Grecanici book review at Ethnos

Journal of Modern Greek Studies, 2018

Studia Universitatis …, 1995

The central idea of this article is that the reasons to claim a minority right may be more important than the right itself. In other words, it might be that the majority group tends to be more reactive to the reasons put forward to claim a right than the actual content of that right. Specifically, we hypothesize that some Italian speaking might oppose the right of the Slovenians to manifest their presence in the city centre when this right is claimed on the basis of traditional topoi of the Slovenian national narrative. We provide empirical support for this hypothesis by analyzing a study on the Slovene minority in Italy, conducted in 2006 and 2008. Our analyses seem to show that a symbolic collective right, as the bilingual signposts are, may be more likely accepted if the argument in favour does not echo the standard national narrative. People care not only about the actual content of the right, but also the reasons put forward to claim that right. This suggests that there is room, even in a place deeply divided in the past, to develop arguments in defence of the linguistic, cultural and national pluralism that still characterizes many areas of Central and Eastern Europe that are based on liberal values and are different from those engendered by received national narratives.

Modern State and Its “Normal” Languages: History and Other Stories Gabriella Valera [English Translation of an essay published in “Utopia e Patologia della libertà, ed. by Nestore Pirillo, Liguori 2013, pp.241-266], 2013

"A long and uneven process of stabilization was implemented by normal sciences and disciplinary traditions, in order to maintain and institutionalize the antinomies that were a distinctive mark of the reason, which permeated the State. Therefore these antinomies become evident in the process of accumulation of knowledge, which, far from being purely contemplative, is at work within the very body and structure of the State. The task we must undertake today is to forsake normal science and put to the test, each by each, the categories, which were discovered, perfected and polished to serve the construction and confirmation of the paradigm. In particular the essay shows that the consolidated form of representation of the political world and its relationship with the State overshadowed all the problematic aspects connected to the modern paradigm. It points out at the figure of sovereignty, at its rather multiple and complex public incarnations. In fact, as the root and essence (if one may say so) of the modern state, this figure evokes all the antinomies that traverse the whole history of democracy . It also encourages a comparative reflection upon the statute of subjectivity and individuality, within the frame of an ever-difficult relationship between science and ethics, a relationship that was once mediated by the juridical discourse, and was later destructively resolved by a philosophy of values. Indivisibility, identity (as opposed to the alterity of what lies in the outside) and irresistibility are the common features shared by the different figures of subjectivity. These were the figures Hobbes chose to draw in his impressive effort to reconstruct on scientific bases the cosmos, which the crisis of the European mind had broken into pieces. The modern subject inseparably bears the attributes of individuality and sovereignty and we may say that the State (similarly to the status) functions as a (spatial) metaphor, within which and through which modern subjectivity is shaped and constructed. Ultimately, the “space of the sovereign”, which has been the focus of the close reading of Hobbes’s text proposed by the essay, is the space of the individual, understood as the principal target for the action of modern political culture. The connection between individuality and sovereignty is one of those features of the paradigm that were obscured by the disciplinary traditions of the sciences of the state. Such obscuration led, in our opinion, to complex and problematic consequences for the whole “narrative” of history, which was later provided by European and Western liberalism.

Comp. Southeast Europ. Stud. , 2021

The article is based on my fieldwork in 2002 in a village in Eastern Romania with a multi-confessional population made up mostly of Roman Catholics/Csangos and Orthodox Christians. The core premise of the analysis is that the collective identity manifested here transcends ethnic and confessional divides. The field data about the village's cross-cultural life fall into the following categories: the oral history of the village, the performing of rituals, and the local history of modernization. These topics inform a single collective identity that is grounded in an expressive culture (Fredrik Barth) and as such requires critical reflection on the cultural complexity of collective identities as the Csangos, which have been formed within multiple and overlapping social and historical contexts. The subject is the different temporalities that emerge during political modernization. In conclusion, in the Csangos' case, the constructivist concept of ethnicity should be revisited and complemented with an acknowledgment of Csangos' benign self-identification, which sheds light on their discrete or hidden identity.

2003

This research is based on a study of the Northern League political culture carried out towards the end of the 1990s and represent the basis of political theoretical in progress of the Northern League. The analysis used The Leagues political sources (neo-ethnic works, the daily newspaper Padania, and Leagues political posters 1979-84). The Political communication of this political actor covers various periods of its career, up to and including 1997 electoral success. Subsequently, the political actor lost a part of its support as it moved towards an institutional role, less strong electorally, but still hegemonically efficient (Bossi-Fini Immigration Law; devolution, reform of the State). It can be claimed that three universal policies , implemented by the present government have been influenced by the League's ideological framework. The characteristics of the Northern League's cultural and political production is analysed using Gramsci's concept of hegemony.

Multilingual Matters eBooks, 2024

Regio (1), 2003

When identifying the language/-s spoken by different members of a community, we first categorise and then further merge it/them into definitions. In this article, I discuss some such definitions often used in discourse on the Slovenian language in Italy. I gathered and analysed these definitions using the method of critical analysis of media discourse on language. In this article, I will discuss the material from an epistemological perspective that transcends the linguistics field and reaches to other fields of humanities and social studies. Namely, the social dynamics and cultural paradigms of a language-speaking community are reflected in the perceptions of languages, their practices, and language policies. In this article, I will present the examples of language definitions found in the analysed material and explain when and why these definitions could be problematic. I will place them in their epistemological contexts and present their ideological connotation in other contexts.

Michael Stewart and Marton Rövid (eds), 2010. Multidisciplinary Approaches to Romany Studies. Budapest: Central European University Press, 211-22.

In this chapter I analyze the social and cultural conditions under which in 2008 - for the first time since the collapse of the Fascist regime - the Italian government implemented exclusionary policies vis-à-vis Roma. By ethnographically looking at the relations between the 'politics from above' - policies and media discourses, and the 'politics from below' - Romani NGOs' claims and actions in Centre-Left-wing Florence and in Centre-Right-wing Pescara, I show that contemporary institutional exclusion of Roma can be viewed as predicated upon a complex mélange of benevolent and repressive approaches. Ultimately, both these approaches revolve around the idiom of nomadism, an old stigmatizing device, which becomes handy and functional to governing purposes.