Mapping Diversity in Milan. Historical Approaches to Urban Immigration

An historical and spatial approach is crucial to the understanding of any city. Waves of immigration and population movements from different sources have constructed the cultural mix of this financial, industrial and market city over time. To focus just on the new foreign immigration into Milan over the last 25 years or so risks omitting the deep historical fissures created by previous (and bigger) waves of population movements – the traces left by these populations in the urban fabric and their role in subjective experience. Moreover, the historical and spatial comparison of various types and moments of population movement can help us to understand the changes to this city at macro and micro-levels. This paper uses a mixture of approaches in order to understand and map diversity in Milan, its province and its region. It is intended as a discussion paper to be looked at in conjunction with the work and arguments laid out in other research projects and published work. Methodologies used in this paper range from straightforward historical research (using documents and archives) to photography, micro-history (the examination of one small area – in this case one housing block) and oral historical interviews.Immigration, Urban Space, Periphery (Periferia), Memory, Housing

Franco Basaglia and the radical psychiatry movement in Italy, 1961–78

This article provides a short introduction to the life and work of Italian radical psychiatrist and mental health reformer Franco Basaglia. A leading figure in the democratic psychiatry movement, Basaglia is little known and often misunderstood in the English-speaking world. This article will seek to address this by highlighting Basaglia’s significant role in the struggle for both deinstitutionalisation and the human rights of those incarcerated in Italy’s asylums during the 1960s and 1970s

Television documentary, history and memory.:An Analysis of Sergio Zavoli’s <i>The Gardens of Abel</i>

This article examines a celebrated documentary made for Italian state TV in 1968 and transmitted in 1969 to an audience of millions. The programme – The Gardens of Abel – looked at changes introduced by the radical psychiatrist Franco Basaglia in an asylum in the north-east of Italy (Gorizia). The article examines the content of this programme for the first time, questions some of the claims that have been made for it, and outlines the sources used by the director, Sergio Zavoli. The article argues that the film was as much an expression of Zavoli's vision and ideas as it was linked to those of Franco Basaglia himself. Finally, the article highlights the way that this programme has become part of historical discourse and popular memory

Photography and radical psychiatry in Italy in the 1960s.:The case of the photobook Morire di Classe (1969)

In the 1960s Franco Basaglia, the Director of a Psychiatric Hospital in a small city on the edge of Italy (Gorizia), began to transform that institution from the inside. He introduced patient meetings and set up a kind of Therapeutic Community. In 1968 he asked two photographers – Carla Cerati and Gianni Berengo Gardin – to take photos inside Gorizia and other asylums. These images were then used in a photobook called Morire di Classe (To Die Because of your Class) (1969). This article re-examines in detail the content of this celebrated book and its history, and its impact on the struggle to reform and abolish large-scale psychiatric institutions. It also places the book in its social and political context and as a key text of the anti-psychiatry movement of the 1960s

Francesco Scotti, Per una storia della riforma psichiatrica in Umbria: Nascita ed evoluzione di una psichiatria di comunità in Umbria, Perugia, Morlacchi, 2021 (vol. 1, pp. 448), 2022 (vol. 2, pp. 506)

Book review of Francesco Scotti, Per una storia della riforma psichiatrica in Umbria: Nascita ed evoluzione di una psichiatria di comunità in Umbria, Perugia, Morlacchi, 2021 (vol. 1, pp. 448), 2022 (vol. 2, pp. 506)

Non-violence in the Indian religious tradition

The purpose of this thesis is to trace the roots of non-violence from the Vedic Age, circa 3000 BCE to the present day. The emphasis is on the history and philosophy of the three main religions of India, Hinduism, Buddhism and Jainism. For the modern period significant stress will be placed on Mohandas Gandhi, the single most influential devotee of non-violence. An investigation of the early culture of India, reveals a group of people living in the Indus Valley as sophisticated and as aware of the world as any other civilization during the same time period. The collections of the compositions of the Vedic poets, collectively known as the Vedas reflect the rich culture and ideas of the Vedic people. Roots of nonviolence emerge in the earliest work, the Rig Veda, a great collection of hymns dating back to the second millennium BCE. An evolutionary process of the growth and development of non-violence occurs in the quintessential documents of the Vedas, the Upanishads. The development of monism matures in the Upanishads and is reflected in the non-violent way of life. Buddhism develops around the same time as Jainism in the sixth century BCE. Jainism represents the epitome of non-violence. Following the discussion of each religious tradition of India the thesis considers the reasons for violence and the reasons for non-violence in an attempt to analyze the philosophy of non-violence. The latter part of this work examines the life and evolution of Gandhi and his use of non-violence to mobilize the masses of India to gain independence from Britain. His work in India was continued by the saintly Viinoba Bhave and the pragmatic J. P. Narayan. In the west Gandhi\u27s example inspired Martin Luther King Jr., to use Gandhi\u27s techniques in breaking the status quo for the blacks of America.Dept. of Religious Studies. Paper copy at Leddy Library: Theses & Major Papers - Basement, West Bldg. / Call Number: Thesis1998 .F66. Source: Masters Abstracts International, Volume: 39-02, page: 0367. Adviser: Mahesh Mehta. Thesis (M.A.)--University of Windsor (Canada), 1999