Zones,corridors, and postcolonial capitalism

This essay examines the reordering of space under contemporary capitalism, mainly dealing with Asia and posing questions about its significance for Australia. It traces the history of zones and shows how today they are linked via corridors to ensure the circulation of commodities, capital and money. Notwithstanding the exploitation and dispossession involved in the system, it is argued that over time India and Australia will be brought together in a shared postcolonial destiny.     

Public vices,private remedies in nineteenth-century Italy: Giulia Falletti di Barolo Colbert and Le Forzate

In nineteenth-century Italy notions of femininity and, no less, masculinity influenced the ways in which crime was viewed. The result was that criminality was perceived, judged and explained differently according to the sex of the offender. At every stage in the penal process, cultural understandings of what women were like, and how they ought to behave, operated to define the appropriate response to their misconduct and to structure their punishment. These 'gendered' aspects of criminal justice have influenced the practices of prosecution and sentencing, and, most clearly of all, the special regimes and attitudes adopted in women's prisons: throughout the century male prison regimes emphasized discipline and deterrence, while female prisons developed individualized programmes of 'moral regeneration'. This article deals with the history of the first prison destined exclusively for women - which was opened in Turin in 1821 - with the circumstances which brought about its creation as well as with its organizational structure and its aims. Its promoter - both in money and in spirit - was a woman, named Giulia Falletti di Barolo Colbert. Giving special consideration to the ideals of its foundress, this article examines how nineteenth-century perceptions of the female criminal differentiated the nature and purpose of penal servitude for women.     

Cronies,economic crime and capitalism in Putin's sistema

The books included in this review article are essential for the understanding of what I call Putin's sistema—the governance model that originated in the Soviet system but has transformed and adapted to global change. Each book tackles, from a different angle, the issues of Russia's transition and suggests ways to describe its political consequences. The books all attempt to identify some underlying logic or organizing force in a Russian society that has emerged through weak institutions. Although I join the authors in their criticisms of the ‘transition paradigm’ and its ‘opening‐breakthrough‐consolidation of democracy’ formula, transformations of the Soviet sistema seem to resonate with the ‘opening‐breakthrough‐consolidation of capitalism’. Perestroika can be seen as an ‘opening’ in shaking the foundations of sistema; Yeltsin's era as a ‘breakthrough’; and Putin's regime as the ‘consolidation’ of capitalism but with its distinct characteristics.     

转型时期私营企业劳资关系的博弈分析

工人、企业主和政府共同构成劳资关系的三方格局。在我国目前劳资关系的格局中,企业主处于强势地位,劳动者处于弱势地位,缺少对企业主进行有效制衡的力量和机制,地方政府在劳资关系中偏向企业主一方。解决目前劳资关系困境的关键在于引进集体谈判机制,建立政府、企业主组织和工会之间的三方协商机制,形成企业主、工人与政府之间制度性协商平台。     

The Mafia,the market and the state in Italy and Russia

Pino Arlacchi (1983) La mafia imprenditrice (Bologna: II Mulino); translated by Martin Ryle as Mafia Business: The Mafia Ethic and the Spirit of Capitalism (London: Verso, 1986), $13.95, ISBN 0‐86091‐892‐0.

Raimondo Catanzaro (1988) II delitto come impresa: storia sociale della mafia (Padua: Liviana Editrice); translated by Raymond Rosenthal as Men of Respecc: A Social History of the Sicilian Mafia (New York: Free Press, 1992), $22.95, hardback, ISBN 0‐02‐905325‐0.

Diego Gambetta (1992) La mafia siciliana: Una industria della protezione privata (Turin: Einaudi revised paperback edn, 1994); translated as The Sicilian Mafia: The Business of Private Protection (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1993), $39.95 hardback, ISBN 0‐674‐80741‐3.

Salvatore Lupo (1993) Storia della mafia dalle origini ai giorni nostri (Rome: Donzelli Editore).

Alexander Stille (1995) Excellent Cadavers: The Mafia and the Death of the First Italian Republic (New York: Pantheon), ISBN 0679425799.

Stephen Handelman (1995) Comrade Criminal: Russia's New Mafiya (New Haven, Conn.: Yale University Press), $27.50, hardback, ISBN 0‐300‐06352‐0.

Robert Putnam (1993) Making Democracy Work: Civic Traditions in Modern Italy (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press), $39.95, hardback, $14.95, paperback, ISBN 0‐691‐03738‐8.     

The articulation of capitalism and traditional modes of production in Africa

Illife, John. The Emergence of African Capitalism. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1983. ix + 113 pp. including reference notes and index. $29.50 cloth, $10.95 paper.

Vercruijsse, Emile. The Penetration of Capitalism: A West African Case Study. London: Zed Books, 1984. vi + 180 pp. including appendices, bibliography, and index. $26.25 cloth, $10.25 paper.

van Ginsbergen, Wim, and Peter Geshiere, eds. Old Modes of Production and Capitalist Encroachment: Anthropological Explorations in Africa. London: Routledge and Kegan Paul. xviii + 341 pp. including chapter references and indices. $49.95 cloth.     

The collective capitalism of Northeast Asia and the limits of orthodox economics

In an effort to offer a more balanced assessment of Northeast Asian political economy than is typically found in the conventional neo‐classical tradition, this paper highlights forms of business collectivism and state‐economy interaction that have, arguably, played an important role in Northeast Asian economic dynamism. Beyond this, there is an account of why mainstream economic analysis has been so one‐sided in its analysis of Northeast Asia. A number of policy implications are also drawn from the analysis.     

韦伯解释资本主义发生的社会学视界

在《新教伦理与资本主义精神》一书中,马克斯.韦伯从社会学视角解释经济的发展,认为如果没有新教伦理导致的资本主义精神的存在,欧洲资本主义就不会兴起和发展起来。韦伯的这种社会学研究范式与经济学研究范式相比有许多特色,主要体现在:“跳出经济看经济”和从细微处切入探求现象背后的深层次本质;“系统的视野”和把经济发展看作是一种复合式的社会的变迁;“经验的研究”和整体类型比较学的研究方法。     

Slum clearance, privatization and residualization: the practices and politics of council housing in mid-twentieth-century England

This article contributes to a growing literature on working-class suburbanization by arguing that both the residualization and privatization of council housing need to be properly historicized. This case study of housing policy in the borough of Brighton demonstrates that council house sales between the 1950s and 1970s were important in the residualization of inter-war estates well before the 'right to buy' legislation of the 1980s. Concerns about excessively affluent tenants can also be traced to the inter-war period, although it was not until the late 1950s that local Conservatives sought to push affluent council tenants into owner occupation via capping incomes and encouraging council house sales. The article shows that slum clearance had long been central to the local council's provision of municipal housing and that apart from two short periods following the First and Second World Wars, council housing was conceived of primarily as a residual tenure by those in control of policy implementation. It further demonstrates that slum clearance between the 1920s and 1960s altered the social constituency for council housing and, combined with selective privatization, specific allocation policies and disinvestment, led to the stigmatization of certain inter-war estates. The article suggests that further case studies are needed in order to test the wider applicability of these arguments during the middle years of the twentieth century.     

The Rigging and the 'Hydraulic System' of the Roman Wreck at Grado, Gorizia, Italy

The hull of the Roman wreck at Grado has been preserved under the cargo of amphoras. On the site, a lot of wooden elements of the rigging are preserved, including deadeyes, blocks, and toggles. Three possible bitts were identified, one of them sculpted; two were nailed to the hull while one was loose. Near the keel a lead tube, protected by a wooden box, has been interpreted as a bilge-pump but more probably it was a suction-pump. The tube would have been connected to a piston pump which has not survived. Possible explanations for its use are presented.
© 2005 The Nautical Archaeology Society     

The history of the book and publishing in eighteenth-century Italy

Based on published and untapped sources, the article sets out to explore the cultural and material conditions of the book trade in Italy during the eighteenth century. Special concern is given to the import of French printed works and pamphlets as a means to diffuse the Enlightenment south of the Alps. The text does not address problems of authorial status, but provides a general assessment of the literary market and its impact on the reading habits of the elites. Critical and bibliographical information is also provided about the renewal of interest for the history of the book and reading in Italy since the 1980s.     

The public relevance of the church and Catholicism in Italy

Abstract

This article highlights the particular situation of the Catholic religion in Italy which distinguishes itself for its systematic organization, active association-forming and cultural vitality, unrivalled in any other European country either Protestant or Catholic. On the one hand the church in Italy still disposes of such a wealth of clergy and religious figures, dioceses and parishes, educational and social institutions, ecclesiastical groups and associations, and so on, that it can maintain a diffuse presence scattered over the national territory; it deploys numerous forces and resources which form an integral part of normal social relationships that animate civil society. On the other hand, the church and Italian Catholicism today are particularly active at a cultural level, with their contribution of ideas and experience on vital questions arising in social coexistence (ranging from the family to bioethics, from religious freedom to the secular State, from national identity to the multiethnic presence, and so on).