Introduction: Italians Do It Better? The Occupation of Spaces for Radical Struggles in Italy

Italy could be considered a social laboratory in relation to radical theories, practices, struggles and radical political conditions. It is worth exploring what kind of laboratory Italy is and investigating some of the features of current struggles that challenge neoliberalism and the revival of fascism. One way to grasp the specificity of the Italian context is by considering an inherent set of social conflicts that take the form of multidimensional challenges, embracing social, cultural, economic and decision‐making dimensions. Put succinctly, a prefigurative politics is the lens suggested to interpret the experience of squatting and commoning, which are the fundamental attributes of many related struggles over housing and Social Centers and environmental protection.     

Community Volunteering as Neoliberal Strategy? Green Space Production in Berlin

Abstract: The task for critical urban research is to analyze processes of neoliberalization “on the ground”. This paper examines—based on original empirical research—in how far the outsourcing of former local state responsibilities for public services and urban infrastructure is expressed in the promotion of community gardening in Berlin (Germany). It shows the contradictory outcomes: on the one hand, a failing strategy of outsourcing towards residents and the opening up of opportunity structures for other interests. On the other hand it shows how far the emergence of open green spaces maintained by volunteers can only be understood against the background of “roll‐back” neoliberal urban politics and that their rationality cannot be separated from “roll‐out neoliberalism”.     

中国社会地理学发展综述

在中国人文地理学众多分支学科中,社会地理学属于发展较慢的一个分支,但近年来出现了较快的发展势头,研究内容日益广泛,研究人员对社会地理学的诸多领域开展了研究,包括:
1.社会地理学的性质与内容。在吸收西方社会地理学成果的基础上,结合中国实际,认为要重点研究社会集团的空间活动,也有人认为要研究社会集团、社会文化、社会生态、社会问题。
2.社区地理研究。主要内容包括社区地理的理论、城市社会区域的划分、农村社区、社会集团等方面的研究。
3.社会问题的研究。主要有犯罪现象、贫困问题等。
随着人文地理学在中国的全面复兴,地理学出现了明显的人文化、社会化趋向,人文地理工作者从原先注重经济活动转而关注社会问题,特别是进入九十年代以来,社会转型加快,社会问题愈加突出地显现出来,迫切需要建立中国的社会地理学理论体系,加强对现实社会问题的研究,开拓新的研究领域,如生活水平与生活方式、生活空间、社会变迁等,为我国制定有关方针政策提供依据。     

Urban community gardens,commons, and social reproduction: revisiting Silvia Federici’s Revolution at Point Zero

Abstract

Revolution at Point Zero gathers together some of the major works written by Silvia Federici from the 1970s through the 2000s. It offers a series of incisive analyses and is replete with insights on identifying lines of effective intervention to overcome capitalist relations, including housework, care work, and the commons. As Federici identifies urban community gardening as an important development in the struggle for the commons, and thereby a postcapitalist future, I briefly discuss two general concerns that suggest caution in making more of urban community gardens than they can deliver politically. One concern is over an uncertain relationship between community, social reproduction, and commons that infuses urban community gardens. The community in the urban community gardens can be reactionary and capitalism-friendly, so that commons may not necessarily come out of such projects. Urban gardening, since it is still largely women’s work, may also impede the collectivisation of social reproduction by adding yet another set of responsibilities expected to be taken up by women. Another regards pollution problems and their under-appreciated political reverberations. Urban gardeners may be exposed to greater concentrations of toxic substances, possibly like farmworkers or miners. These imply highly uneven social consequences, as women, people of colour, and the elderly are the main urban gardeners. The health effects of prolonged exposure could also lead to greater needs for care work, which is also still mostly carried out by women. Finally, gaining, not just enrolling technical expertise on environmental processes will help build more autonomous urban commons.     

从“文化标本”到“文化生活”——以苏州古典园林为资源的社区旅游发展模式研究

苏州古城区现存的古典园林作为明清时期私家园林的典型代表,如同文化标本一般,体现了明清园林文化和风格。本文从苏州古城区的居住街区空间构成入手,通过重新评价古典园林作为街区空间资源的价值定位,探索居民生活和园林文化相互融合的途径,在此基础之上,构建了以苏州古典园林为资源的社区旅游发展模式,其特征为：旅游者和居民的利益统一在街区生活环境改善之上;以古典园林为平台形成旅游者和居民间的交流;园林资源保护的旅游者和居民双方参与。     

Queerly situated? Exploring negotiations of trans queer subjectivities at work and within community spaces in the UK

While traditional perspectives on transgender from some strands of feminism and within medical/psychoanalytical discourse have argued that transgender people conform to and reproduce gender stereotypes, queer theory has celebrated transgender as a site that highlights the social and cultural construction of ‘sex’ and ‘gender’ and, moreover, as a symbol of transgressive gender possibility. Both of these readings ignore the complexities of lived trans experiences and identifications. By evaluating a queer reading of trans through recent empirical research into transgender identities, I suggest that while trans identifications certainly queer binary models of ‘sex’ and ‘gender’, such transgressions are materially, culturally, socially and spatially contingent. The article draws on empirical research to explore the ways in which access to queer subjectivities is constrained by, and negotiated alongside, the locales of the workplace and community spaces.     

Delegitimation and anticommunism in Italian neofascism

Abstract

Although anticommunism was a key element of the identity and political strategy of the neofascist Italian Social Movement (MSI), it has remained a largely unexplored theme in historiographic research. This article reconstructs its origins, developments, and outcomes, from the birth of the MSI in the aftermath of World War II to its dissolution in 1994. Far from being an immutable feature of neofascist political culture, anticommunism took on very different roles and meanings depending on the political climate of republican Italy. In a more radical key, anticommunism both facilitated and hindered political dialogue with the other parties, firstly and foremost the Christian Democratic Party (DC). Taken to excess, anticommunism also accentuated neofascist hostility to democracy. This led to a lasting delegitimation of the MSI at a systemic and ethical-political level, and the party’s alienation in the years of the First Republic.     

Foreclosure Risk and Community Health: Does Social Capital Have a Protective Effect?

This study draws upon the social determinants of health framework to model and test the extent to which a community’s social capital is health protective in the face of a substantial economic shock, namely the recent foreclosure crisis. U.S. county–level data are used to analyze potential moderating effects of social capital on health given a community’s foreclosure risk. We rely upon established social capital measures for U.S counties and merge them with county level foreclosure risk scores constructed by the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD). While theorists suggest that social capital’s effect on health and other outcomes may be durable over time there have been few empirical tests of this. We interact established social capital indicators measured at two points in time with foreclosure risk to predict overall self-reported health. Our results provide strong support suggesting that high levels of social capital are health protective. Communities with high levels of social capital that are facing high foreclosure risks report significantly better aggregate health outcomes than comparable communities facing the same level of foreclosure risk, but lower levels of social capital.