Making the Neighbourhood Relevant. A Study on How Events Territorialise their Outcomes

International audienceShifting and multi-level territories are not only generated by the mobility of capital and companies. Non-profit, community-based, groups increasingly adopt forms of action, such as the setting up of events, that directly question the taken-for-granted relation between spatial distance and social proximity. In this paper I focus on non-profit groups’ use of events as space infrastructures to make the neighbourhood relevant for the development of social ties and, thus, for the enhancement of local social inclusion. In order to account for the variety of outcomes produced by this strategy, three cases are introduced to show that the observed outcomes derive from the type of territorialisation process through which events develop and from the associated level of territorial complexity. This paper introduces a territorological approach useful to specify the different shapes that similar temporary claiming of space may take and to analyse the link between territorialisation forms and the deriving outcomes.Les territoires changeants et multiscalaires ne sont pas seulement générés par le capital et les entreprises. Des organisations à but non lucratif, communautés locales, adoptent de plus en plus des formes d’action comme l’organisation d’événements, ce qui questionne les relations entre distance spatiale et proximité sociale. Dans cette communication, je me concentre sur l’utilisation, par ces organisations, des événements qu’elles organisent comme bases visant à rendre le voisinage actif dans le développement du lien social et, de fait, dans l’amélioration de l’intégration sociale au niveau local. Pour rendre compte de la variété des conséquences, trois cas sont présentés qui soulignent que ces résultats dérivent à la fois du type de processus de territorialisation par lequel les événements se développent et du niveau de complexité territoriale. Cet article introduit une approche utile pour spécifier les formes que peuvent prendre des revendications de l’espace local et pour analyser le lien entre des formes de territorialisation et les conséquences qui en découlent

Local Democracy and Deliberative Arenas: Politics in the Garbage Can?

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Gary Alan Fine, The Hinge. Civil Society, Group Cultures and the Power of Local Commitments. Chicago: Chicago University Press, 2021.

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Gramsci's Civil Society and the Implicit Dimension of Politics. A case Study

Civil society actors' reduced ability to take political action and adopt critical positions towards public institutions is often ascribed to the "marketisation" of the local welfare systems in which non-profit and third-sector organizations operate. This reading of the depoliticisation of civil society is correct, but it has a number of shortcomings, including the assumption that civil society actors are passive agents that are overwhelmed by the depoliticisation mechanisms to which they are subjected. Instead, this paper ex-plores how civic organizations – albeit unintentionally – engender depoliticisation dynamics that shrink their critical strength. To do so, it draws on Gramscian arguments regarding civil society and politics and uses them to illuminate a case study of a local governance strategy (V'Arco Villoresi Green System), involv-ing both experts and civic groups. The main finding of the research is that civil society sustains what Gram-sci called "economism", i.e. a radical rejection of politics, which may be enacted by civil society both when non-critically adhering to governance arenas and when contesting them. The analysis undertaken contrib-utes to our understanding of the depoliticisation of civil society, shedding light, on the one hand, on how this process is not solely due to factors external to civil society and, on the other hand, on what the author calls the implicit dimension of politics

Gary Alan Fine, The Hinge. Civil Society, Group Cultures and the Power of Local Commitments. Chicago: Chicago University Press, 2021.

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Social Spirals through Everyday Group Life: Settings and Group Styles in a Comparative Perspective

Everyday group life is generally neglected in the study of the ongoing shifts affecting voluntary associations. This paper is grounded on a comparative ethnography of three Milanese associations affected by transformations in forms of voluntary participation, repertoires of action, and in their relations with public institutions. The study focuses on group styles and settings to ascertain the role played by everyday group life in shaping the implications of these transformations for the production of inclusive outcomes by the observed associations. The author introduces three different results produced by the studied associations and account for them with the same overall argument, which focus on practices and spaces shaping everyday group life. The main findings illustrate that everyday group life works both as a filter through which transformations produce consequences and also as a site of autonomous elaboration through which associations' outcomes are made and unmade

An ethnographic approach to the taking place of the event

This chapter delineates an ethnographic methodology to explore urban events accounting for the contested contingency of their taking place. This approach marks a difference vis-à-vis more conventional ways to explore urban events, which frame them through static, outcome-oriented, managerial, and de-materialising perspectives that tend to miss and pacify its constitutive conflictuality. Following instead the path opened by a series of recent attempts to address urban events in their material, sensorial, dynamic, and contingent unfolding, this chapter presents a methodology focused on the conflictual taking place of the event: the coming together of practices, bodies, and spaces through which the event emerges, the often uncontrollable narratives, affects, and materialities it produces, as well as the dispositifs put in place to control them, to channel the event’s contingency into precise, meaningful, and safe outcomes. It is exactly these frictions—generated at the encounter between the lines of flight of the event and the attempts to control them, which the ethnography permits to unpack and describe. Significantly, this research methodology is applicable to different types of events at different scales, and this is illustrated by a comparative analysis of two case studies of urban events. The first is a neighbourhood festival set in Milan, aimed to foster social inclusion among different ethnic groups. The second is a mega event, the 2010 South Africa FIFA World Cup, as it takes place in the city of Johannesburg. Notwithstanding the sheer difference of scale, organisation, significance, and purpose between them, both events take place in the urban space and thus produce an impact on the pre-existent rhythm and atmosphere of the city, whose outcomes are always to some extent unpredictable and contested, and thus require an appropriate methodology to be accounted for. This comparative analysis shows how this ethnographic approach is fitting to this task, as well as its value in highlighting the emancipatory potential of the event, at its different scales and typologies.info:eu-repo/semantics/publishedVersio

Martial, Pline le jeune et l’identité du genre de l’épigramme latine

Dès la fin du dix-neuvième siècle et jusqu’aux années soixante-dix au moins du vingtième le problème des origines de l’élégie latine était considéré comme d’une importance centrale. La prémisse du problème posé de façon traditionnelle était une drastique sous-évaluation de l’originalité des poètes latins. L’absence d’un genre grec exactement correspondant au niveau de la thématique et de l’ethos apparaissait, justement, comme un « problème » qu’on considérerait comme « résolu » lorsqu’on parv..