Papers by Monica Caggiano
Partecipazione e Conflitto, 2015
This article contributes to ongoing debates on how bottom-up social cooperation can halt and reve... more This article contributes to ongoing debates on how bottom-up social cooperation can halt and reverse processes of environmental and human degradation, dispossession and impoverishment, by proposing a synchronization of resistance and of commoning practices. The article moves from the empirical case of social and ecological conflicts currently unfolding in the so-called Land of Fires, an area in Southern Italy infamous for the socio-environmental impacts of two decades of waste disposal, mismanagement and contamination. Within this context, a coalition of grassroots movements is struggling to resist livelihoods degradation through an alliance with anti-Mafia social cooperatives. We provide an in-depth analysis of emerging social and economic networks that connect the strategies of grassroots movements for environmental justice with the work of social cooperatives that reclaim lands and assets confiscated to Mafia. The interests of environmental activists meet the interests of social ...
This article provides an in-depth analysis of emerging social and economic networks for an ecolog... more This article provides an in-depth analysis of emerging social and economic networks for an ecological society in the so-called Land of Fires. The area, located between Caserta and Naples provinces (Southern Italy), is infamous for the socio-environmental impacts of two decades of waste disposal, mismanagement and contamination. The article moves from the empirical case of social and ecological conflicts currently ongoing in the Land of Fires, connecting the actions of grassroots movements for environmental justice with the emergence of social cooperatives that reclaim lands and assets confiscated to Mafia. The practices of grassroots environmental movements over fifteen years are described and analyzed, pointing out their shift from resisting contamination to the physical and symbolic re-appropriation of territories and communities. The work of social cooperatives is put forward as the realization of a bottom-up model of socioeconomic and ecological wellbeing. Confronting the presen...
Cet article analyse la fabrication de l’espace social urbain par les interactions creees grâce a ... more Cet article analyse la fabrication de l’espace social urbain par les interactions creees grâce a la musique des migrants dans le quartier de Belleville, ancien faubourg ouvrier du Nord-Est parisien. Depuis l’entre-deux guerres, ce quartier a accueilli plusieurs vagues d’immigration (Armeniens, Grecs, Juifs polonais, Algeriens, Tunisiens, Chinois, populations d’Asie du sud-est, etc.) et des arrivees plus eparses de migrants de tous pays. Sa population actuelle est un veritable kaleidoscope de differentes nationalites, cultures et couches sociales. A travers l’analyse ethnographique des pratiques musicales collectives, cet article contribue au debat ouvert sur la multiethnicite et l’integration dans le quartier ; une controverse issue d’une opposition dialectique entre ceux qui defendent l’idee qu’a Belleville il y a un veritable brassage culturel et social et ceux qui affirment l’existence d’une « societe partagee », fragile mosaique de communautes qui partagent le meme espace sans s...
The organization on a regional basis of the public Italian advisory services responds to the extr... more The organization on a regional basis of the public Italian advisory services responds to the extreme differentiation of the local farming systems, institutional arrangements, market opportunities, and many other contextual factors. In Italy, each Region has its own law and its own policy on agriculture advisory services, developing 21different systems that rarely interact with each other. The possibility to design an agricultural advisory system on local basis could be an important prerequisite in devising a system that fit the specific needs and situations, according to the theoretical framework that support a shift from a “best practice” or “one-size-fits-all” to a “best fit” approach in the reform of public advisory services (Birner, 2006). In reality, however, the decentralization of Italian advisory system produces a great variety of regional public systems with different quantity and quality of service delivery, poor coordination, duplication of efforts by key players, limited...
Land Use Policy, Mar 1, 2016
Farm advisory services have returned to both the academic and the political agenda. Commercialisa... more Farm advisory services have returned to both the academic and the political agenda. Commercialisation-charging a fee for an advisory service-is a trend observed not only in private advisory organisations, but to some extent also in public and other types of organisations. This paper explores how commercialisation of farm advice impacts on the quality of services. Based on key informant interviews and a unique data set from a survey of 227 advisory organisations across four European countries, both the front-office and the back-office dimension were investigated. The paper compares private organisations that draw income from charging for their services with non-private organisations (public, non-governmental and farmer-based organisations). We found that the private organisations are typically small and medium size enterprises that employ fewer advisors than non-private organisations. Their services are more personalised, that is, they have a higher proportion of 1:1 advice and they have a lower ratio of farms per advisor. With regard to the back office dimension, they differ little from non-private organisations in terms of training their advisors but have considerably lower levels of investment in research and development, and tend to rely on peer-to-peer networks and cooperation with other private consultancies and public authorities. We conclude that commercialised advice has several advantages but favours affluent clients. It is essential for commercial advisory services to be complemented with other services that reach different types of farmers, and that public support is available to improve the knowledge flows between public research and private organisations.
HAL (Le Centre pour la Communication Scientifique Directe), 2013
The aim of this document is to produce a state-of-the-art of the academic literature in order to ... more The aim of this document is to produce a state-of-the-art of the academic literature in order to identify theories and concepts available for: a) describing the structure, the dynamics and the functioning of agricultural advisory services; b) understanding how these services are embedded into national Agricultural Knowledge and Innovation Systems (AKIS), and into various agricultural and rural policies across the European Union (EU) countries; c) providing some conceptual elements to support the methodology for an inventory of agricultural advisory services in EU 27 countries (WP3 of the PRO AKIS project), and for the selection of case studies (WP4 of the PRO AKIS project). Recent reviews of the literature indicate some challenges for the analysis, the implementation and the evaluation of agricultural advisory services (Faure et al. 2012, Birner et al. 2009). These reviews stress the need to switch towards a best fit perspective: "promoting "one-size-fits-all" approaches are inappropriate for agricultural advisory services.[...] What is important is to build capacity among policy-planners, managers and researchers to identify modes of providing and (...) advisory services that "best fit" the specific conditions and development priorities of their countries" (Birner et al 2009). If such debates have a growing importance in the contexts of South countries, they need to be intensified in Europe through comparative analyses. The report proposes an analysis of agricultural advisory services according to the diversity of i) their methods, ii) their funding principles and iii) their aims, beyond their common characteristics. It is also possible to propose a consistent set of tools for describing these three dimensions. All these issues also open a new research agenda. Some of them will be considered in the realm of the PRO AKIS project (e.g. systematic reviews of available knowledge on the effectiveness of farm advisory services carried out in WP2; case studies on innovation dynamics in different EU countries in WP4). This document, as well as the project more globally, aims at contributing to the policy debate, emphasizing the need for a more integrated vision of advisory services as instruments of European policies involving agriculture and innovation.
HAL (Le Centre pour la Communication Scientifique Directe), Apr 1, 2014
The organization on a regional basis of the public Italian advisory services responds to the extr... more The organization on a regional basis of the public Italian advisory services responds to the extreme differentiation of the local farming systems, institutional arrangements, market opportunities, and many other contextual factors. In Italy, each Region has its own law and its own policy on agriculture advisory services, developing 21different systems that rarely interact with each other. The possibility to design an agricultural advisory system on local basis could be an important prerequisite in devising a system that fit the specific needs and situations, according to the theoretical framework that support a shift from a "best practice" or "one-size-fits-all" to a "best fit" approach in the reform of public advisory services (Birner, 2006). In reality, however, the decentralization of Italian advisory system produces a great variety of regional public systems with different quantity and quality of service delivery, poor coordination, duplication of efforts by key players, limited funding, penalizing the farming systems in some Regions. The recent measures to cut public extension system have further compromised the quality of services offered while new challenging scenarios demand an even more complex knowledge needs. The main aim of this paper is to analyze the effects of current disinvestment in the Italian public extension services, while the knowledge needs ofsmall and medium-sized farms (by international standards, the farms managed in Italy are very small and thus rarely competitive on the global markets), the emphasis on public goods provided by agriculture and the dominant narrative of rural development require more support from advisory services. The study is carried out within the EU FP7 Project Prospects for Farmers Support: Advisory Services in European AKIS (PRO AKIS). The overall purpose of PRO AKIS is to contribute to the performance of advisory services within the European AKIS, to make available significant and reliable knowledge for farmers and other rural actors.
RePEc: Research Papers in Economics, Aug 1, 2014
The organization on a regional basis of the public Italian Agricultural Advisory Services (AAS) r... more The organization on a regional basis of the public Italian Agricultural Advisory Services (AAS) responds both to historical reasons and to the extreme differentiation of the local farming systems, institutional arrangements, and many other contextual factors. In Italy, each Region has its own law and its own policy on AAS, developing 21different systems with a poor coordination and great regional variety. The main aim of this paper is to explore the dimension of transparency and accountability of decentralization, considering the ASS governance and the coordination structures. The analysis integrates a literature review with empirical researches conducted through in-depth interviews.
HAL (Le Centre pour la Communication Scientifique Directe), 2014
HAL is a multidisciplinary open access archive for the deposit and dissemination of scientific re... more HAL is a multidisciplinary open access archive for the deposit and dissemination of scientific research documents, whether they are published or not. The documents may come from teaching and research institutions in France or abroad, or from public or private research centers. L'archive ouverte pluridisciplinaire HAL, est destinée au dépôt et à la diffusion de documents scientifiques de niveau recherche, publiés ou non, émanant des établissements d'enseignement et de recherche français ou étrangers, des laboratoires publics ou privés.
HAL (Le Centre pour la Communication Scientifique Directe), Aug 29, 2013
Research Papers in Economics, 2014
The organization on a regional basis of the public Italian Agricultural Advisory Services (AAS) r... more The organization on a regional basis of the public Italian Agricultural Advisory Services (AAS) responds both to historical reasons and to the extreme differentiation of the local farming systems, institutional arrangements, and many other contextual factors. In Italy, each Region has its own law and its own policy on AAS, developing 21different systems with a poor coordination and great regional variety. The main aim of this paper is to explore the dimension of transparency and accountability of decentralization, considering the ASS governance and the coordination structures. The analysis integrates a literature review with empirical researches conducted through in-depth interviews.
Recently, Agricultural Knowledge and Innovation resp. Information Systems (AKIS) have gained cons... more Recently, Agricultural Knowledge and Innovation resp. Information Systems (AKIS) have gained considerable attention in scientific and political fora in the EU. AKIS is considered a key concept to identify, analyse and assess the various actors as well as their communication and interaction performances for innovation processes in the agricultural sector. Through qualitative expert interviews and with the help of institutional mapping, the national AKIS, and especially the role(s) and functions of advisory services as one major actor within these systems, were investigated in selected EU member states (BG, DE, F, IRL, PT and UK). We present the varied national conceptions of AKIS and compare them qualitatively with regard to their institutional settings, and their overall policy frameworks and coordinating structures. Specific attention is given to agricultural advisory services and their integration within the respective national or country-wide AKIS. Conclusions are drawn with rega...
The aim of this document is to produce a state-of-the-art of the academic literature in order to ... more The aim of this document is to produce a state-of-the-art of the academic literature in order to identify theories and concepts available for: a) describing the structure, the dynamics and the functioning of agricultural advisory services; b) understanding how these services are embedded into national Agricultural Knowledge and Innovation Systems (AKIS), and into various agricultural and rural policies across the European Union (EU) countries; c) providing some conceptual elements to support the methodology for an inventory of agricultural advisory services in EU 27 countries (WP3 of the PRO AKIS project), and for the selection of case studies (WP4 of the PRO AKIS project) . Recentreviews of the literature indicate some challenges for the analysis, the implementation and the evaluation of agricultural advisory services (Faure et al. 2012, Birner et al. 2009). These reviews stress the need to switch towards a best fit perspective: "promoting "one-size-fits-all" approac...
Multi-actors networks are increasingly used by farmers to link between them and to be interactive... more Multi-actors networks are increasingly used by farmers to link between them and to be interactively connected with other partners, such as advisory organizations, local governments, universities, and non-farm organizations. Given the importance assigned to the agricultural innovation by EU resorting to the networking between the research chain actors and the farmers, a strong focus on enhancing the creation of learning and innovation networks is expected. In this context is relevant to have information about the features of such networks enhance farmers’ ability to learn and to innovate in cooperation with other actors. The main goal of the paper is to contribute to the understanding of which are the features of agricultural or rural networks showing determinant to enhance the farmers' ability to learn and to innovate in cooperation with other actors, namely by identifying the influencing factors encouraging the farmers’ enrolment and the influence of network stability. The addi...
Land Use Policy, 2016
Farm advisory services have returned to both the academic and the political agenda. Commercialisa... more Farm advisory services have returned to both the academic and the political agenda. Commercialisation-charging a fee for an advisory service-is a trend observed not only in private advisory organisations, but to some extent also in public and other types of organisations. This paper explores how commercialisation of farm advice impacts on the quality of services. Based on key informant interviews and a unique data set from a survey of 227 advisory organisations across four European countries, both the front-office and the back-office dimension were investigated. The paper compares private organisations that draw income from charging for their services with non-private organisations (public, non-governmental and farmer-based organisations). We found that the private organisations are typically small and medium size enterprises that employ fewer advisors than non-private organisations. Their services are more personalised, that is, they have a higher proportion of 1:1 advice and they have a lower ratio of farms per advisor. With regard to the back office dimension, they differ little from non-private organisations in terms of training their advisors but have considerably lower levels of investment in research and development, and tend to rely on peer-to-peer networks and cooperation with other private consultancies and public authorities. We conclude that commercialised advice has several advantages but favours affluent clients. It is essential for commercial advisory services to be complemented with other services that reach different types of farmers, and that public support is available to improve the knowledge flows between public research and private organisations.
Outlook on Agriculture, 2015
Recently, Agricultural Knowledge and Innovation Systems (AKISs) have gained considerable attentio... more Recently, Agricultural Knowledge and Innovation Systems (AKISs) have gained considerable attention in scientific and political forums in the European Union (EU). AKIS is considered a key concept in identifying, analysing and assessing the various actors in the agricultural sector as well as their communication and interaction for innovation processes. Using qualitative expert interviews and organizational mapping, the features of national AKISs were investigated in selected EU member states (Belgium, France, Ireland, Germany, Portugal and the UK). The authors present the different national AKISs and compare them qualitatively with regard to their institutional settings, their overall policy frameworks and their coordinating structures. Conclusions are drawn with regard to AKIS appraisal in general and the usefulness of the AKIS concept, particularly for the understanding and evaluation of policy-induced innovation in agriculture.
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Papers by Monica Caggiano