"Water users must be efficient producers". Women's access to and use of land in Chókwè irrigation scheme, Mozambique

The irrigation scheme Eduardo Mondlane, situated in Chókwè District - in the Southern part of the Gaza province and within the Limpopo River Basin - is the largest in the country, covering approximately 30,000 hectares of land. Built by the Portuguese colonial administration in the 1950s to exploit the agricultural potential of the area through cash-cropping, after Independence it became one of Frelimo’s flagship projects aiming at the “socialization of the countryside” and at agricultural economic development through the creation of a state farm and of several cooperatives. The failure of Frelimo’s economic reforms, several infrastructural constraints and local farmers resistance to collective forms of production led to scheme to a state of severe degradation aggravated by the floods of the year 2000. A project of technical rehabilitation initiated after the floods is currently accompanied by a strong “efficiency” discourse from the managing institution that strongly opposes the use of irrigated land for subsistence agriculture, historically a major livelihood strategy for smallfarmers, particularly for women. In fact, the area has been characterized, since the end of the XIX century, by a stable pattern of male migration towards South African mines, that has resulted in an a steady increase of women-headed households (both de jure and de facto). The relationship between land reform, agricultural development, poverty alleviation and gender equality in Southern Africa is long debated in academic literature. Within this debate, the role of agricultural activities in irrigation schemes is particularly interesting considering that, in a drought-prone area, having access to water for irrigation means increased possibilities of improving food and livelihood security, and income levels. In the case of Chókwè, local governments institutions are endorsing the development of commercial agriculture through initiatives such as partnerships with international cooperation agencies or joint-ventures with private investors. While these business models can sometimes lead to positive outcomes in terms of poverty alleviation, it is important to recognize that decentralization and neoliberal reforms occur in the context of financial and political crisis of the State that lacks the resources to efficiently manage infrastructures such as irrigation systems. This kind of institutional and economic reforms risk accelerating processes of social and economic marginalisation, including landlessness, in particular for poor rural women that mainly use irrigated land for subsistence production. The study combines an analysis of the historical and geographical context with the study of relevant literature and original fieldwork. Fieldwork was conducted between February and June 2007 (where I mainly collected secondary data, maps and statistics and conducted preliminary visit to Chókwè) and from October 2007 to March 2008. Fieldwork methodology was qualitative and used semi-structured interviews with central and local Government officials, technical experts of the irrigation scheme, civil society organisations, international NGOs, rural extensionists, and water users from the irrigation scheme, in particular those women smallfarmers members of local farmers’ associations. Thanks to the collaboration with the Union of Farmers’ Associations of Chókwè, she has been able to participate to members’ meeting, to education and training activities addressed to women farmers members of the Union and to organize a group discussion. In Chókwè irrigation scheme, women account for the 32% of water users of the familiar sector (comprising plot-holders with less than 5 hectares of land) and for just 5% of the private sector. If one considers farmers’ associations of the familiar sector (a legacy of Frelimo’s cooperatives), women are 84% of total members. However, the security given to them by the land title that they have acquired through occupation is severely endangered by the use that they make of land, that is considered as “non efficient” by the irrigation scheme authority. Due to a reduced access to marketing possibilities and to inputs, training, information and credit women, in actual fact, risk to see their right to access land and water revoked because they are not able to sustain the increasing cost of the water fee. The myth of the “efficient producer” does not take into consideration the characteristics of inequality and gender discrimination of the neo-liberal market. Expecting small-farmers, and in particular women, to be able to compete in the globalized agricultural market seems unrealistic, and can perpetuate unequal gendered access to resources such as land and water.

Appartenenze, identità e ruoli di genere negli adolescenti di origine immigrata. Uno studio qualitativo nel territorio di Monza e della Brianza

Starting from the contexts on which the researches about migrant minors and adolescents have been concentrated so far, school, free time, friends, family, society integration, this work puts attention on gender dimension, supporting the ideas that socialization is a life-long process, that gender and gender roles are a cultural construction and the subject has multiple identities. The research aim to understand if being male or female, related with ethnic and cultural origin, influences the identity construction, the gender belonging and roles, the behaviours, in a different way, in interaction with the different everyday contexts. The research points out how being male or female affects: - daily choices, expectations and behaviours inside peer group, family and school; - future expectations as adult inside family, work and society; - idea about the adolescence and the self-decription as adolescent, female, male and immigrant. The analysis highlights that the gender belonging, as the ethnic and cultural belonging, doesn’t drive behaviours, attitudes, expectations totally to tradition or totally to “western way”, in the different everyday contexts. There is rather a combination of these ways, choosing the one or the other way in the different contexts according to be in a position in which there are more or less contacts with the society they live in. Differently, the self perception as adolescent and as individual is relatively independent from gender and ethniccultural belonging, over which prevail the idea of “ peer normality”. Above all, it is important to put in evidence that they are experiencing a very high level of complexity and change as adolescent and migrant or migrant’ son. Personal, cultural and social transitions can explain a large part of variability and our difficulty to construct high defined classifications.

Creative process in globally distributed teams: a study of new product development in Volvo

With the business environments no longer confined to geographical borders, the new wave of digital technologies has given organizations an enormous opportunity to bring together their distributed workforce and develop the ability to work together despite being apart (Prasad & Akhilesh, 2002). resupposing creativity to be a social process, the way that this phenomenon occurs when the configuration of the team is substantially modified will be questioned. Very little is known about the impact of interpersonal relationships in the creativity (Kurtzberg & Amabile, 2001). In order to analyse the ways in which the creative process may be developed, we ought to be taken into consideration the fact that participants are dealing with a quite an atypical situation. Firstly, in these cases socialization takes place amongst individuals belonging to a geographically dispersed workplace, where interpersonal relationships are mediated by the computer, and where trust must be developed among persons who have never met one another. Participants not only have multiple addresses and locations, but above all different nationalities, and different cultures, attitudes, thoughts, and working patterns, and languages. Therefore, the central research question of this thesis is as follows: “How does the creative process unfold in globally distributed teams?” With a qualitative approach, we used the case study of the Business Unit of Volvo 3P, an arm of Volvo Group. Throughout this research, we interviewed seven teams engaged in the development of a new product in the chassis and cab areas, for the brands Volvo and Renault Trucks, teams that were geographically distributed in Brazil, Sweden, France and India. Our research suggests that corporate values, alongside with intrinsic motivation and task which lay down the necessary foundations for the development of the creative process in GDT.

Tra società informazionale e prosumerismo: il citizen journalism e la partecipazione on line

I temi della ricerca riguardano il rapporto fra avvento del web e la modificazione dei processi di formazione di identità personale e sociale, della percezione dello spazio e del tempo, del prosumerismo digitale e delle varie forme di partecipazione ed associazione. Centrale è stata l’analisi del rapporto fra il Web 2.0 e la trasformazione delle forme di comunicazione a vari livelli, sia personali che sociali. Partendo da una analisi dei contesti socio-economici globali che hanno trasformato la società moderna nella società informazionale, è stato impostato un percorso di ricerca che approfondisse gli attuali criteri di strutturazione della propria identità, alla luce dell’avvento dei social network e delle reti virtuali di comunicazione come strumento preferenziale di socializzazione. La realtà delle reti sociali è stata analizzata in un’ottica di aggregazione spontanea mirata tanto alla comunicazione quanto alla tutela dei consumatori, e le trasformazioni portate dal Web 2.0 sono state la chiave di lettura per ridefinire i parametri della partecipazione dal basso generata dalla rete. Per comprendere la portata di tali trasformazioni nel contesto italiano è stato impostato un paragone tra l’uso del web negli Stati Uniti e in Italia, avendo le recente campagne elettorali dimostrato l’importanza del web nella partecipazione politica bottom-up; il percorso di ricerca ha dunque affrontato una comparazione di due casi, quello italiano e quello statunitense, finalizzato a comprendere l’attuale ruolo dell’utente nelle dinamiche di comunicazione mediatica. Per focalizzare al meglio le trasformazioni sociali generate dalla partecipazione on line è stato infine analizzato il caso del citizen journalism, per misurare, attraverso la metodologia dell’etnografia digitale, l’entità delle trasformazioni in corso. Il portale di giornalismo partecipativo YouReporter è stato il contesto privilegiato dove poter verificare le ipotesi iniziali circa le dinamiche di partecipazione, e il supporto di programmi di elaborazione statistica netnografica ha permesso di destrutturare al meglio tali dinamiche.

An interdisciplinary analysis of obesity: theory and empirical evidence

The dissertation is structured in three parts. The first part compares US and EU agricultural policies since the end of WWII. There is not enough evidence for claiming that agricultural support has a negative impact on obesity trends. I discuss the possibility of an exchange in best practices to fight obesity. There are relevant economic, societal and legal differences between the US and the EU. However, partnerships against obesity are welcomed. The second part presents a socio-ecological model of the determinants of obesity. I employ an interdisciplinary model because it captures the simultaneous influence of several variables. Obesity is an interaction of pre-birth, primary and secondary socialization factors. To test the significance of each factor, I use data from the National Longitudinal Survey of Adolescent Health. I compare the average body mass index across different populations. Differences in means are statistically significant. In the last part I use the National Survey of Children Health. I analyze the effect that family characteristics, built environment, cultural norms and individual factors have on the body mass index (BMI). I use Ordered Probit models and I calculate the marginal effects. I use State and ethnicity fixed effects to control for unobserved heterogeneity. I find that southern US States tend have on average a higher probability of being obese. On the ethnicity side, White Americans have a lower BMI respect to Black Americans, Hispanics and American Indians Native Islanders; being Asian is associated with a lower probability of being obese. In neighborhoods where trust level and safety perception are higher, children are less overweight and obese. Similar results are shown for higher level of parental income and education. Breastfeeding has a negative impact. Higher values of measures of behavioral disorders have a positive and significant impact on obesity, as predicted by the theory.

Tracce di cinefilia su Facebook

La mia tesi approfondisce le dinamiche della cinefilia su Facebook: quali relazioni s'instaurano tra lo spettatore cinefilo, e dunque il suo particolare sguardo, e la moltitudine di frammenti di cinema dispersi nella rete; come si sono modificati i rapporti, gli atteggiamenti, i processi di negoziazione, le abitudini e soprattutto i discorsi dei cinefili al cospetto di tracce di cinema sui social network e in particolare su Facebook. Inoltreprovo a dimostrare che la cinefilia è un'esperienza costitutivamente autobiografica, cui il web permette il perpetuare potenzialmente infinito della (auto)narrazione di sé.

"Un libro per ogni compagno". Case editrici e politiche per la lettura del partito comunista italiano (1944-1956)

Anche se la politica editoriale comunista rappresenta un campo di indagine fondamentale nella ricerca sul Pci, la sua attività editoriale è caduta in un oblio storico. Assumendo il libro come supporto materiale e veicolo della cultura politica comunista, e la casa editrice come canale di socializzazione, questa ricerca s’interroga sui suoi processi di costruzione e di diffusione. La ricerca si muove in due direzioni. Nel primo capitolo si è tentato di dare conto delle ragioni metodologiche dell’indagine e della messa a punto delle ipotesi di ricerca sul “partito editore”, raccogliendo alcune sfide poste alla storia politica da altri ambiti disciplinari, come la sociologia e la scienza politica, che rappresentano una vena feconda per la nostra indagine. La seconda direzione, empirica, ha riguardato la ricognizione delle fonti e degli strumenti di analisi per ricostruire le vicende del “partito editore” dal 1944 al 1956. La suddivisione della ricerca in due parti – 1944-1947 e 1947-1956 – segue a grandi linee la periodizzazione classica individuata dalla storiografia sulla politica culturale del Pci, ed è costruita su quattro fratture storiche – il 1944, con la “svolta di Salerno”; il 1947, con la “svolta cominformista”; il 1953, con la morte di Stalin e il disgelo; il 1956, con il XX Congresso e i fatti d’Ungheria – che sono risultate significative anche per la nostra ricerca sull’editoria comunista. Infine, il presente lavoro si basa su tre livelli di analisi: l’individuazione dei meccanismi di decisione politica e dell’organizzazione assunta dall’editoria comunista, esaminando gli scopi e i mutamenti organizzativi interni al partito per capire come i mutamenti strategici e tattici si sono riflessi sull’attività editoriale; la ricostruzione della produzione editoriale comunista; infine, l’identificazione dei processi di distribuzione e delle politiche per la lettura promosse dal Pci.