Therapeutic encounters at a Muslim shrine in Pakistan: an ethnographic study of understandings and explanations of ill health and help-seeking among attenders.

In Muslim countries, shrines of Sufi saints serve as sources of healing. Why people decide to seek healing at shrines and their experience whilst there remains largely un-researched. The aims of this study were to: investigate the explanatory models of sickness among attendees at a Muslim shrine particularly in relation to this choice of help-seeking; explore individuals’ perceptions and experiences regarding the role of the shrine; and propose a theory explaining the meaning of attendees’ problems, their choice of healing resource and the role it played. An ethnographic approach was used to allow exploration of the topic from the perspectives of those seeking help at the Shrine. Semi-structured interview, incorporating the Explanatory Model (EM) of sickness (Kleinman, 1980), and participant observation were used to collect data over a period of three months. This study was conducted at a Muslim shrine in Pakistan. Twenty six attendees participated, including those seeking healing, carers, and a Shrine caretaker. The results highlighted magic and possession as the main explanations of the problem that brought them to the Shrine. Participants’ experiences of everyday oppression, and adverse social factors, such as poverty, poor quality of medical care, and domestic violence seemed to play a significant role in the development of their problem. The Shrine served as a therapeutic landscape, the prevailing social conditions, built environment and perceptions of attendees combined to produce a place ‘conducive to healing’ (Gesler, 1992), that allowed healing to take place. Possession acted as a vehicle for a subtle change in the family dynamics in which family members appeared complicit. The movement and changes in power, the positive reframing of symptoms/problems and the renegotiation of identity essentially transformed the individual and made the experience therapeutic. The results generate a unique set of knowledge in regard to the role of shrines in Pakistan as culturally sanctioned places allowing therapeutic change and healing

"Sunt Picentes natura mobiles novisque studentes". Francesco Sforza e le citt\ue0 della Marca di Ancona (1433-1447)

Il saggio indaga le forme di dominazione degli Sforza nelle Marche e privilegia la configurazione dei rapporti fra Francesco Sforza e le comunit\ue0 locali. A tale proposito, le fonti lasciano emergere tecniche, lessici e spazi di potere del tutto comparabili a quelli adottati nei coevi stati regionali: con queste ultime realt\ue0 il saggio intende stabilire rapporti e riscontri, anche sulla base delle pi\uf9 recenti acquisizioni storiografiche

Bonifacio VIII e la Marca d'Ancona

The essay will investigate the policy adopted by Boniface VIII, as sovereign of the Papal state, for the March of Ancona, a region that was not directly implicated in the pope\u2019s private interests, but was subject to significant administrative measures. The policy of Caetani pope is placed in continuity with that of his predecessor, Nicholas IV, and is driven by a strong pragmatism, aimed to legitimize de facto the autonomies of the many urban centers in the region and to limit abuse of officials working in the papal Curia. The justice domain, with its strong evidence on financial, allows to sense, better than any other, the political management of Boniface VIII in the March. The pope granted, for consideration, large awards to towns and castles of the region in terms of administration of justice, even giving some of them from the jurisdiction of appeals. But at the same time, there was a sharp increase in cases of appeal discussed in the provincial Curia or in one of the three intermediate districts, called \u2018giudicati\u2019. In this respect, an extraordinary document, the Liber liliorum, keep in the communal archive of San Ginesio, allows to value the frequent recourse to the papal courts in civil and criminal. Even the most important legislation for the March, the Celestis patris familias (1303) grants to justice a major role. That legislation was received so favorably by the municipalities of Marchs, that, when a year later the death of Boniface VIII their successor decided to repeal it, they went down in open revolt, forcing Pope Benedict XI to reaffirm its validity

Moderazione del vivere cittadino: il "Testamentum" di Pietro da Fermo (1292)

Il saggio prende in esame un manoscritto inedito e fino ad ora sconosciuto, conservato presso la Biblioteca Civica \uabRomolo Spezioli\ubb di Fermo: si tratta di un testamento \u2018morale\u2019 scritto alla fine del XIII secolo da un funzionario podestarile, Pietro da Fermo, mentre si trovava al seguito del podest\ue0 Offreduccio di Falerone nella citt\ue0 di Rieti e indirizzato ai suoi figli. Il testo si articola in ottantatre rubriche, che raccolgono prevalentemente sententiae e proverbi derivanti dalla tradizione classica e medievale. Il dettato del testo non ambisce ad alcuna pretesa di originalit\ue0 n\ue9 di letterariet\ue0, ma risulta nondimeno significativo, dal punto di vista euristico, in quanto denota la circolazione, all\u2019interno di una cultura media come quella interpretata da Pietro da Fermo, delle idee variamente sviluppate nella coeva letteratura didattica. Quella che l\u2019autore veicola nel suo testo \ue8 un\u2019educazione di tipo pragmatico, rivolta al cittadino consapevole degli assetti istituzionali e delle pratiche sociali della citt\ue0 comunale, nei delicati equilibri della quale si svolge concretamente l\u2019esperienza di vita dell\u2019autore e dei suoi destinatari

Wolfgang Hagemann e la storia del Fermano nell\u2019et\ue0 degli Svevi (secoli XII-XIII): a margine di un progetto per la valorizzazione della ricerca storica.

This paper explains the re-edition\u2019s project (in italian translation) of same historical studies by Wolfgang Hagemann (Leipzig, 1911 \u2013 Rom, 1978). The German historian accomplished his researches on the relationships beetween the Hohenstaufer\u2019s emperor and the most important \u2018Comuni\u2019 in the region of Fermo (XII-XIII Century) for over thirty-year period, since the beginning of the 1950s till the middle of the 1970s. His main aim was to catch every evidence of the imperial presence in the Marches, especially in the region of Fermo. He looked through the council archives a huge amount of documents and often edited them as a summary in the essays\u2019s appendix. That allows him to draw a picture very rich and appealing. Therefore, his studies still offers an interesting input both for historians and for wide users

Gravitational waves in vacuum spacetimes with cosmological constant. II. Deviation of geodesics and interpretation of non-twisting type N solutions

In a suitably chosen essentially unique frame tied to a given observer in a general spacetime, the equation of geodesic deviation can be decomposed into a sum of terms describing specific effects: isotropic (background) motions associated with the cosmological constant, transverse motions corresponding to the effects of gravitational waves, longitudinal motions, and Coulomb-type effects. Conditions under which the frame is parallelly transported along a geodesic are discussed. Suitable coordinates are introduced and an explicit coordinate form of the frame is determined for spacetimes admitting a non-twisting null congruence. Specific properties of all non-twisting type N vacuum solutions with cosmological constant Lambda (non-expanding Kundt class and expanding Robinson-Trautman class) are then analyzed. It is demonstrated that these spacetimes can be understood as exact transverse gravitational waves of two polarization modes "+" and "x", shifted by pi/4, which propagate "on" Minkowski, de Sitter, or anti-de Sitter backgrounds. It is also shown that the solutions with Lambda>0 may serve as exact demonstrations of the cosmic "no-hair" conjecture in radiative spacetimes with no symmetry.Comment: 16 pages, no figures, LaTeX, To appear in J. Math. Phy

A Canonical Decomposition in Collective and Relative Variables of a Klein-Gordon Field in the Rest-Frame Wigner-Covariant Instant Form

The canonical decomposition of a real Klein-Gordon field in collective and relative variables proposed by Longhi and Materassi is reformulated on spacelike hypersurfaces. This allows to obtain the complete canonical reduction of the system on Wigner hyperplanes, namely in the rest-frame Wigner-covariant instant form of dynamics. From the study of Dixon's multipoles for the energy-momentum tensor on the Wigner hyperplanes we derive the definition of the canonical center-of-mass variable for a Klein-Gordon field configuration: it turns out that the Longhi-Materassi global variable should be interpreted as a center of phase of the field configuration. A detailed study of the kinematical "external" and "internal" properties of the field configuration on the Wigner hyperplanes is done. The construction is then extended to charged Klein-Gordon fields: the centers of phase of the two real components can be combined to define a global center of phase and a collective relative variable describing the action-reaction between the two Feshbach-Villars components of the field with definite sign of energy and charge. The Dixon multipoles for both the energy-momentum and the electromagnetic current are given. Also the coupling of the Klein-Gordon field to scalar relativistic particles is studied and it is shown that in the reduced phase space, besides the particle and field relative variables, there is also a collective relative variable describing the relative motion of the particle subsytem with respect to the field one.Comment: 86 pages, no figure

Estimating total momentum at finite distances

We study the difficulties associated with the evaluation of the total Bondi momentum at finite distances around the central source of a general (asymptotically flat) spacetime. Since the total momentum is only rigorously defined at future null infinity, both finite distance and gauge effects must be taken into account for a correct computation of this quantity. Our discussion is applicable in general contexts but is particularly relevant in numerically constructed spacetimes for both extracting important physical information and assessing the accuracy of additional quantities.Comment: 10 pages, 1 figure. Typos corrected. Comments added and a new Appendix. To be published in PR

Fermo

Il volume fa parte della Collana: "Il medioevo nelle citt\ue0 italiane", diretta da P. Cammarosano, di cui costituisce il secondo volume. Il volume si prefigge di fornire una sintesi ragionata della storia medievale della citt\ue0 di Fermo esaminando: l'evoluzione urbanistica, il rapporto fra citt\ue0 e territorio, il profilo storiografico, la vicenda politico-istituzionale, i caratteri della documentazione scritta, il paesaggio urbano e le opere d'arte, fornendo una bibliografia esaustiva degli studi e pubblicando (fuori numerazione) carte tematiche e immagini fotografiche delle emergenze architettoniche descritte