Underwater archaeological parks: a new perspective and a challenge for conservation—the Italian panorama

The conservation in situ of underwater archaeological heritage is a highly stimulating subject for both archaeologist and conservator as it permits planning and experimentation of new treatment methods opening up new possibilities for conservation, protection and scientific research. This paper offers some remarks on this subject and shows the experience of some Italian underwater archaeological parks.     

Gender and the Silences of Social Capital: Lessons from Latin America

Social capital has entered development policy thinking and practice in Latin America where it converges with the premises of a new development agenda that emerged in the 1990s. Women are often central to the forms of social capital that development agencies are keen to mobilize in poverty relief programmes, but the terms of women’s insertion into these programmes is rarely problematized. This article critically examines the gendered assumptions that govern efforts to build social capital, and explores some of the tensions that have arisen in post‐transition Latin America between women’s rights and social capital agendas.     

Showing the Poor a Good Time: Caring for Body and Spirit in Bologna's Civic Charities

As poor relief in Christian Europe was being reformed through the sixteenth century, tensions emerged between a traditional charitable culture that allowed for occasional festivity, and the newer charitable culture that emphasized discipline, restraint, and efficiency. An undated document relating to a dispute that broke out in the main civic welfare agency of Bologna (Opera Pia dei Poveri Mendicanti) shows that gender and class were key dimensions of these two cultures, and underscores that the two should not be seen as sequential but as co-existing and competing. This study examines the dispute and proposes a dating for the document in the 1590s.