Looking for trouble: (Infra-)law enforcement, penal populism, and professional habitus against squatting in Italy

This paper reflects ethnographically on law enforcement against squatting in Milan. To this end, it examines labor practices, moral economies, and everyday narratives of those who work with the institutional mandate of tack- ling squatting in public housing. I propose to grasp these processes considering two specific political and legal con- figurations that traverse the arena under investigation: the entrenched presence, in the Italian context, of what has been defined as penal populism; additionally, the increas- ingly pronounced prominence of an infra-legal dimension of law. Squatting—and the way in which it is publicly managed and punished—represents a privileged lens for examining the specific forms of normative and political governance in contemporary cities

Sustainability data distortions: the use of visual impression management techniques in corporate sustainability reporting

Purpose The purpose of this study is to conduct a comprehensive investigation into the utilization of visual impression management techniques within sustainability reporting. Specifically, the study aims to determine whether Italian companies employ impression management tactics in the presentation of graphs within their sustainability reports and, thus, problematize visual data communication in corporate social responsibility (CSR). Design/methodology/approach The research adopts a multimodal content analysis of the 58 sustainability reports from Italian listed companies that are GRI-compliant. The analysis focused on three types of graphs: pie charts, line graphs and bar graphs. In total, 860 graphs have been examined. Findings The study found evidence of graphical distortion techniques being employed by companies in their sustainability reports to create a favorable impression. Specifically, graph distortions are found in column graphs and not in line or pie charts. In particular, selectivity, presentation enhancement and measurement distortion techniques seem to be extensively used when adopting column graphs in sustainability communication. Moreover, social sustainability–related topics tend to be more represented of other area of CSR reporting. This suggests that companies, whether consciously or unconsciously, engage in impression management techniques when using graphs in their sustainability reports. Social implications The study findings suggest that more consciousness is needed for companies when engaging in the construction and selection of graphs in their sustainability reports and that decision-makers should develop a clear guide for ethical visual communication. Originality/value The paper systematically analyzes visual impression management techniques in communicating sustainability data and, in particular, advances literature on graphical distortion. The value lies in empirical evidence of distortion adoption in GRI-compliant reports as well as problematizing visual data communication as a fundamental challenge for sustainability communication management

The Supreme Illusion of Real Time as the Limit of All Accelerations

The reflection on Real Time represents the culmination of a theoretical investiga- tion and, moreover, the most significant testament that Jean Baudrillard has left us. Upon closer inspection, one of the fundamental trajectories followed by his philosophical discourse is the transition from the centrality of space (Barile 2012) – from the “System of Objects” (1972) to Disneyland in “Simulacra and Simula- tions” – to that of time. In addressing this question, Baudrillard exhibits an interest typical of an epistemologist. In contrast to M. McLuhan, who was much more fas- cinated by the subatomic physics of Niels Bohr and Werner Heisenberg, the French philosopher expresses himself mostly as an attempt to construct a sort of relativistic socio-anthropology

Synthetic cell research: Is technical progress leaving theoretical and epistemological investigations one step behind?

Advancements in the research on so-called “synthetic (artificial) cells” have been mainly characterized by an important acceleration in all sorts of experimental approaches, providing a growing amount of knowledge and techniques that will shape future successful developments. Synthetic cell technology, indeed, shows potential in driving a revolution in science and technology. On the other hand, theoretical and epistemological investigations related to what synthetic cells “are,” how they behave, and what their role is in generating knowledge have not received sufficient attention. Open questions about these less explored subjects range from the analysis of the organizational theories applied to synthetic cells to the study of the “relevance” of synthetic cells as scientific tools to investigate life and cognition; and from the recognition and the cultural reappraisal of cybernetic inheritance in synthetic biology to the need for developing concepts on synthetic cells and to the exploration, in a novel perspective, of information theories, complexity, and artificial intelligence applied in this novel field. In these contributions, we will briefly sketch some crucial aspects related to the aforementioned issues, based on our ongoing studies. An important take-home message will result: together with their impactful experimental results and potential applications, synthetic cells can play a major role in the exploration of theoretical questions as well

Ecological and discourse in Pope Francis’ tweets

In 2015, the Holy Father relaunched Catholic ecological dis- course in his encyclical letter Laudato sì. As a basis for the Catholic chur- ch’s renewed position aimed mainly at promoting « sustainable and inte- gral development » (Bergoglio 2015, par. 13), the letter revisits the figura- tive rationality (Greimas & Courtés 1979) characterizing Saint Francis’ Laudes Creaturarum (Canticle of the Sun). The poem defines as brother- and sisterhood the relationship between man and nature, man and the four elements, celestial bodies and meteorological phenomena, and takes these as its objects of praise together with Mother Earth. Pope Francis references the cosmology outlined in the first part of the poem, offering it to contemporary Catholics for consideration. How is this representation disseminated through social media ? To ans- wer this question, we will analyze a corpus of tweets marked with the hashtag #LaudatoSi in different languages to search for the global strate- gies enacted by the Church. As we will show, many tweets associate this hashtag with the hashtag #Anthropocene, though this specific term does not appear in the encyclical letter. How do these notions of sustainable development and Anthropocene actualize Saint Francis’ poem ? How do they renew Catholic subjectivity ? To answer such questions, this study applies an innovative method from structural semantics to ecological tweets containing the hashtags #LaudatoSi, #sustainability, and #Anthropocene

The Chinese Inland-Coastal Inequality: The Role of Human Capital and the 2007–2008 Crisis Watershed

We investigate the role of human capital (HC) in the Chinese inland-coastal inequality and, related to this, how the consequences of the 2007–2008 crisis may induce China to re-focus its development path on HC. We compare panel data analyses for two periods (1998–2008 and 2009–2017) for two diverging groups of provinces (the richer/coastal and the relatively poor/inland areas). In the first period, the economic strengths that influenced the Chinese take-off and the dualism are confirmed. However, the results show that an evolution in local economic endowments is taking place: first, HC has a more evident economic effect after the crisis only in the inland provinces; second, the development path of the inland area is changing, with an evolution towards more productive sectors which can favor higher returns to HC