Movements in Parties: OccupyPD

When the United States activists called for people to Occupy#everywhere, it is unlikely they were thinking of the headquarters of the Italian centre-left party. Parties and movements are often considered to be worlds apart. In reality, parties have been relevant players in movement politics, and movements have influenced parties, often through the double militancy of many of their members. OccupyPD testifies to a continuous fluidity at the movement-party border, but also to a blockage in the party’s interactions with society that started long before the economic crisis but drastically accelerated with it. In this paper we present the OccupyPD Movement as a case of interaction between party politics and social movement politics, and in particular between the base membership of a centre-left party and the broader anti-austerity movement that diffused from the US to Europe adopting similar forms of actions and claims. Second, by locating it within the context of the economic and democratic crisis that erupted in 2007, we understand its emergence as a reaction towards politics in times of crisis of responsibility, by which we mean a drastic drop in the capacity of the government to respond to citizens’ requests. To fulfil this double aim, we bridge social movement studies with research on party change, institutional trust and democratic theory, looking at some political effects of the economic crisis in terms of a specific form of legitimacy crisis, as well as citizens’ responses to it, with a particular focus on the political meaning of recent anti-austerity protests. In this analysis, we refer to both quantitative and qualitative data from secondary liter-ature and original in-depth interviews carried out with a sample of OccupyPD activists

Together we stand? Coalition-building in the Italian and Spanish feminist movements in times of crisis

We analyse coalition-building in feminist mobilisations in times of crisis in two similar cases: Spain and Italy. Based on social movement literature, we develop two key arguments. First, in austerity-ridden scenarios, connecting socio-economic grievances and feminist demands is key for the feminist mass mobilisations to follow. Second, anti-austerity struggles must resonate across different dimensions of coalition-building, both within the feminist movements and across feminists and other actors, such as LGBTQ collectives and anti-austerity challengers. The data used throughout the article come from semi-structured interviews with activists in Italian and Spanish feminist grass-roots organisations. Our results suggest that times of neoliberal crisis may present opportunities not only to advance the feminist agenda, but also to foster alliances within the feminist milieus and between feminists and other relevant collective actors. These alliances might well extend beyond the period of greatest hardship

Wine and Its Legality-A Survey to Know the Consumer Opinions on the Activities of Sicilian Wine Companies Operating on Lands Confiscated from the Mafia

The current guidelines of the European Union Common Agricultural Policy face the agricultural sector in the position of the backbone for the economic development of rural areas and regions with difficult economic differentiation. The EU Common Agricultural Policy defines agriculture as “multifunctional” and among the different roles and functions expected, there is also the “social function”, defined as the ability that the farm has to generate services with respect to a population with risk of social exclusion. This paper investigated all the agricultural initiatives with social impacts that were carried in the lands confiscated from the organized crime (called mafia), mainly in the South of Italy and especially in Sicily. Through an Italian law, these lands could be used with social purposes by a particular kind of associations which might exercise an agricultural activity with the aim to produce food products, sell them in the market and offer employment opportunities in the agricultural sector. In particular, in Sicily, the activity of the “Social Cooperative Placido Rizzotto-Libera Terra” and its winery “Cantina Centopassi” which received honors and awards for its production of wine obtained from the earliest harvests and for its social work in that territory were well known. This work, which was part of a much broader study on “wine and legality”, aimed to know the opinion of Sicilian wine consumers and their knowledge about this topic with particular reference to the Cantina Centopassi

Marsala Wine and Porto Wine, two Important Stories and two Great Wines in Comparison. The Current Market Situation and Opportunities

Introduction Marsala wine is the oldest of the Sicilian wines and it takes its name from the little town where it is produced. It is one of the most famous fortified wines in the world thanks to its organoleptic qualities and its incredible versatility. Despite its ancient origin and its fame, which led this wine to be known all over the world, Marsala wine is for several years in a decline phase. Porto wine, has always been a true symbol of Portugal, is also very famous worldwide for centuries, it is obtained from different varieties of grapes grown in the Douro Valley and then it is aged in wooden barrels at the cellars of the Oporto City where it was then shipped to be exported all over the world. As the Marsala wine, also the Porto wine is a fortified and versatile wine, with its several varieties, depending on grapes, maturity and production technique used. Marsala and Porto are then two great wines with very similar stories and destinies, but they have now encountered (especially the Marsala wine) difficulties in holding a good position in the market, this is because of the “younger” sweet wines, their new strong competitors, passito wine, malvasia wine, sauterne, etc.

Radical left parties and social movements : strategic interactions

Defence date: 25 July 2018Examining Board: Professor Donatella della Porta, Scuola Normale Superiore (EUI Supervisor); Professor Philippe C. Schmitter, EUI; Professor Luke March, University of Edinburgh; Professor Kenneth M. Roberts, Cornell UniversitySince the 1990s, the progressive transformation of social-democratic parties into catch-all organizations, with a light ideological baggage and lack of social rootedness, has negatively influenced their relationship with the social movements. While losing their traditional institutional reference point, social movements are experiencing new forms of interaction with other party families – e.g. the Greens, the radical left and hybrid parties such as the Italian Five Star Movement. Accordingly, this study examines the ‘strategic interactions’ between the main ‘renewed’ (or ‘refounded’) radical left-wing parties (RLPs) and the left-wing social movements in Italy and Greece from 1999 to the present. The goal is to identify the processes by which the interactions between the two actors take shape, and the factors that contribute to success and failure in building them. To this end, I take into account both the adaptive changes that the RLPs have enacted under the impulse of social movements and the reactions of social movements to those party transformations. First, I distinguish between three party dimensions – organization (structure and internal mechanisms), political culture (values and political issues), and strategies (alliances within the political system) – and verify whether social movements represented a stimulus for RLPs to set in motion a process of change. Second, I consider how movement-oriented party transformations retroact on the movements’ perception of RLPs. The analysis shows that movement mobilization was an opportunity for the RLPs to emerge from the sidelines and achieve greater recognition. Nonetheless the changes they implemented differed, nor was their transformation equal in its strength and duration. While variation can be observed even over the same case through time, the macro result is that Greek RLPs adopted greater movement-oriented changes that helped them in cultivating stronger ties to social movements than their Italian cousins. The explanation for these differences is found in the combination of the RLPs’ heterodox political culture, higher and constant levels of double membership in both the party and the movements, and social movements’ instrumental attitude towards political institutions

Quality Factors Influencing Consumer Demand for Small Fruit by Focus Group and Sensory Test

The market of berries is a niche of high value in Italy. Small fruit\u2019s healthy properties are well known in the international market, but little is known about the reason for a low commercialization rate of fresh small fruit in Italy. The objective of this study was to assess consumer preferences in Italy for selected berry species. Moreover, the study aims to identify the relevant attributes of berries that affect the demand for this produce according to consumers and to compare these attributes. We assessed relevant attributes affecting the demand for fresh berries for different consumers\u2019 profiles and compared berries\u2019 attributes rankings. The results reveal high concordance between blackberries and raspberries; price is the attribute that constrains more purchases because it is deemed too high. Consumers prefer small fruit because of the rising interest in their nutraceutical value, and they have a higher willingness to pay because of this important attribute

La locura de Guerrita

Copia digital. Valladolid : Junta de Castilla y León. Consejería de Cultura y Turismo, 201

Importance of food labeling as a means of information and traceability according to consumers

Consumption patterns have considerably changed over recent years. We are witnessing more and more frequently to a lack of information (i.e. information asymmetry) between food producers and consumers, this generate in the consumer the latter need to access information related to processes of production of food and food distribution. Decisionmaking, in absence of further information, leads consumers to pay attention to food labeling. Food labels become the only tool for consumers to acquire additional information about products in order to make the purchase decision. In today’s modern and globalized market, labels limitations can be partially overcome by using Mobile Marketing tools, such as the QR Code (Quick Response Code). Therefore the objective of this study is: (1) categorize profiles of consumers according to the importance given to various information patterns shown on food labeling; (2) discover consumer behaviors when making a purchasing decision based on food information they require in the label; (3) discover consumer profiles with regards to food quality and the use QR Code to acquire further information about food products. Two Italian regional capitals were chosen, as representative of Northern and Southern Italy, basing on the geographical division of the Country made by the ISTAT (Istituto Nazionale di Statistica). The interviews were carried out by telephone, using a questionnaire. Data collected were processed by Multidimensional Scaling We discovered eight profiles of consumers with different purchasing behaviors. Some consumer profiles, with lifestyles typical of contemporary life, use the QR Code to obtain additional information about food products. The innovative purchasing behavior identifies a consumer who is particularly interested in food quality and safety. Agri-food businesses that focus on quality productions could target the innovative profile and communicate further information trough the use of modern communication technologies