of legitimacy and sustainability emerged from the LCA shadows and became central issues in rural renewable energy project development. I explore the tensions between technical expert and lay expert knowledges that swirl around the deployment of LCAs in solar project development and I argue that LCAs enabled disembodied and context-less decision-making. Seen through my ethnography in the WAV, I present material on the internecine politics of renewable energy project development that took place locally and at the Los Angeles County level—a local-regional scale perspective that is often not seen in the literature. I describe how the fractured relationships between stakeholders and the disparity between rural and urban mechanisms of governance facilitated the diminishing fairness and participatory democracy in renewable energy project dispute resolution.
