Towards a Political Economy of Social Infrastructure: Contesting “Anti-Social Infrastructures” in London

In this paper, we develop a situated and intersectional urban political economy approach to social infrastructure. This approach contrasts with a growing body of liberal urban geography, which offers an optimistic account of how shared spaces afford encounter and social connection. We present four arguments about why such outcomes cannot be assumed, which are informed by a case of contested redevelopment in the London borough of Haringey. First, social infrastructures express power relations, enacting distinct visions of “the social”, that are at times premised on the denigration of other forms of collective life as anti-social. Second, elite social infrastructures are increasingly central to speculative urban development, serving to procure consent for, and valorise, investment. Third, other social infrastructures are essential networks of social reproduction and survival, especially for diverse working-class communities: demolition and displacement mean infrastructural disruption. Finally, unequal political economies of social infrastructure are a realm of structural antagonism over urban citizenship (un)making.     

Regional Concentration of the Knowledge-based Economy in the EU: Towards a Renewed Oligocentric Model?

This paper aims to contribute to a better understanding of the Knowledge-based Economy spatial distribution across the European Union (EU) regions (NUTS II), linking recent research approaches on innovation and structural change with approaches to regional economics. As a means of conducting this research, we classify economic activities according to six sectors based on their knowledge/technology intensity. Our results show that the higher the knowledge/technology content of the economic activity, the higher the concentration level of the activity. We find that some service activities (those considered knowledge intensive) have similar concentration levels to those operating in high or medium tech manufacturing. With regard to specialization, the most outstanding result is the strong presence of high and medium knowledge intensive service activities in metropolitan/capital regions. In general, our results reinforce the notion that an oligocentric model persists in Europe, with the southern German regions leading high and medium tech manufacturing, the south-east of England leading in high knowledge-intensive services, and with the mid-core model exemplified by the European metropolitan archipelago (particularly capital cities) in both northern and southern Europe.     

‘Discipline and Interference’: Ruskin's Political Economy,Natural Law,and the Moral Disorder of Victorian England

When Ruskin turned from art and architectural studies towards political economy in the late 1850s works such as Unto This Last, Munera Pulveris and Time and Tide met with negative critical reactions. In these works he attempted to restore to the language of Victorian political economy the moral content which, he argued, had been lost since the time of Adam Smith, under a cloak of misleading scientific terminology associated with utilitarian ‘orthodox political economy’. In doing so, he resorted to pre-Enlightenment sources of political and economic practice. His study of classical, Biblical, medieval and selected renaissance texts led him to gradually embrace older natural law arguments which contrasted sharply with the assumptions of post-Enlightenment positivist forms of natural law and science. These older and more organic natural law based understandings informed the principles by which he established his ideas on economics as well as his late social experiment, the Guild of St George. The charter and oath of the Guild illustrates how Ruskin's early upbringing in the Protestant Evangelical tradition was replaced by a more comprehensive natural law tradition of ethics.     

Education and Political Socialisation of a National-Colonial Political Elite in French West Africa, 1936–47

Much has been written about the first generation of political leaders of French West Africa, their leadership skills, personal resources and networks. Their attachment to, and close links with, France played a crucial role in determining the pattern of decolonisation in the colony. Through a study of their political socialisation, this article seeks to throw light on the experiences and influences that fashioned their thinking about politics and created a common stock of ideas, norms and values. Focusing in particular on their education at the William Ponty School and two key moments that shaped their political thinking—the Popular Front period (1936–38) and the immediate post-war period (1944–47)—it will be argued that an appreciation of their process of political socialisation enhances our understanding of their political choices. A final section reflects on the legacy of this process in the postcolonial period.     

Political Leadership,Parties and Citizens: The Personalisation of Leadership,edited by Jean Blondel and Jean-Louis Thièbault with Katarzyna Czernicka,Takashi Inoguchi,Ukrist Pathmanand and Fulvio Venturino

Tom Behan, The Camorra, Routledge, London, 1996, 225 pp., ISBN 0–415–09987–0 hbk, £25.00.

Gianluca Fiorentini and Sam Peltzman (eds), The Economics of Organized Crime, Cambridge University Press, Cambridge, 1996, 301 pp., ISBN 0–521–47248–2 hbk, £30.00.

T.C.W. Blanning and David Cannadine (eds), History and Biography: Essays in Honour of Derek Beales, Cambridge University Press, Cambridge, 1996, ix + 298 pp, ISBN 0–521–47330–6 hbk, £35.00.

’La Terza Irlanda’. Gli scritti sulla Sardegna di Carlo Cattaneo e Giuseppe Mazzini, (ed.) Francesco Cheratzu, Condaghes, Cagliari, 1995, ISBN 88–86229–12–1.

Martin Clark, Modern Italy 1871–1995,2nd edn, Longman, London and New York, 1996, xiii + 474 pp., ISBN 0–582–05126–6 pbk, £19.99.

Spencer M. Di Scala, Italy: From Revolution to Republic: 1700 to the Present, Westview Press, Boulder, San Francisco and Oxford, 1995, xxiii + 416 pp, ISBN 0–8133–1342–2 hbk, £56.50, 0–8133–1343–0 pbk, £15.50.

Christopher Duggan and Christopher Wagstaff (eds), Italy in the Cold War: Politics, Culture and Society, 1948–58, Berg, Oxford, 1995, 228 pp., ISBN 1–85973–038–8 hbk, £34.95.

Douglas J. Forsyth, The Crisis of Liberal Italy. Monetary and Financial Policy, 1914–1922, Cambridge University Press, Cambridge, 1993, xii + 370 pp., ISBN 0–521–41682–5 hbk, £40.00.

Paul Furlong, Modern Italy: Representation and Reform, Routledge, London, 1994, 295 pp., ISBN 0–415–01565–0 pbk.

Maria Ida Gaeta (ed.), Giovanni Gentile: la filosofia, la politica, l'organizzazione della cultura, Marsilio, Venice, 1995, ISBN 88–317–6285–0, 30,000 Lire.

Giovanni Turi, Giovanni Gentile: una biografia, Giunti, Florence, 1995, ISBN 88–09–20755–6, 48,000 Lire.

Mark Gilbert, The Italian Revolution. The End of Politics, Italian Style?, Westview Press, Boulder, San Francisco and Oxford, 1995, 204 pp., ISBN 0–8133–8788–4 hbk, ISBN 0–8133–2685–0 pbk.

V.A. Goddard, Gender, Family and Work in Naples, Berg, Oxford, 1996, 264 pp., ISBN 1–85973–0345 hbk, 1–85973–039–6 pbk, £14.95.

Italo Pardo, Managing Existence in Naples: Morality, Action and Structure, Cambridge University Press, Cambridge, 1996, 232 pp., ISBN 0–521–562–279 hbk, 0–521–566–657 pbk.

Stephen Gundle, I comunisti italiani tra Hollywood e Mosca. La sfida della cultura di massa, Giunti, Florence, 1995, 572 pp., ISBN 88–09–20642–8 pbk, 42,000 Lire.

Walter Laqueur, Fascism: Past, Present, Future, Oxford University Press, New York, 1996, 263 pp., ISBN 0–19–509245–7 hbk, $27.50, 0–19–511793‐X pbk, $13.95.

Stanley G. Payne, A History of Fascism 1914–1945, University of Wisconsin Press, Madison, 1995, 613 pp., ISBN 0–299–1487–0 hbk, $39.95 or £31.95, 0–299–14874–2 pbk, $19.95 or £14.95.

Renzo Martinelli, Storia del Partito comunista italiano: II ‘Partito nuovo’ dalla Liberazione al 18 Aprile, Einaudi, Turin, 1995, 382 pp, ISBN 88–06–13877–4, 65,000 Lire.

Patrick McCarthy and Gianfranco Pasquino (eds), The End of Post‐War Politics in Italy. The Landmark 1992 Elections, Westview Press, Boulder, San Francisco and Oxford, 1993, 187 pp., ISBN 0–8133–8628–4, £21.95.

Philip Morgan, Italian Fascism 1919–1945, Macmillan, Basingstoke, 1995, vii + 209 pp., ISBN 03353–7793 pbk, £12.99

John Whittam, Fascist Italy, Manchester University Press, Manchester, 1995, v + 179 pp., ISBN 07190–40043 pbk, £12.99.

Serge Noiret, La nascita del sistema dei partiti nell'ltalia contemporanea. La proportionate del 1919, Lacaita, Manduria, Bari and Rome, 1994, 313 pp., 30,1997 Lire.

Silvana Patriarca, Numbers and Nationhood. Writing Statistics in Nineteenth‐Century Italy, Cambridge University Press, Cambridge, 1996, pp. 280, ISBN 0–521–46296–7 hbk, £40.00.

Paolo Pombeni, La Costituente. Un problema storico‐politico, Il Mulino, Bologna, 1995, 170 pp., ISBN 88–15–05192–9 pbk, 18,000 Lire.

Michele Sarfatti, Mussolini contro gli ebrei: Cronaca dell'elaborazione delle leggi del 1938, Silvio Zamorani editore, Turin, 1994, 199 pp., ISBN 88–7158–033–8, 30,000 Lire.     

Towards a chequebook democracy? Business,parties and the funding of politics in Italy and the United States

This article seeks to establish to what extent Silvio Berlusconi's entry into electoral politics as leader of Forza Italia signals an ‘Americanization’ of Italian politics. It argues that Italian party democracy is moving in an ‘American’ direction in two ways. First, Italian party organizations are declining, leading to a more candidate-centred type of electoral politics. Second, the decline of parties is enhancing the ability of business to use its financial clout to tailor public policy to its own requirements. However, these trends do not have identical effects in Italy and the United States. This article will also show that this process of ‘Americanization’ interacts with the existing political praxis and institutional framework of Italian politics to produce an outcome which differs from both the traditional Western European model and the American model of party democracy. It will be concluded that this outcome seriously undermines representative democracy in Italy.     

Towards a history of emotion, 1562–1660

Abstract

This article examines uses of the word emotion during the seventeenth century, arguing that the term's meaning at this time was in flux. OED gives three principle definitions of emotion, the first as meaning ‘political turmoil or agitation’, the second as meaning literally ‘movement or motion’, and the third as meaning ‘strong feelings or passing’. I argue that a great many uses of emotion during the seventeenth century apply the word in the second sense to the physiological movements of humours. This being so, I suggest that in emotion's seventeenth-century uses it is possible to read a transition in the word's meaning. Through its frequent use with references to humours in motion, the word begins to take on the characteristics which would allow it to develop into meaning ‘feelings or passions’.     

Designing a New Civic Economy? On the Emergence and Contradictions of Participatory Experimental Urbanism

Can we remake local economies from scratch – not through political struggle but by design – to solve wicked problems and transform urban governance? Such questions are raised by an emergent trend within urban experimentation that emphasises participation and commoning in designing peer-to-peer provisioning systems through a platform logic. This article deconstructs the discourses animating what we term “participatory experimental urbanism” and reflects on what this might mean for local state restructuring in times of neoliberal austerity. By following its policies and prototypes as they move and mutate across the London Boroughs of Lambeth and Barking & Dagenham, we examine two exemplary initiatives, Open Works and Participatory City, tracing their beginnings in Lambeth's “cooperative council” model and their ongoing assembling into novel public-common-philanthropic partnerships. Foregrounding the contradictions within this latest turn towards urban governance-beyond-the-state, we draw out the implications for the future of social innovation, design-thinking, and the experimental city.     

Sticky words? Towards a theory of rhetorical path dependency

Speech matters. Political actors are defined by what they say as much as by what they do but, with each rhetorical choice, they also narrow the range of rhetorical options open to them for the future. This paper examines the idea of path dependency, a well-established concept in the field of policy studies, and applies it to the study of political rhetoric. It argues that words are sticky, leaving political leaders caught between the desire to utilise fresh and engaging rhetoric to explain new policy choices and the reality that they cannot shake off the wording of their previous promises. In advancing a theory of rhetorical path dependency, the paper builds on the insights of both discursive institutionalism and rhetorical political analysis to suggest that whilst ideas are indeed vital to the shaping of institutions, the arguments that give those ideas shape can themselves be constrained by earlier choices.