Beyond the Aberrant City: Towards a Critical Ethnography of Naples

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Moroccan City Festivals, Cultural Diplomacy and Urban Political Agency

Over the last two decades, cultural festivals have been established and consolidated in cities across Morocco. Their proliferation has coincided with the reign of Mohammed VI, well known as an enthusiastic and extremely wealthy patron of the arts, and the concomitant state-controlled democratization of Moroccan politics and society. Drawing on two examples—the Marrakech International Film Festival and the Mawazine music festival in Rabat—this article interrogates the ways in which festivals and the urban scale combine to function as vehicles for cultural diplomacy. Contra the common tendency in recent policy debates that perceive the city (with or without its administration) as an active agent in translocal cultural relations, I argue for a more nuanced perspective that understands the urban festival as a diplomatic platform through which the cultural politics of the state are rescaled and where a range of actors contest ideas about the local, national and global trajectories of society and cultural life

How far can we compare? Migration studies, comparative urbanism and the potential of a trans-Mediterranean perspective

Through an analysis of migrant incorporation in Rome and Rabat, this article investigates the theoretical, methodological and policy consequences of comparing across the fault lines around which urban migration research is conventionally structured. It critically brings into conversation the “local turn” in migration policy research with debates around comparative urbanism, and discusses how the Mediterranean region and a reconsideration of temporal frames in migration studies can offer a generative framework for comparing cities across the Global “North” and “South.” The comparative analysis considers how, inter alia, legacies of internal mobility, non-state service provision and divergent public discourses about “diversity” illuminate the different ways in which contemporary migration has been negotiated in the two cities. In doing so, the article challenges assumptions about policy path dependency or the smooth transfer of “best practices” and instead points to the possibility of learning from any city, be it Rome or Rabat

The experience of diversity in an era of urban regeneration: The case of Queens Market, East London

This paper explores the relationship between ethnic diversity, public space and urban regeneration by considering the redevelopment of Queens Market in the multiethnic borough of Newham, East London. In 2004 Newham Council announced plans to demolish the market and relocate it within a new shopping and residential complex. In response, local people have campaigned to halt the scheme and have called for the refurbishment of the existing structure. Drawing on ethnographic fieldwork conducted in Newham, the paper examines the conflict that has arisen between local people’s attachments to the market and the Council’s vision of creating a “safer and cleaner” environment aimed at attracting higher income users. Within this frame, the paper attempts to unpack the contested significance of diversity, from the everyday experience of interaction and a resource that is mobilized by campaigners, to the gentrifying trajectory that is inherent in the market redevelopment scheme and reflective of a more general process in contemporary urban regeneration in Britain

From ‘southern’ to ‘ordinary’: Conceptualizing and contextualizing segregation in public space in southern European cities

This article discusses segregation in public space in southern European cities. As well as questioning the appropriateness of associating the concept of segregation with public space, it considers the possibilities and limits of using ‘southern’ and postcolonial urban theory in order to analyze cities in southern Europe. Drawing on longstanding research in Naples, the article relects upon how two issues of global signiicance – migration and cultural heritage – have been implicated in the reordering of public spaces in the city’s historic centre. Besides accounting for the nuanced nature of spatial segregation in the city, the article argues that the notion of ‘ordinary’ is a more useful point of departure than ‘southern’, because it alerts us to the different exclusionary dynamics that exist both between and within cities in southern Europe

Stop Pasolini! Excavating the social underbelly of a ‘gentrifying’ neighbourhood in Rome

As Pigneto becomes increasingly associated with gentrification in local, national and international imaginaries, both from celebratory and critical standpoints, ideas about the neighbourhood tend to get collapsed into a predetermined set of signifiers. This is not to deny that gentrification is very real in Pigneto or that it is not embroiled in instances of structural and symbolic violence. Rather, it is simply to point out that any attempt to understand a gentrifying neighbourhood will be wholly inadequate if the narrative approach clings to class and political identities that no longer exist or perhaps never existed in the first place

Italy and the Mediterranean: Words, Sounds, and Images of the Post-Cold War Era

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Thinking Lampedusa: border construction, the spectacle of bare life and the productivity of migrants

This article interrogates the relationship between the Italian island of Lampedusa and trans-Mediterranean migration. It explores how the construction of Lampedusa as a border zone has been implicated in the rise and fall in numbers of migrants reaching the island’s shores over the last two decades. It proceeds to consider the appropriateness of interpreting death and detention on Lampedusa in terms of ‘bare life’. While acknowledging how Giorgio Agamben’s formulation of bare life has been problematized in relation to irregular migration and taking into account the frequent acts of migrants’ political agency on the island itself, it is argued that the transformation of Lampedusa by the media and political establishment into a spectacle of bare life is not only instrumental to the functioning of migration management at Europe’s southern border but is also constitutive of the subordinate position of migrants in Italian society and its labour market

L’eterno abietto: le classi popolari napoletane nelle rappresentazioni del Partito Comunista Italiano

This article examines the complex albeit rarely studied relationship between the PCI/PDS and the so-called ‘popular classes’ in Naples from the end of the Second World War to 1998. Despite the fact that the party after 1958 consistently received more votes in Naples than in Milan or Rome, the popular classes would always represent a dilemma for the Neapolitan institutional Left and its way of thinking about the city. On the one hand, the mobilization of the ‘lumpen’ city was considered a crucial goal for a communist politics, on the other, the ‘pre-political’ forms of life of the city’s subaltern classes were seen to pose an obstacle to such a project. Through an analysis of the writings of local party leaders and the communist daily press, the article illustrates how the relationship between the Left and the popular classes was reconfigured over time: from the aim of building class consciousness among the ‘lumpenproletariat’ to the goal, during the 1990s, of inculcating ‘civic consciousness’ among the Neapolitan people

Effect of bone loss in anterior shoulder instability

Anterior shoulder instability with bone loss can be a difficult problem to treat. It usually involves a component of either glenoid deficiency or a Hill-Sachs lesion. Recent data shows that soft tissue procedures alone are typically not adequate to provide stability to the shoulder. As such, numerous surgical procedures have been described to directly address these bony deficits. For glenoid defects, coracoid transfer and iliac crest bone block procedures are popular and effective. For humeral head defects, both remplissage and osteochondral allografts have decreased the rates of recurrent instability. Our review provides an overview of current literature addressing these treatment options and others for addressing bone loss complicating anterior glenohumeral instability