The relativistic attitude in development: reflections on the implementation of the Ethiopian multinational Constitution

L’approccio allo sviluppo che considera la crescita economica come unico obiettivo può produrre degli effetti deleteri sui gruppi marginalizzati. Lo sviluppismo adottato in Etiopia dal 1991 illustra questo punto con riferimento ai contadini, ai popoli pastorali e alle minoranze etniche. La riflessione internazionale sullo sviluppo e il progresso nel campo dei diritti umani hanno portato all’emergere di nuovi paradigmi. L’articolo mostra come le misure correttive siano state caratterizzate da una crescente attitudine ‘relativistica’, che consiste nel dare considerazione alla rilevanza di articolazioni particolari di cultura, norme formali o informali, e condizioni locali. L’attitudine relativistica è prima definita e poi considerata in relazione alla compatibilità con la Costituzione Etiopica, adottata nel 1995 ma mai messa realmente in pratica. La pressione del movimento Qeerroo sta inducendo la coalizione al potere ad aprire effettivamente alla democratizzazione del paese e alla decentralizzazione. C’è quindi una concreta possibilità di rivedere anche le politiche sviluppiste, in linea sia con la Costituzione sia con i diritti umani di seconda e terza generazione.Under the development approach that targets economic growth as its sole objective the marginalised groups may seriously be impacted. The developmental policy adopted since 1991 in Ethiopia illustrates it in relation to small-holding farmers, pastoralists and ethnic minorities. At the international level, alternative development paradigms have evolved along with progress in human rights. This article shows that the corrective measures have been informed by a growing ‘relativistic’ attitude, consisting in giving consideration to the relevance of specific articulations of culture, formal or informal norms and local conditions. The relativistic attitude is first defined and then considered in terms of compatibility with the Ethiopian multinational Constitution, adopted in 1995 but never really implemented. Under the pressure of the Qeerroo movement the ruling coalition in Ethiopia is today opening up to democracy and effective decentralisation. There is today a concrete possibility to revise the country’s developmental policy, in line with the Constitution and respecting second and third generation human rights

Chikage Oba-Smidt, The Oral Chronicle of the Boorana in Southern Ethiopia: Modes of Construction and Preservation of History among People without Writing

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Serawit Bekele Debele, Locating Politics in Ethiopia’s Irreecha Ritual

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Bounds on collapse models from cold-atom experiments

The spontaneous localization mechanism of collapse models induces a Brownian motion in all physical systems. This effect is very weak, but experimental progress in creating ultracold atomic systems can be used to detect it. In this paper, we considered a recent experiment [1], where an atomic ensemble was cooled down to picokelvins. Any Brownian motion induces an extra increase of the position variance of the gas. We study this effect by solving the dynamical equations for the Continuous Spontaneous Localizations (CSL) model, as well as for its non-Markovian and dissipative extensions. The resulting bounds, with a 95% of confidence level, are beaten only by measurements of spontaneous X-ray emission and by experiments with cantilever (in the latter case, only for rC > 10^(-7) m, where rC is one of the two collapse parameters of the CSL model). We show that, contrary to the bounds given by X-ray measurements, non-Markovian effects do not change the bounds, for any reasonable choice of a frequency cutoff in the spectrum of the collapse noise. Therefore the bounds here considered are more robust. We also show that dissipative effects are unimportant for a large spectrum of temperatures of the noise, while for low temperatures the excluded region in the parameter space is the more reduced, the lower the temperature.Comment: 16 pages, 14 figure

Generation and regeneration in policy and practices

The idea of working on ‘generation’ and ‘regeneration’ in the context of policy arose when the European Union launched the Next Generation EU recovery plan as a way out of COVID crisis, thus resorting to a concept that East African societies based on generational class systems have been using as reference of their main main institutional set-up. Inspired by the Rhetoric culture school, attention shifted to the cognitive structures and correlations that ‘generation’ and ‘regeneration’ evocate, for appropriate and constructive use in policy and action. This special issue collects applied ethnographic studies on the implementation of EU programmes, long-term ethnography of Candomblè religion, a study on the role of the gadaa generational class systems of the Oromo (Ethiopia), ethnography on car theft in Kanaky (New Caledonia), a collaborative ethnography of the dônga stick duelling practiced by the Mursi (Ethiopia), and a long-term ethnographic study of divination in Hamar (Ethiopia). The comparative review of the use of ‘generation’ and ‘regeneration’ in these ethnographies shows that both represent the link between past and future, providing condensed expressions of continuity of key values. Generation evokes the reproduction of society, the process of knowledge transfer, education and cultural transmission, as linked to a specific identity group or polity. Regeneration is instead activated in response to some sort of unpredictable disturbing element that breaks the normal flow of events, either as an ongoing necessity or on occasion of crises. As such, regeneration allows the idea of change and social transformation

Vena cava anomalies in thoracic surgery

Background: Vena cava anomalies are a rare group of anatomical variations due to an incorrect development of the superior or inferior vena cava during fetal life. They generally show no clinical relevance and the diagnosis is done due to the association with congenital heart diseases in most of cases. However, preoperative identification of these anomalies is mandatory for surgeons to proper surgical planning. If not recognized, lethal complications may occur, as already reported in literature. Case presentation: We report a case series of three different unidentified vena cava anomalies in patients undergoing lung resection. These unrecognized anomalies led to minor complications in two cases and required an accurate intraoperative evaluation in another. A careful retrospective evaluation of preoperative radiological images showed the anomalies. Conclusions: A careful evaluation of the vena cava anatomy at pre-operative imaging is mandatory for thoracic surgeons to properly plan the surgery and avoid complications

Darsi codici etici in antropologia

Through review of selected anthropological ethical codes an attempt is made to outline the fundamental ethical principles of anthropological research and their applicability to current practices of applied anthropology. The Statement on Problems of Anthropological Research and Ethics was adopted by the American Anthropological Association in response to the need to take distance from military research after the Camelot scandal. Anthropology reacted stronger than other disciplines due to its methodology implying a relation of trust with the community. The Codice etico of AISEA defines the anthropologist’s obligations with different type of actors. In applied anthropology more attention should be paid to the relation with the financers of the research, due to possible conflict of interest between the latter and the concerned community. During consultancies anthropologists are today often forced into conditions that do not allow them to fulfil the obligations as stated in most deontological codes. Yet, giving up would cut the anthropologist out of the ongoing processes that have often a potential critical impact on the communities. The Codes of Ethics of ISE has allowed overcoming serious controversies by referring to procedural rights according to international law. It is suggested that reference to procedural and collective rights, appropriate international standards and best practices can provide an appropriate device to evaluate case by case the opportunity to engage, considering the overall field of relations rather that strictly focusing on the anthologist’s obligations which each actor independently

4 Years of EU Cookie Law: Results and Lessons Learned

Personalized advertisement has changed the web. It lets websites monetize the content they offer. The downside is the continuous collection of personal information with significant threats to personal privacy. In 2002, the European Union (EU) introduced a first set of regulations on the use of online tracking technologies. It aimed, among other things, to make online tracking mechanisms explicit to increase privacy aware- ness among users. Amended in 2009, the EU Directive mandates websites to ask for informed consent before using any kind of profiling technology, e.g., cookies. Since 2013, the ePrivacy Directive became mandatory, and each EU Member State transposed it in national legislation. Since then, most of European websites embed a “Cookie Bar”, the most visible effect of the regulation. In this paper, we run a large-scale measurement campaign to check the current implementation status of the EU cookie directive. For this, we use CookieCheck, a simple tool to automatically verify legislation violations. Results depict a shady picture: 49 % of websites do not respect the Directive and install profiling cookies before any user’s consent is given. Beside presenting a detailed picture, this paper casts lights on the difficulty of legislator attempts to regulate the troubled marriage between ad-supported web services and their users. In this picture, online privacy seems to be continuously at stake, and it is hard to reach transparency

Towards a territorial definition of a circular economy: exploring the role of territorial factors in closed-loop systems

This paper deals with the territorial dimension of a circular economy. We review the territorial factors shaping closed-loop systems, upon which a territorial definition of a circular economy is developed. We consider six categories of territorial factors: (1) Land-based factors emphasize the significance of physical endowment to satisfy the growing demand of secondary and biotic materials in a circular economy; (2) agglomeration factors are important determinants for a circular economy, as these provide circular businesses with the necessary access to resources, knowledge and collaboration, as well as viable markets; some of these functions are enabled by (3) hard territorial factors, in particular by accessibility and connectivity infrastructures as well as by (4) access to state-of-the-art technologies; softer territorial factors, including (5) knowledge-related factors and (6) governance and institutional arrangements, support collaboration among companies and between them, as well as among consumers and public institutions. Our review shows that agglomeration and land-based factors contribute to define the framework conditions of circular transformations, the harder territorial factors (accessibility and technologies) enable the circular economy in practice, and the softer factors (knowledge, awareness, governance and milieus) contribute to catalyse circular transformations. These findings base and complement research done in the ESPON CIRCTER project.This work was supported by ESPON 2020 Cooperation Programme