Transport infrastructure and economic development in least developed countries: the case of Afghanistan

This PhD thesis tries to show the impact of transport infrastructure in economic development in least developed countries and in particular in the case of Afghanistan. Some least developed countries during 1990 to 1999 experienced lack of investment in transportation. Lack of investment further increased the economic development gap between developed and least developed countries. Moreover, lack of literature and research in poor countries such as Afghanistan encouraged me to do my research in this country in order to unveil the problems, facing poor people who are living in inaccessible places and suffer from lack of economic opportunities and long term unemployment. This thesis shows the effect of inaccessibility and immobility in economic opportunities and basic social services in Afghanistan. This thesis is important because it covers the role of transport infrastructures at the moment that international community promised to rebuild the infrastructures of post conflict Afghanistan.

La "responsabilità sociale" dell'imprenditore negli ambienti cattolici lombardi dagli anni Trenta alla Ricostruzione

My research focuses on the mentality of catholic entrepreneurs and managers in Italy between the 1930's and the 1950's. The main source of my study is the archive of an organization called Unione Cristiana Imprenditori Dirigenti [Christian Entrepreneurs and Managers Association], which was founded in Milan in 1945 with the pedagogic intent to foster higher moral standards and social responsibility in the milieux of catholic entrepreneurs, in the spirit of the Social Doctrine of the Church. This experience was set in the social and political context of the Italian post-war years, but it was also rooted in the debate – started during the 1930s - on the rise of a new catholic leadership in society.

Max Bill in Italia . Lo spazio logico dell'architettura

I Max Bill is an intense giornata of a big fresco. An analysis of the main social, artistic and cultural events throughout the twentieth century is needed in order to trace his career through his masterpieces and architectures. Some of the faces of this hypothetical mural painting are, among others, Le Corbusier, Walter Gropius, Ernesto Nathan Rogers, Kandinskij, Klee, Mondrian, Vatongerloo, Ignazio Silone, while the backcloth is given by artistic avant-gardes, Bauhaus, International Exhibitions, CIAM, war events, reconstruction, Milan Triennali, Venice Biennali, the School of Ulm. Architect, even though more known as painter, sculptor, designer and graphic artist, Max Bill attends the Bauhaus as a student in the years 1927-1929, and from this experience derives the main features of a rational, objective, constructive and non figurative art. His research is devoted to give his art a scientific methodology: each work proceeds from the analysis of a problem to the logical and always verifiable solution of the same problem. By means of composition elements (such as rhythm, seriality, theme and its variation, harmony and dissonance), he faces, with consistent results, themes apparently very distant from each other as the project for the H.f.G. or the design for a font. Mathematics are a constant reference frame as field of certainties, order, objectivity: ‘for Bill mathematics are never confined to a simple function: they represent a climate of spiritual certainties, and also the theme of non attempted in its purest state, objectivity of the sign and of the geometrical place, and at the same time restlessness of the infinity: Limited and Unlimited ’. In almost sixty years of activity, experiencing all artistic fields, Max Bill works, projects, designs, holds conferences and exhibitions in Europe, Asia and Americas, confronting himself with the most influencing personalities of the twentieth century. In such a vast scenery, the need to limit the investigation field combined with the necessity to address and analyse the unpublished and original aspect of Bill’s relations with Italy. The original contribution of the present research regards this particular ‘geographic delimitation’; in particular, beyond the deep cultural exchanges between Bill and a series of Milanese architects, most of all with Rogers, two main projects have been addressed: the realtà nuova at Milan Triennale in 1947, and the Contemporary Art Museum in Florence in 1980. It is important to note that these projects have not been previously investigated, and the former never appears in the sources either. These works, together with the most well-known ones, such as the projects for the VI and IX Triennale, and the Swiss pavilion for the Biennale, add important details to the reference frame of the relations which took place between Zurich and Milan. Most of the occasions for exchanges took part in between the Thirties and the Fifties, years during which Bill underwent a significant period of artistic growth. He meets the Swiss progressive architects and the Paris artists from the Abstraction-Création movement, enters the CIAM, collaborates with Le Corbusier to the third volume of his Complete Works, and in Milan he works and gets confronted with the events related to post-war reconstruction. In these years Bill defines his own working methodology, attaining an artistic maturity in his work. The present research investigates the mentioned time period, despite some necessary exceptions. II The official Max Bill bibliography is naturally wide, including spreading works along with ones more devoted to analytical investigation, mainly written in German and often translated into French and English (Max Bill himself published his works in three languages). Few works have been published in Italian and, excluding the catalogue of the Parma exhibition from 1977, they cannot be considered comprehensive. Many publications are exhibition catalogues, some of which include essays written by Max Bill himself, some others bring Bill’s comments in a educational-pedagogical approach, to accompany the observer towards a full understanding of the composition processes of his art works. Bill also left a great amount of theoretical speculations to encourage a critical reading of his works in the form of books edited or written by him, and essays published in ‘Werk’, magazine of the Swiss Werkbund, and other international reviews, among which Domus and Casabella. These three reviews have been important tools of analysis, since they include tracks of some of Max Bill’s architectural works. The architectural aspect is less investigated than the plastic and pictorial ones in all the main reference manuals on the subject: Benevolo, Tafuri and Dal Co, Frampton, Allenspach consider Max Bill as an artist proceeding in his work from Bauhaus in the Ulm experience . A first filing of his works was published in 2004 in the monographic issue of the Spanish magazine 2G, together with critical essays by Karin Gimmi, Stanislaus von Moos, Arthur Rüegg and Hans Frei, and in ‘Konkrete Architektur?’, again by Hans Frei. Moreover, the monographic essay on the Atelier Haus building by Arthur Rüegg from 1997, and the DPA 17 issue of the Catalonia Polytechnic with contributions of Carlos Martì, Bruno Reichlin and Ton Salvadò, the latter publication concentrating on a few Bill’s themes and architectures. An urge to studying and going in depth in Max Bill’s works was marked in 2008 by the centenary of his birth and by a recent rediscovery of Bill as initiator of the ‘minimalist’ tradition in Swiss architecture. Bill’s heirs are both very active in promoting exhibitions, researching and publishing. Jakob Bill, Max Bill’s son and painter himself, recently published a work on Bill’s experience in Bauhaus, and earlier on he had published an in-depth study on ‘Endless Ribbons’ sculptures. Angela Thomas Schmid, Bill’s wife and art historian, published in end 2008 the first volume of a biography on Max Bill and, together with the film maker Eric Schmid, produced a documentary film which was also presented at the last Locarno Film Festival. Both biography and documentary concentrate on Max Bill’s political involvement, from antifascism and 1968 protest movements to Bill experiences as Zurich Municipality councilman and member of the Swiss Confederation Parliament. In the present research, the bibliography includes also direct sources, such as interviews and original materials in the form of letters correspondence and graphic works together with related essays, kept in the max+binia+jakob bill stiftung archive in Zurich. III The results of the present research are organized into four main chapters, each of them subdivided into four parts. The first chapter concentrates on the research field, reasons, tools and methodologies employed, whereas the second one consists of a short biographical note organized by topics, introducing the subject of the research. The third chapter, which includes unpublished events, traces the historical and cultural frame with particular reference to the relations between Max Bill and the Italian scene, especially Milan and the architects Rogers and Baldessari around the Fifties, searching the themes and the keys for interpretation of Bill’s architectures and investigating the critical debate on the reviews and the plastic survey through sculpture. The fourth and last chapter examines four main architectures chosen on a geographical basis, all devoted to exhibition spaces, investigating Max Bill’s composition process related to the pictorial field. Paintings has surely been easier and faster to investigate and verify than the building field. A doctoral thesis discussed in Lausanne in 1977 investigating Max Bill’s plastic and pictorial works, provided a series of devices which were corrected and adapted for the definition of the interpretation grid for the composition structures of Bill’s main architectures. Four different tools are employed in the investigation of each work: a context analysis related to chapter three results; a specific theoretical essay by Max Bill briefly explaining his main theses, even though not directly linked to the very same work of art considered; the interpretation grid for the composition themes derived from a related pictorial work; the architecture drawing and digital three-dimensional model. The double analysis of the architectural and pictorial fields is functional to underlining the relation among the different elements of the composition process; the two fields, however, cannot be compared and they stay, in Max Bill’s works as in the present research, interdependent though self-sufficient. IV An important aspect of Max Bill production is self-referentiality: talking of Max Bill, also through Max Bill, as a need for coherence instead of a method limitation. Ernesto Nathan Rogers describes Bill as the last humanist, and his horizon is the known world but, as the ‘Concrete Art’ of which he is one of the main representatives, his production justifies itself: Max Bill not only found a method, but he autonomously re-wrote the ‘rules of the game’, derived timeless theoretical principles and verified them through a rich and interdisciplinary artistic production. The most recurrent words in the present research work are synthesis, unity, space and logic. These terms are part of Max Bill’s vocabulary and can be referred to his works. Similarly, graphic settings or analytical schemes in this research text referring to or commenting Bill’s architectural projects were drawn up keeping in mind the concise precision of his architectural design. As for Mies van der Rohe, it has been written that Max Bill took art to ‘zero degree’ reaching in this way a high complexity. His works are a synthesis of art: they conceptually encompass all previous and –considered their developments- most of contemporary pictures. Contents and message are generally explicitly declared in the title or in Bill’s essays on his artistic works and architectural projects: the beneficiary is invited to go through and re-build the process of synthesis generating the shape. In the course of the interview with the Milan artist Getulio Alviani, he tells how he would not write more than a page for an essay on Josef Albers: everything was already evident ‘on the surface’ and any additional sentence would be redundant. Two years after that interview, these pages attempt to decompose and single out the elements and processes connected with some of Max Bill’s works which, for their own origin, already contain all possible explanations and interpretations. The formal reduction in favour of contents maximization is, perhaps, Max Bill’s main lesson.

Da alleati vittoriosi ad acerrimi rivali: i processi di ri-allineamento dopo i conflitti egemonici. Teorie a confronto e studio di casi

Why some powers manage to coordinate their security efforts while others confront each other as rivals is still one of the most relevant and debated questions in the field of IR theory. The dissertation wants to give a contribution to this important debate. In particular, the main goal of the research is to analyse the dynamics of great power interactions after the end of hegemonic conflicts, that is to understand why, following the defeat of the common enemies, some of the winning allies continue to cooperate, while others begin to engage in political and military competition. In order to understand this difference, the study compares the explanatory value of two rival theoretical perspectives: neorealism, in its main version of the balance of power framework, and a liberal approach focused on domestic politics. The thesis is divided in two sections. In the first, I do summarize the main assumptions and predictions of the theories, from which I derive two different sets of hypotheses on the evolution of post-war great power relations. In the second part, I test the hypotheses by focusing on two cases of post-war alignment dynamics: 1) the relations among Austria, Prussia, Russia, Great Britain and France after the Napoleonic wars; 2) the relations among the US, the UK, France and Italy after the end of WWI. The historical cases disconfirm the logic of the balance of power and confirm the liberal hypotheses, seeing that the results of the analysis show changes in the domestic structures of the great powers had a much larger impact on the emergence of new alliances and rivalries than did the international distribution of power. In the conclusion of the dissertation, I provide the reader with a discussion of the main theoretical implications of the empirical findings.

Dall'involucro all'invaso. Lo spazio a pianta centrale nell'opera architettonica di Adalberto Libera

An archetype selected over the centuries Adalberto Libera wrote little, showing more inclination to use the project as the only means of verification. This study uses a survey of the project for purely compositional space in relation to the reason that most other returns with continuity and consistency throughout his work. "The fruit of a type selected over centuries", in the words of Libera, is one of the most widely used and repeated spatial archetypes present in the history of architecture, given its nature as defined by a few consolidated elements and precisely defined with characters of geometric precision and absoluteness, the central space is provided, over the course of evolution of architecture, and its construction aspects as well as symbolic, for various uses, from historical period in which it was to coincide with sacred space for excellence, to others in which it lends itself to many different expressive possibilities of a more "secular". The central space was created on assumptions of a constructive character, and the same exact reason has determined the structural changes over the centuries, calling from time to time with advances in technology, the maximum extent possible and the different applications, which almost always have coincided with the reason for the monumental space. But it’s in the Roman world that the reason for the central space is defined from the start of a series of achievements that fix the character in perpetuity. The Pantheon was seen maximum results and, simultaneously, the archetype indispensable, to the point that it becomes difficult to sustain a discussion of the central space that excludes. But the reason the space station has complied, in ancient Rome, just as exemplary, monuments, public spaces or buildings with very different implications. The same Renaissance, on which Wittkower's proving itself once and for all, the nature and interpretation of sacred space station, and thus the symbolic significance of that invaded underlying interpretations related to Humanism, fixing the space-themed drawing it with the study and direct observation by the four-sixteenth-century masters, the ruins that in those years of renewed interest in the classical world, the first big pieces of excavation of ancient Rome brought to light with great surprise of all. Not a case, the choice to investigate the architectural work of Libera through the grounds of the central space. Investigating its projects and achievements, it turns out as the reason invoked particularly evident from the earliest to latest work, crossing-free period of the war which for many authors in different ways, the distinction between one stage and another, or the final miss. The theme and the occasion for Libera always distinct, it is precisely the key through which to investigate her work, to come to discover that the first-in this case the central plan-is the constant underlying all his work, and the second reason that the quota with or at the same time, we will return different each time and always the same Libera, formed on the major works remained from ancient times, and on this building method, means consciously, that the characters of architectural works, if valid, pass the time, and survive the use and function contingent. As for the facts by which to formalize it, they themselves are purely contingent, and therefore available to be transferred from one work to another, from one project to another, using also the loan. Using the same two words-at-issue and it becomes clear now how the theme of this study is the method of Libera and opportunity to the study of the central space in his work. But there is one aspect that, with respect to space a central plan evolves with the progress of the work of Libera on the archetype, and it is the reason behind all the way, just because an area built entirely on reason centric. It 'just the "center" of space that, ultimately, tells us the real progression and the knowledge that over the years has matured and changed in Libera. In the first phase, heavily laden with symbolic superstructure, even if used in a "bribe" from Free-always ill-disposed to sacrifice the idea of architecture to a phantom-center space is just the figure that identifies the icon represents space itself: the cross, the flame or the statue are different representations of the same idea of center built around an icon. The second part of the work of clearing the space station, changed the size of the orders but the demands of patronage, grows and expands the image space centric, celebratory nature that takes and becomes, in a different way, this same symbol . You see, one in all, as the project of "Civiltà Italiana" or symbolic arch are examples of this different attitude. And at the same point of view, you will understand how the two projects formulated on the reuse of the Mausoleum of Augustus is the key to its passage from first to second phase: the Ara Pacis in the second project, making itself the center of the composition "breaks" the pattern of symbolic figure in the center, because it is itself an architecture. And, in doing so, the transition takes place where the building itself-the central space-to become the center of that space that itself creates and determines, by extending the potential and the expressiveness of the enclosure (or cover) that defines the basin centered. In this second series of projects, which will be the apex and the point of "crisis" in the Palazzo dei Congressi all'E42 received and is no longer so, the symbol at the very geometry of space, but space itself and 'action' will be determined within this; action leading a movement, in the case of the Arco simbolico and the "Civiltà Italiana" or, more frequently, or celebration, as in the great Sala dei Recevimenti all’E42, which, in the first project proposal, is represented as a large area populated by people in suits, at a reception, in fact. In other words, in this second phase, the architecture is no longer a mere container, but it represents the shape of space, representing that which "contains". In the next step-determining the knowledge from which mature in their transition to post-war-is one step that radically changes the way centric space, although formally and compositionally Libera continues the work on the same elements, compounds and relationships in a different way . In this last phase Freedom, center, puts the man in human beings, in the two previous phases, and in a latent, were already at the center of the composition, even if relegated to the role of spectators in the first period, or of supporting actors in the second, now the heart of space. And it’s, as we shall see, the very form of being together in the form of "assembly", in its different shades (up to that sacred) to determine the shape of space, and how to relate the parts that combine to form it. The reconstruction of the birth, evolution and development of the central space of the ground in Libera, was born on the study of the monuments of ancient Rome, intersected on fifty years of recent history, honed on the constancy of a method and practice of a lifetime, becomes itself, Therefore, a project, employing the same mechanisms adopted by Libera; the decomposition and recomposition, research synthesis and unity of form, are in fact the structure of this research work. The road taken by Libera is a lesson in clarity and rationality, above all, and this work would uncover at least a fragment.

Italia e Francia nell'Ungheria di Trianon (1919-1939): due modelli di penetrazione politico-culturale

Italy and France in Trianon’s Hungary: two political and cultural penetration models During the first post-war, the Danubian Europe was the theatre of an Italian-French diplomatic challenge to gain hegemony in that part of the continent. Because of his geographical position, Hungary had a decisive strategic importance for the ambitions of French and Italian foreign politics. Since in the 1920s culture and propaganda became the fourth dimension of international relations, Rome and Paris developed their diplomatic action in Hungary to affirm not only political and economic influence, but also cultural supremacy. In the 1930, after Hitler’s rise to power, the unstoppable comeback of German political influence in central-eastern Europe determined the progressive decline of Italian and French political and economic positions in Hungary: only the cultural field allowed a survey of Italian-Hungarian and French-Hungarian relations in the contest of a Europe dominated by Nazi Germany during the Second World War. Nevertheless, the radical geopolitical changes in second post-war Europe did not compromise Italian and French cultural presence in the new communist Hungary. Although cultural diplomacy is originally motivated by contingent political targets, it doesn’t respect the short time of politics, but it’s the only foreign politics tool that guarantees preservations of bilateral relations in the long run.

Conservazione e ricostruzione dei tessuti storici dal secondo dopoguerra agli anni settanta. Teoria e prassi del restauro nell'opera del soprintendente Alfredo Barbacci

Il Soprintendente Alfredo Barbacci fu uomo di poliedrica formazione, perito nell’uso di metodiche innovative di restauro ed esperto delle tecniche di ricomposizione delle forme architettoniche dei complessi monumentali, danneggiati dai bombardamenti del secondo conflitto mondiale. Quel che, questo studio ha inteso indagare e comprendere, attraverso un approccio critico, sostanziato dalle carte d’archivio, è fondamentalmente il contributo, da egli ha offerto circa la valenza storica e architettonica del tessuto connettivo di base della città, da cui si originava - negli anni della sua attività - l’idea ancora inedita di un bene culturale e sociale nuovo: il centro storico tutto, con annessi monumenti, complessi architettonici nobili ed edilizia minore, di base. Dando avvio all’analisi sistematica delle teorie e della prassi di Alfredo Barbacci e alla lettura puntuale dei suoi scritti, sono stati razionalizzati il significato, le valenze e le implicazioni del termine edilizia minore all’interno del più ampio contesto del restauro dell’edilizia monumentale e alla luce degli elementi di tendenza, portati all’attenzione dal dibattito delle diverse scuole di pensiero sul restauro, a partire dai primi anni del sec. XX fino agli anni Settanta dello scorso secolo. Concretamente vi si evidenziano interessanti intuizioni e dichiarazioni, afferenti la necessità di un restauro del tipo integrato, da intendersi come strumento privilegiato di intervento sul tessuto nobile e meno nobile della città antica. Al termine della sua carriera, il contributo del Soprintendente Barbacci al dibattito scientifico si documenta da sé, nella compilazione a sua firma di quella parte della Relazione Franceschini, in cui si dava proposta di un corpo normativo alla necessità di guardare alla città storica come a un bene culturale e sociale, insistendo come al suo interno era d’uopo mantenere, nel corso di interventi restaurativi, un razionale equilibrio tra monumento ed edilizia minore già storicizzata e che non escludesse anche l’apparato paesaggistico di contorno.

Una grande narrazione del capitalismo: potere e scienze sociali nel pensiero politico di Daniel Bell

Questa tesi punta a ricostruire il pensiero politico di Bell tra il secondo dopoguerra e la metà degli anni Settanta. In tale arco cronologico, la riflessione politica di Bell si profila, per usare una formula di Jean-François Lyotard, come una «grande narrazione» del capitalismo. Nel complesso, cioè, l’opera di Bell appare come una storia sociologica del capitalismo, che nella fine delle ideologie registra l’apogeo del fordismo e, in seguito, ne mette in luce le trasformazioni in senso post-industriale, indagando le ricadute che tali mutamenti implicano sul piano dei rapporti di potere e della legittimazione del sistema. Nell’ottica di Bell, pertanto, il capitalismo non costituisce soltanto un sistema economico, ma la forma specifica attraverso cui si dispiega la società nel suo complesso, attivando una serie di rapporti di potere mediante i quali gli individui vengono coordinati e subordinati. Una siffatta concezione del capitalismo agisce immediatamente la questione del potere e solleva un interrogativo a esso connesso: «che cosa tiene insieme una società?». Una domanda che attraversa la traiettoria intellettuale di Bell e, sia pure declinata mediante una terminologia sociologica, riflette in realtà l’ambizione delle scienze sociali di farsi teoria politica. Esse si presentano quindi come teoria politica della modernità, nella misura in cui distinguono il potere sociale dal potere politico e, al tempo stesso, instaurano tra i due poli una tensione dialettica produttiva. Mettendo a fuoco la concettualizzazione del potere nell’opera di Bell si analizzeranno le mutazioni nel rapporto tra Stato e società negli Stati Uniti durante la Golden Age del capitalismo. In particolare, si metterà in luce nella grande narrazione di Bell l’ascesa e il declino di un ordine istituzionale che, alla metà degli anni Settanta, appare percorso da molteplici tensioni politiche e sociali che preannunciano l’avvento dell’età globale e il bisogno di una nuova “scala” di governo.

Il museo Wilhelm Lehmbruck: paradigma della nuova modernità nella Germania del secondo dopoguerra

Oggetto della ricerca è il museo Wilhelm Lehmbruck di Duisburg, un'opera dell'architetto Manfred Lehmbruck, progettata e realizzata tra il 1957 e il 1964. Questa architettura, che ospita la produzione artistica del noto scultore Wilhelm Lehmbruck, padre di Manfred, è tra i primi musei edificati ex novo nella Repubblica Federale Tedesca dopo la seconda guerra mondiale. Il mito di Wilhelm Lehmbruck, costruito negli anni per donare una identità culturale alla città industriale di Duisburg, si rinvigorì nel secondo dopoguerra in seno ad una più generale tendenza sorta nella Repubblica di Bonn verso la rivalutazione dell'arte moderna, dichiarata “degenerata” dal nazionalsocialismo. Ricollegarsi all'arte e all'architettura moderna degli anni venti era in quel momento funzionale al ridisegno di un volto nuovo e democratico del giovane stato tedesco, che cercava legittimazione proclamandosi erede della mitica e gloriosa Repubblica di Weimar. Dopo anni di dibattiti sulla ricostruzione, l'architettura del neues Bauen sembrava l'unico modo in cui la Repubblica Federale potesse presentarsi al mondo, anche se la realtà del paese era assai più complessa e svelava il “doppio volto” che connotò questo stato a partire dal 1945. Le numerose dicotomie che popolarono presto la tabula rasa nata dalle ceneri del conflitto (memoria/oblio, tradizione/modernità, continuità/discontinuità con il recente e infausto passato) trovano espressione nella storia e nella particolare architettura del museo di Duisburg, che può essere quindi interpretato come un'opera paradigmatica per comprendere la nuova identità della Repubblica Federale, un'identità che la rese capace di risorgere dopo l' “anno zero”, ricercando nel miracolo economico uno strumento di redenzione da un passato vergognoso, che doveva essere taciuto, dimenticato, lasciato alle spalle.

"Tra centro e periferia" Istituzioni e processi di industrializzazione nella Sicilia del secondo dopoguerra

In Sicilia lo strumento principale che ha caratterizzato le modalità d’intervento dei poteri pubblici in economia è stato quello della partecipazione diretta o indiretta, quello cioè della Regione che si propone come ente fautore del sostegno allo sviluppo dell’industria e successivamente come soggetto imprenditore. Le formule organizzative attraverso le quali si è concretizzato l’intervento regionale in economia furono la società per azioni a partecipazione regionale, l’azienda autonoma regionale e l’ente pubblico regionale1. La storia dello sviluppo economico siciliano nel secondo dopoguerra conferma come il ricorso allo strumento dell’ente pubblico economico sia stato molto frequente nella realtà locale come, peraltro, anche in altre Regioni d’Italia. Tracce, queste, di una vicenda storica che intuiamo subito avere complesse implicazioni tali da generare la necessità di interrogarsi sul modo nel quale le istituzioni politiche hanno influito sulle dinamiche economiche siciliane nel secondo dopoguerra; per quanto noti e approfonditi siano stati infatti gli elementi caratterizzanti e i percorsi peculiari dello sviluppo economico siciliano, rimangono scarsamente approfonditi il tenore dei rapporti e i nessi politici, istituzionali ed economici tra centro e periferia, in altre parole rimane ancora parzialmente inesplorata quella parte dell’indagine inerente l’evoluzione dei processi di industrializzazione della Sicilia nel secondo dopoguerra attuata parallelamente dalle autorità regionali e dallo Stato attraverso i loro enti e strumenti. È lecito chiedersi quali siano stati i tempi, le modalità, gli ostacoli e gli eventuali risultati delle azioni di pianificazione intraprese dai poteri pubblici centrali e regionali nella prospettiva dello sviluppo economico del territorio; il coordinamento delle azioni di promozione del progresso industriale si presentava in tal senso, sin dall’inizio, come una delle sfide fondamentali per un adeguato e consistente rilancio economico delle aree più arretrate del Mezzogiorno italiano; ecco che lo studio dei provvedimenti legislativi emanati rappresenta un approfondimento indispensabile e obiettivo primario di questo lavoro.

Narratori degli anni zero. Storia, critica, poetiche

Il lavoro si propone come un’indagine sulla letteratura italiana del primo decennio del XXI secolo, in una prospettiva non di semplice ricognizione ma di individuazione di linee interpretative capaci di ripercorrere un archivio di materiali molto vasto e non ancora chiuso. La prima parte affronta questioni relative a condizioni produttive, ricezione e valutazione critica della letteratura contemporanea. Il primo capitolo è dedicato alla discussione di problemi relativi allo studio della narrativa italiana del XXI secolo a partire dalla definizione utilizzata per riferirsi ad essa, quella di “anni zero”. Il secondo capitolo situa la narrativa contemporanea nelle linee di sviluppo della letteratura italiana degli ultimi trent’anni, a partire da un mutamento del rapporto dello scrittore con la tradizione umanistica che risale all’inizio degli anni ottanta. Il terzo capitolo approfondisce uno dei generi maggiormente praticati: il romanzo storico. Considerato negli anni ottanta e novanta un genere d'evasione e intrattenimento, negli anni zero è divenuto veicolo di punti di vista critici nei confronti delle narrazioni dominanti. La seconda parte è dedicata all’approfondimento di romanzi che raccontano, da un’ottica non testimoniale, gli anni settanta italiani, periodo complesso non solo sul piano evenemenziale, ma anche su quello della rielaborazione artistica. I romanzi su cui si concentra l’indagine offrono un racconto degli anni settanta italiani a partire da un’idea di storia plurale, ricostruita attraverso una molteplicità di voci, che muta a seconda della prospettiva da cui viene affrontata. Le storie false dei romanzi sugli anni settanta non chiedono di essere lette come vere, ma dicono comunque qualcosa di vero sulle modalità attraverso le quali si va costruendo il rapporto con il passato recente, nel più ampio contesto dei percorsi della letteratura italiana di inizio millennio, tra spinte che vanno nella direzione del mantenimento dell’autonomia da parte degli autori e pressioni del mercato editoriale.

Giochi diplomatici. Sport e politica estera nell'Italia del secondo dopoguerra (1943-1953)

Questa tesi di dottorato, partendo dall’assunto teorico secondo cui lo sport, pur essendo un fenomeno periferico e non decisivo del sistema politico internazionale, debba considerarsi, in virtù della sua elevata visibilità, sia come un componente delle relazioni internazionali sia come uno strumento di politica estera, si pone l’obiettivo di investigare, con un approccio di tipo storico-politico, l’attività internazionale dello sport italiano nel decennio che va dal 1943 al 1953. Nello specifico viene dedicata una particolare attenzione agli attori e alle istituzioni della “politica estera sportiva”, al rientro dello sport italiano nel consesso internazionale e alla sua forza legittimante di attrazione culturale. Vengono approfonditi altresì alcuni casi relativi a «crisi politiche» che influirono sullo sport e a «crisi sportive» che influenzarono la politica. La ricerca viene portata avanti con lo scopo primario di far emergere, da un lato se e quanto coscientemente lo sport sia stato usato come strumento di politica estera da parte dei governi e della diplomazia dell’Italia repubblicana, dall’altro quanto e con quale intensità lo sviluppo dell’attività internazionale dello sport italiano abbia avuto significative ripercussioni sull’andamento e dai rapporti di forza della politica internazionale.