An Action Plan for the Mediterranean: a Case of EU Policy Transfer to the Mediterranean Basin

   Although for millennia the Mediterranean has facilitated the exchange of goods and people, in recent decades, it has been treated as a border between continents, nations and supranational institutions, with the European Union on one side and MENA region on the other. Yet pressing issues related to migration, climate change and pollution reveal problems with the border approach. In 1995, the Barcelona Process culminated in the creation of the Union for the Mediterranean (UfM) and the UfM Urban Agenda in an attempt to better connect countries around the Mediterranean. To concretise this agenda, TU Delft and the authors of this text were invited to work with DG-Regio, UNESCO, the EIB (European Investment Bank), and the ministries in charge of spatial planning in Member States, to draft the UfM Strategic Action Plan for Sustainable Urban Development. The goal of the Action Plan is to enhance the strategic and integrative value of spatial planning interventions in each country. Based on the personal reflections of the authors and the detailed communication with the institutions involved in the making of the plan, the article presents the history and the conceptual framework of the making of the UfM Strategic Action Plan. It concludes by highlighting the hurdles that the UfM Strategic Action Plan faces as a new transnational policy framework for the transfer of policy from the European Union to the MENA region (Middle East and the North of Africa). Such challenges are not only based on content, but they are also related to the frames and structures within which policy is developed and exchanged.

Introduction: Failed! The Sociological Analysis of Failure

In recent years the social sciences have been paying closer attention to failure, to its manifestations in the contemporary world and to the modalities of dealing with it both in theory and in practice. An emergent and interdisciplinary field of analysis has been consolidating under the label of failure studies reflecting a number of social trends. These include the instability of winner-take-all systems, the ubiquity of the new spirit of capitalism, metric-based forms of governmentality, platformization, and changes in cultural attitudes to failure. We argue that the normality of failure calls for a better conceptualization of it. What is needed is a clearer thinking about what failure really means, a better understanding of the mechanisms that generate, reproduce, and terminate it as a normal part of life. The essays collected for this symposium offer fresh insights on the analysis of failure. Taking different areas of social life as a focus, they critically examine the failures of large complex socio-technical systems; the purposefully agency of players in systems failure; the failures of governance and metagovernance; new meanings of policy failures; kaleidoscopic failure; network failure and the moral economy of failure. In doing so they we suggest that a sociology of failure needs to be built on socio-historical understandings of failure in different contexts, cultures, and environments

Cut off the King's Head? Constitutional Democracy and the State Against Arbitrariness

Constitutional democracies are increasingly perceived as limited devices. Against invitations to reducing their influence and size, these pages highlight one aspect or function that the State and constitutionalism share and which turn them into valuable instruments: avoidance of arbitrariness. I here argue that a central feature of both institutions is a commitment to making sure that citizens must lead lives that can be planned with some degree of certainty and reasonableness

Promuovere l’educazione e contrastare la povertà educativa. Questione di paradigmi?

Educational practices are affected by the dominant paradigm in the belonging context, which influences the representation of the human being, the idea and the purposes of education. Consequently, as a connecting science between the human sciences, pedagogy is called upon to be a critical instance. This article examines the issue of educational poverty — and of possible actions to prevent and combat it — in light of the cultural frameworks in which it is conceived. The responses to variations of the phenomenon could benefit from contaminations or from the openness to different epistemological and cultural paradigms, capable of enriching educators’ professionalism and nourishing their motivation. In order to deal with today’s Western society typical forms of poverty, it is proposed to draw from both the emerging systemic holistic paradigm and the epistemology of complexity, as well as from proto-holistic practices and guiding principles deriving from neurosciences. The reader is supported in reflecting on the foundations of an integrating education which, taking advantage of sciences from East to West, favours the flourishing and expression of human multidimensionality.Le pratiche educative risentono del paradigma dominante nel contesto di appartenenza, che influenza la rappresentazione dell’essere umano, l’idea e le finalità dell’educazione. Conseguentemente, la pedagogia, scienza di raccordo tra le scienze umane, è chiamata a essere un’istanza critica. Il presente articolo esamina la questione della povertà educativa – e delle azioni possibili di prevenzione e contrasto – alla luce delle cornici culturali entro cui viene concepita. Le risposte alle declinazioni del fenomeno potrebbero giovarsi di contaminazioni o aperture a paradigmi epistemologici e culturali alternativi, in grado di arricchire la professionalità degli educatori e di nutrirne la motivazione. Per far fronte a povertà tipiche dell’odierna società occidentale si propone di attingere dal paradigma olistico sistemico emergente e dall’epistemologia della complessità, da prassi proto-olistiche e orientamenti derivanti dalle neuroscienze. Il lettore è accompagnato a riflettere sui fondamenti di un’educazione integrativa che, facendo tesoro del portato delle scienze da Oriente a Occidente, favorisca la fioritura e l’espressione della multidimensionalità umana

Expectations of Failure: Political Risks in the Moral Economy of Ignorance and Social Injustice

We are observing how contemporary failure regimes increasingly challenge ignorance and social injustice, and how this opens expectations for public policy to move beyond effectiveness and to pursue more emancipatory and progressive aims. Policy reinterpretations and expectations of failure however, are not coming solely from critical and alternative groups in the society. They are first and foremost political, which raises the question how does the moral economy and epistemology of just futures unfold? What are the effects of political exploitation and contamination? Our answer is to review political risks of emancipatory activism in abortion debates, which manifest high levels of polarization and contestation in relation to reproductive justice and human rights. We map out various hazards, showing how they produce what we term post-failure, and sustain emancipation fantasies and alternative policy futures that are linked with oppression effects. With this exploration we see that addressing ignorance and social injustice in policymaking has never been more essential, yet also unpredictable and convoluted in the political risks that it poses

Technical Solutions for Data Systematization for Early Modern Accounting Sources. The HOLYLAB Database of Account Books of the Custody of the Holy Land

This article discusses the early stages of the online, open-access database of the ERC project 'HOLYLAB'. Specifically, it addresses the work done on the database sources—the account books from the Franciscan Custody of the Holy Land between the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries—and the technical solutions adopted for the purpose of data systematization. Considering such solutions in depth is crucial, we believe, for several reasons. First, these solutions make unravelling the complexity and lack of structure for this type of historical data, which are both quantitative and qualitative and greatly inconsistent, possible. They also constitute a key initial step in the analysis and design stages of a database that aims to serve different functions simultaneously: granting access to unpublished historical records, as well as allowing searches for specific objects, people, places and for changes in the circulation of money, objects, and people through space and time. Finally, doing so provides a blueprint for approaching and systematizing historical data in early modern accounting sources in a crucially flexible way, and will help other researchers who face similarly challenging and complex data when building historical databases. L'articolo si propone di illustrare le fasi preparatorie del database, online e open-access, connesso al progetto ERC 'HOLYLAB'. In particolare, si concentra sul lavoro fatto sulle fonti per il database—i libri di conto della Custodia francescana di Terra Santa tra diciassettesimo e diciottesimo secolo—e le soluzioni tecniche adottate ai fini della sistematizzazione dei dati. Discutere tali soluzioni in profondità si rivela importante per diverse ragioni. Primo, tali soluzioni aiutano ad affrontare la complessità e mancanza di struttura che caratterizza questo tipo di dati storici, i quali hanno natura sia quantitativa che qualitativa ma profondamente disomogenea al loro interno. Costituiscono inoltre un passaggio iniziale chiave nell'analisi e progettazione di un database che punta a servire diversi scopi allo stesso tempo: garantire l'accesso a informazioni storiche inedite, così come la possibilità di effettuare ricerche su oggetti, persone e luoghi specifici e sui cambiamenti nei secoli e tra aree geografiche nella circolazione di denaro, oggetti e persone. Infine, fare ciò fornisce un modello per affrontare e sistematizzare in maniera flessibile dati storici da fonti contabili d'età moderna, e aiuterà altri ricercatori alle prese con dati storici dalle complessità e sfide simili

Le case sono infrastrutture? Riproduzione, intimità e lavoro negli spazi domestici

The text examines domestic space and the relationships that characterize it through an attempt to interpret them as a social infrastructure. Thinking of the home as infrastructure also means expanding the conception of what constitutes an infrastructure and reflecting on the relationship between politics and intimacy to question the boundaries between public and private. Moreover, observing the home through the infrastructural dimension allows for placing reproductive labor at the center, not only as work but also as a central element for social infrastructure.Il testo prende in esame lo spazio domestico e le relazioni che lo caratterizzano attraverso il tentativo di leggerli come un’infrastruttura sociale. Pensare la casa come infrastruttura significa anche ampliare la concezione di cosa sia un’infrastruttura e riflettere sulla relazione tra politica e intimità per mettere in discussione i confini tra pubblico e privato. Inoltre, osservare la casa attraverso la dimensione infrastrutturale permette di mettere la centro il lavoro riproduttivo non solo come lavoro ma anche come elemento centrale per l’infrastruttura sociale

Designing a Waterspace in a Sea of Land. The Basso Ferrarese: a Territory Poised Between Reclamations and Sea Level Rising

The Basso Ferrarese area in the Po Delta is an undecided place, suspended between land and sea, in search of its future. Its current conformation derives from a history linked first to a large marshy basin, then to centuries of reclamation. Although the reclamations have helped the agricultural use of the land, at the same time they have caused the disentanglement between population and site. At the same time, the threat of rising sea levels is looming. Through a series of journeys, the current landscapes of that sea of land that today forms the Basso Ferrarese have been recorded. A sea made up of many levels that limit and direct the reclamation channels. In a strong state of abandonment, what can be the future of the area? Through the creation of an imaginary for the water space and the study of the needs of a case study, 5 design actions have been identified to decolonize the delta from the land and regain contact with the water, at the same time preparing for the rise of the sea

Taking Quantitative Evaluation of Intellectual Labour Seriously: A Debate about Juan Pablo Pardo-Guerra’s The Quantified Scholar (CUP, 2022)

The rise of quantitative research evaluation has changed not only the way knowledge is rated and ranked, but the way scientific knowledge is produced. This Focus discusses the outcomes of Juan Pablo Pardo-Guerra’s research on the transformation of the British social sciences. While pushing social scientists to adapt to the new canons of evaluation, research assessment frameworks have increased disciplinary homogeneity at the detriment of diversity. Moving beyond the specificity of the British case, the comments that follow critically engage with the perspectives and proposals advanced by the author

[Not quotable] The adsorption of Pb2+ and Ni2+ ions utilizing modified chitosan beads: A response surface methodology and artificial neural network modelling study

Editorial Note - 2024-05-31The article has been temporarily retracted due to ongoing investigations.---This work investigates the application of artificial neural networks (ANN) and response surface methodology (RSM) in developing a technique for removing Pb2+ and Ni2+ ions from wastewater using chitosan derivative. The materials including chitosan beads (CS) and grafted chitosan beads (MCS) were evaluated using infrared spectroscopy (FTIR) and a scanning electron microscope (SEM). The process factors were modeled and optimized using the central composite design (CCD) derived from RSM. Removal efficiency was described as the response for the output layer. However, the input layer feed data consists of pH, adsorbent dose, contact duration, temperature, and concentration. Two neurons were used as the ANN algorithm's output layers, which correspond to the adsorption of Pb2+ and Ni2+ ions. Both models were measured using statistical metrics like average relative errors (ARE), coefficient of determination (R2), Marquart's percentage standard deviation (MPSD), mean squared error (MSE), Pearson's Chi-square (), root means square errors (RMSE), and the sum of squares of errors (SSE). The ideal trained neural network depicts the training, validation, and testing phases, with R2 values of 1.0, 0.968, and 0.961, respectively. The findings, however, showed that the ANN technique is superior to the RSM-CCD model approach. At pH 5, starting concentration of 100 mg/L, an adsorbent mass of 6.0 g, a reaction time of 55 min, and a temperature of 40 oC, the RSM-CCD model's optimization results for the process variables were achieved. The greatest removal percentages for Pb2+ and Ni2+ ion was 98.14% and 98.12%, respectively. The findings suggest that ANN can be utilized in forecasting the removal of adsorbates from wastewater