1,720,965 research outputs found
The socio-political construction of the Central Mediterranean Sea between politics of exclusion and practices of solidarity: the role of European migration policies and SAR NGOs in the aftermath of the Arab uprisings
No full textSince 2014, the involvement of Non-Governmental Organizations (NGOs) in Search and Rescue (SAR) activities has been gradually changing and reshaping the socio-political scene in the Central Mediterranean (Cuttitta, 2018). European migration policies, on one hand, and NGOs’ humanitarian action, on the other, have contributed to a double redefinition of the Central Mediterranean space, as both a place of exclusion and hospitality, where state sovereignty and the need to respect human rights clash.
While European migration policies - emphasizing the political-ontological separation between the space inside and outside national borders (Di Cesare, 2017)- define the central Mediterranean space as a place of exclusion, where politics of border control and externalization of SAR activities to Libya prevail in the name of security, NGOs’ humanitarian intervention questions and oppose such an approach, redefining the political space of the Central Mediterranean from a humanitarian perspective, in which hospitality becomes the priority. In this sense, the Central Mediterranean space, produced by the social and political actions (Lefebvre, 2018), implemented in order to cope with the migratory phenomenon, and defined by the political and social values that these practices entail, assumes a dual identity and becomes, in Foucauldian terms, an heterotopia, representing in one real place -the central Mediterranean sea- incompatible spaces (Foucault, 2006), symbolizing the impasse between politics and ethics (Di Cesare, 2017) in the management of the migratory phenomenon in the Central Mediterranean region.
Drawing on Lefebvre's theorisation of space as a social product that does not pre-exist human beings, rather it is built and shaped by them, and Foucault’s notion of heterotopia, this paper proposes to analyse the role that both European migration policies and NGOs’ humanitarian SAR activities play in the socio-political construction of the Central Mediterranean, where the need to ensure human rights deeply clashes with the reaffirmation of the nation-state and its sovereignty, leading to the reconfiguration of the Central Mediterranean area as a space of representation, in which exclusion and hospitality coexist
Saving lives at sea. Le ONG di ricerca e soccorso nel Mediterraneo centrale: migrazioni, pratiche umanitarie e immaginari di solidarietà
Full text linkDal 2014, l’intervento di Organizzazioni Non Governative nelle attività di ricerca e soccorso (d’ora in poi SAR NGOs – Search and Rescue Non Governmental Organizations) nel Mediterraneo centrale ha messo in discussione le politiche migratorie europee – ancorate a processi di securitizzazione ed esternalizzazione delle frontiere, riportando l’agency dei migranti e i diritti umani al centro del dibattito sulle migrazioni e promuovendo, al contempo, riflessioni sul ruolo della solidarietà in processi più ampi di mutamento sociale. Quali sono i processi sociali e politici alla base dell’intervento della società civile nel Mediterraneo centrale? Qual è il ruolo delle ONG che fanno ricerca e soccorso nelle questioni legate alla migrazione nel complesso contesto geopolitico del Mediterraneo centrale?
Esplorando le narrazioni, gli immaginari e le pratiche che caratterizzano e definiscono le operazioni di salvataggio in mare delle ONG, attraverso interviste in profondità condotte con soccorritori e soccorritrici che fanno parte di diverse organizzazioni, con questa ricerca ci si è proposti di indagare i processi sociali e politici alla base dell'intervento della società civile nel Mediterraneo centrale, esaminando in particolare i significati che gli attori coinvolti attribuiscono alla propria azione in mare anche e soprattutto in relazione ai concetti teorici di umanitarismo e solidarietà (politica). Oltre alla dimensione operativa e umanitaria, che definisce fortemente l’identità delle SAR NGOs, assumendo talvolta caratteri controversi, emerge anche una forte dimensione politica, sebbene concepita in modo diverso dalle diverse organizzazioni. I cambiamenti storico-politici che hanno interessato il fenomeno dalle sue origini fino ad oggi ne hanno profondamente modificato i connotati contribuendo a una costante metamorfosi del fenomeno stesso. Inizialmente nate “dal basso”, quasi spontaneamente, collocandosi tuttavia molto presto all’interno di un quadro istituzionale ben definito e in piena collaborazione con gli attori istituzionali coinvolti – le guardie costiere, i governi nazionali così come pure gli attori europei, le ONG del Mediterraneo centrale hanno poi dovuto affrontare un contesto via via sempre più ostile in cui l’avviarsi di un forte processo di criminalizzazione ha portato a una costante necessità di trasformazione e riadattamento delle pratiche da loro messe in atto. Dalla forte professionalizzazione e burocratizzazione del settore fino ai tentativi di ri-politicizzare la propria azione mettendo in atto azioni più orientate alla solidarietà politica, le ONG che fanno ricerca e soccorso in mare si costituiscono come attori ibridi in cui è possibile individuare diverse tipologie di azioni legate a contesti valoriali che spaziano dall’umanitarismo classico, ai diritti umani fino alla solidarietà politica
Esquilino in campo. Associazioni, comitati, gruppi e territorio
No full textIl Rione Esquilino di Roma assurge spesso alle cronache della stampa periodica per episodi di degrado e criminalità, quasi sempre ricondotti alla fitta presenza di immigrati e senza fissa dimora. Tuttavia, l’elemento che probabilmente più lo connota è la vivacità del tessuto sociale locale, che si manifesta nell’elevata presenza di associazioni, comitati e gruppi, così come nella frequenza delle iniziative e degli eventi organizzati.
Questo libro, frutto di un progetto di ricerca transdisciplinare (antropologia, geografia, sociologia), finanziato da Sapienza Università di Roma, sofferma l’attenzione su una tipologia specifica di associazioni, vale a dire quelle impegnate nel contrasto al degrado urbanistico e nel miglioramento della qualità della vita nel rione. Associazioni, dunque, a forte impronta territoriale che costituiscono un tratto tipico dell’Esquilino, non ancora adeguatamente indagato.
Attraverso interviste semi-strutturate con gli esponenti di alcune tra le più rappresentative organizzazioni del rione, si è cercato di comprendere quale fosse la loro strutturazione interna, l’ambito di azione, le relazioni intessute con le istituzioni e con le altre associazioni, le modalità di operato esterno. I risultati della ricerca evidenziano gli innegabili risultati ottenuti dall’associazionismo esquilino in termini di progettualità realizzate e di restituzione sul piano della coesione sociale, ma anche alcune connotazioni che ne limitano l’efficacia operativa e l’incisività con gli attori decisionali
Going Beyond Counting First Authors in Author Co-citation Analysis
Full text linkThe present study examines one of the fundamental aspects of author co-citation analysis (ACA) - the way co-citation
counts are defined. Co-citation counting provides the data on which all subsequent statistical analyses and mappings
are based, and we compare ACA results based on two different types of co-citation counting - the traditional type that
only counts the first one among a cited work's authors on the one hand and a non-traditional type that takes into
account the first 5 authors of a cited work on the other hand. Results indicate that the picture produced through this non-traditional author co-citation counting contains more coherent author groups and is therefore considerably clearer. However, this picture represents fewer specialties in the research field being studied than that produced through the traditional first-author co-citation counting when the same number of top-ranked authors is selected and analyzed. Reasons for these effects are discussed
Variations on the Author
Full text link“Variations on the Author” discusses two of Eduardo Coutinho’s recent films (Um Dia na Vida, from 2010, and Últimas Conversas, posthumously released in 2015) and their contribution to the general question of documentary authorship. The director’s filmography is characterized by a consistent yet self-effacing form of authorial self-inscription: Coutinho often features as an interviewer that rather than express opinions propels discourses; an interviewer that is good at listening. This mode of self-inscription characterizes him as an author who is not expressive but who is nonetheless markedly present on the screen. In Um Dia na Vida, however, Coutinho is completely absent form the image, while Últimas Conversas, on the contrary, includes a confessional prologue that moves the director from the margins to the center of his films. This article examines the ways in which these works stand out in the filmography of a director who offers new insights into the notion of cinematic authorship
Appropriate Similarity Measures for Author Cocitation Analysis
Full text linkWe provide a number of new insights into the methodological discussion about author cocitation analysis. We first argue that the use of the Pearson correlation for measuring the similarity between authors’ cocitation profiles is not very satisfactory. We then discuss what kind of similarity measures may be used as an alternative to the Pearson correlation. We consider three similarity measures in particular. One is the well-known cosine. The other two similarity measures have not been used before in the bibliometric literature. Finally, we show by means of an example that our findings have a high practical relevance.information science;Pearson correlation;cosine;similarity measure;author cocitation analysis
The social representation of migrants during the Covid-19 pandemic. An Italian case study on hostile narratives and visual political communication
No full textThe present research investigates the social categorisation and construction of immigrants in Italy during the Covid-19 pandemic. For this purpose, hostile political narratives deployed on Twitter by three monitored Italian political forces (Matteo Salvini - La Lega party - Giorgia Meloni - Fratelli d’Italia - and the neofascist movement Casa Pound) and their visual representation of migration and migrants were analysed. Following a defined theoretical framework on the phenomena of othering, moral panic, processes of social exclusion and the role the “new” digital media play in such processes - especially in terms of negative and emotional political communication - the analysis deconstructs and identifies the founding elements of the political narratives on migrants, focusing on their visual component. The review of the sociological literature on the construction and representation of diversity and otherness introduces the empirical case study of the digital and visual communication monitoring performed from March 2020 to December 2021. Through the qualitative analysis of the visual content retrieved from the tweets collected, recurrent themes and communication strategies were investigated, determining the identification of four macro-categories upon which the construction and representation of immigrants and migration were carried out in the chosen context
Dispelling the Myths Behind First-author Citation Counts
Full text linkWe conducted a full-scale evaluative citation analysis study of scholars in the XML research field to explore just how different from each other author rankings resulting from different citation counting methods actually are, and to demonstrate the capability of emerging data and tools on the Web in supporting more realistic citation counting methods. Our results contest some common arguments for the continued
use of first-author citation counts in the evaluation of scholars, such as high correlations between author rankings by first-author citation counts and other citation
counting methods, and high costs of using more realistic citation counting methods that are not well-supported by the ISI databases. It is argued that increasingly available digital full text research papers make it possible for citation analysis studies to go beyond what the ISI databases have directly supported and to employ more
sophisticated methods
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