The politics of innovation, entrepreneurship and community as a discursive practice. Researching a startup incubator in Milan.

This study investigates innovation as a discursive field and it aims to answer the following research questions: under what conditions of possibility does the discursive practice “innovation” become subjectively and collectively sensible and meaningful? How does such discourse “speak the truth” to and for the subject? The research explores innovation as a meaningful social fact that, on one side, features ideal and objectified traits as an object of knowledge and, on the other, it socially inscribes itself into reality through spatialization. The analysis problematizes innovation as a social phenomenon that manifests itself in and through spaces –urban, organizational and corporeal, contingently to relational processes and subjective enactments. To answer the research questions, the study performs an analysis of innovation as a discursive field through a genealogical exercise that builds on an ethnographic observation conducted at Core, a startup incubator and co-working space located in Milan. The inquiry moves from the basic consideration that acknowledges as meaningful the relationship between innovation, the city and the urban space at large. Rather than assuming the “city-innovation” nexus as given, the study investigates some of the epistemological grounds, ontological properties and features of the rational discourse underlying innovation (Chapter 1). More precisely, this study begins with a problematization of how innovation is commonly thought and represented as requiring specific spatial conditions to thrive, and how a particular configuration of the object “city” is pre-reflexively implied and imagined when the desideratum “innovation” is evoked. Building upon this first genealogical analysis, the “eventualization” of innovation as a discursive practice is then investigated with reference to Milan’s contemporary social space (Chapter 3). In the chapter, particular attention is paid to key policies and initiatives embraced at the local and national governmental levels from 2011 to 2016. Building on the assumption that for a discourse to materialize into a social practice, organizational and corporeal spaces of configuration are needed, the results of the ethnographic investigation are then presented. The organizational spatial rhetoric and pedagogy are analyzed in order to shed light upon the material conditions of the appearance of the discourse of innovation (Chapter 4). Finally, the relational conditions of possibility for innovation to occur are explored, and the experience of being an “innovative” subject is investigated (Chapter 5). This study offers a contribution to critical social theory and research, as well as to human geography, in two ways. On the one hand, it performs a “methodological journey” to show how certain objects of thought e.g. the urban space, the city or innovation– territorialize in institutions, rituals, “banal” gestures, unconscious and pre-reflexive practices through spatial relations. On the other hand, this work sheds light on the rhetoric of innovation by arguing that it corresponds to a new anthropological discourse rather than being a simple expression of historically contingent economic necessities

Il sistema del cibo torinese: risorsa economica e spazio delle politiche

Questo contributo presenta, sinteticamente, il sistema del cibo di Torino come oggetto di riflessione e spazio di azione da due punti di vista, strettamente interconnessi. In primo luogo, il sistema del cibo di Torino (inteso in una logica multiscalare che tiene insieme il livello urbano e quello territoriale metropolitano) viene analizzato in quanto filiera economica, costituita da un insieme complesso di attori, risorse, spazi, flussi e relazioni che attengono alla produzione, trasformazione, distribuzione, consumo e smaltimento di cibo. La filiera agro-alimentare intercetta la città e il territorio producendo molteplici economie urbane, molte delle quali capaci di migliorare la sostenibilità ambientale, la giustizia e l’inclusione sociale del sistema stesso. Inoltre, queste economie rappresentano sempre più una leva fondamentale nella costruzione simbolica e materiale della Torino post-industriale. In secondo luogo, il sistema alimentare di Torino viene letto come spazio di politiche (urbane e territoriali) che, negli ultimi anni, si muovono nella direzione di strategie integrate e partecipate, le quali rappresentano anche un’occasione preziosa di contaminazione e reciproca valorizzazione tra le economie del cibo e gli aspetti socioculturali ad esso sottesi. Le riflessioni qui presentate vanno lette all’interno del più ampio progetto di Atlante del cibo di Torino Metropolitana, strumento di analisi, rappresentazione e comunicazione del sistema del cibo urbani e territoriale

Outcomes of pregnancies after kidney transplantation: lessons learned from CKD. A comparison of transplanted, nontransplanted chronic kidney disease patients and low-risk pregnancies: a multicenter nationwide analysis.

BACKGROUND: Kidney transplantation (KT) may restore fertility in CKD. The reasons why materno-foetal outcomes are still inferior to the overall population are only partially known. Comparison with the CKD population may offer some useful insights for management and counselling.Aim of this study was to analyse the outcomes of pregnancy after KT, compared with a large population of non-transplanted CKD patients and with low-risk control pregnancies, observed in Italy the new millennium. METHODS: We selected 121 live-born singletons after KT (Italian study group of kidney in pregnancy, national coverage about 75%), 610 live-born singletons in CKD and 1418 low-risk controls recruited in 2 large Italian Units, in the same period (2000-2014). The following outcomes were considered: maternal and foetal death; malformations; preterm delivery; small for gestational age baby (SGA); need for the neonatal intensive care unit (NICU); doubling of serum creatinine or increase in CKD stage. Data were analysed according to kidney diseases, renal function (staging according to CKD-EPI), hypertension, maternal age, partity, ethnicity. RESULTS: Materno-foetal outcomes are less favourable in CKD and KT as compared with the low-risk population. CKD stage and hypertension are important determinants of results. KT patients with e-GFR >90 have worse outcomes compared with CKD stage 1 patients; the differences level off when only CKD patients affected by glomerulonephritis or systemic diseases ('progressive CKD') are compared with KT. In the multivariate analysis, risk for preterm and early-preterm delivery was linked to CKD stage (2-5 versus 1: RR 3.42 and 3.78) and hypertension (RR 3.68 and 3.16) while no difference was associated with being a KT or a CKD patient. CONCLUSIONS: The materno-foetal outcomes in patients with kidney transplantation are comparable with those of nontransplanted CKD patients with similar levels of kidney function impairment and progressive and/or immunologic kidney diseas

"Innovazione, imprenditorialità, tecnologia: La promessa di una nuova urbanità"

Il presente contributo prende in esame il discorso pubblico dell’innovazione con riferimento al contesto italiano contemporaneo, delineandone la logica e le possibili implicazioni. L’euforia collettiva che “l’innovazione” è capace di suscitare e la diffusione linguistica di tale termine ri ettono una trasformazione sociale e culturale in corso, con conseguenze importanti a livello antropologico e geogra co sulle quali ri ettere in modo critico