Italian Life Research Articles

The Mafia in Italian Lives and Literature: Life Sentences and Their Geographies by Robin Pickering-Iazzi

"The Mafia in Italian Lives and Literature: Life Sentences and Their Geographies by Robin Pickering-Iazzi." University of Toronto Quarterly, 86(3), pp. 302–303

The Mafia in Italian Lives and Literature: Life Sentences and Their Geographies

The Mafia in Italian Lives and Literature: Life Sentences and Their Geographies

La città e l'esperienza della crisi

City makes visible the crisis, it is home to the impoverishment processes that are generating a range of new poors, giving form to the heavy impact they are having on lifestyles and urban experience of the subjects. The public spaces and especially the places of consumption testify these substantial changes that characterize the lives of Italians in the last few years. At the same time, the crisis gives visibility to the city, it increases awareness of the relationship that citizens themselves have with the city, thus further it stimulates the demand for the city that often goes beyond the mere level of needs. The crisis strengthens the sense that subjects have about the right to their own cities.

The Mafia in Italian Lives and Literature: Life Sentences and their Geographies

The Mafia in Italian Lives and Literature: Life Sentences and their Geographies

A Península Itálica no século XIX

Around 1830, the counter-revolutionary movement began to wither but a new European fever would burst in 1848. On one hand, the revolutionary wave of 1848 covers a short period of time – 1848 and 1849. On the other hand, it falls within a broader perspective due to the upholding of liberal and national aspirations. This was both a liberal and national phenomenon that marked the revolutionary movement in Italy. In spite of the utopia underlying such a project, created in 1834, the latter was undoubtedly significant when seen from a cross European perspective based on a democratic view of the Nation-State. It should be noted that this patriotic elan was also a moment of convergence in Europe. This was the feeling that encouraged Mazzini in 1848, when he believed that favorable conditions had been met for the struggle against Austrian oppression. In fact, the unifications of Germany and Italy changed the European balance of power. Mazzinian and Garibaldian, revolutionary and moderate, Genoa played a leading role in important moments of the 19 th century Italian life: “Le due anime quella mazziniana e della sinistra rivoluzionaria in genere, e quella moderata, che avra dopo l’Unita un ruolo importante – sono entrambe protagonista nel quadro dele vicende risorgimentali”.

Francesco Saverio (Father), Marcello Cesare Augusto (Son): Finding Useful Histories in Fascist Rome?

The choice by different regimes as to what matters in the past and what does not is always a telling factor in their character. Mussolini's dictatorship in Italy made major play with romanita through its representation of the dictator as a new Caesar and its claim to be ‘restoring’ the Roman empire. The centro storico of Rome is still full of such Fascist messaging. The regime was also the first to call itself totalitarian and, since the 1980s, a standard interpretation has developed accepting that Mussolini did indeed push his people far along the road to having their minds and actions fascistized. This interpretation, however, with its focus on culture above other issues, underestimates the extensive sectors of Italian life where rival ideas and behaviour survived and flourished. So, too, romanita could signal Catholic, Vatican, class, family and national allegiances as well as ones favoured by the regime. The real message of inter-war Rome was therefore as much about an Italian dictatorship as a Fascist one.

Practicing REBT in Italy: Cultural Aspects

This paper attempts to explore the cultural background for the adoption and practice of REBT by cognitive therapists in Italy since the 1980s. It is not an attempt to capture the history of Italian culture and philosophy from antiquity. Italian therapists tend to prefer the assessment phase of the ABC framework and not fully adopt REBT disputing interventions. They also attempt to link the ABC not only to the here and now but also to clients’ personal development. In our experience, they have combined REBT with constructivism and metacognition. These current features parallel the historical lack of confidence shown by many Italian philosophical thinkers—from Machiavelli to Gianni Vattimo—in the possibility of reducing reality to verification as well as the reproducible rules of logical rationality. The foregoing highlights the interest in exploring the emotional roots of politics, history, and concrete reality in the time frame following the 1980s. Some typical features of Italian social life, such as individualism, hierarchy, remote social distance, and competition can also be thought of as corresponding with the historical features of the way REBT has been adopted and functions in Italy.

Impact of second-line treatment (2L T) in advanced pancreatic cancer (APDAC) patients (pts) receiving first line Nab-Paclitaxel (nab-P) + Gemcitabine (G): An Italian multicentre real life experience.

4124Background: There is no standard of care for 2L T in APDAC. Nab-P + G combination has showed superior efficacy compared to G alone in MPACT phase III study. Here we report data of a retrospecti...

An Indicator for the Measurement of Political Participation: The Case of Italy

In the modern globalized world, political participation is of paramount importance for balanced socio-economic growth and for human development. The Indagine Multiscopo sulle famiglie, a survey by Italian public institutions (ISTAT and CNEL), provides a wide range of data to evaluate specific aspects of Italian life. This work uses a set of data from the Indagine to analyse political participation in Italy at a regional level, by means of a composite indicator using parametric (Pena’s distance) and non-parametric (Mazziotta–Pareto Index) techniques. We have obtained a ranking that shows the level of political participation in different territorial contexts. The aim is to analyse the relation between Italian regions and the political behaviour of their communities: political discussions, participation in political meetings and marches, voluntary activity or donations to political parties and so on. The ranking is not correlated to voter turnout. We can assume that the politically engaged minority are unable to convince and involve the rest. At the same time, these small groups do not alter the general mistrust in parties and, generally speaking, in politics, which is spreading across Italy and also Europe.

Reflections about Italian academic life in Economia Aziendale and its evolution

Applicants for habilitation to Associate and Full professor in Economia Aziendale has during two years been evaluated by a commission, containing four Italian professors and one international professor. Me, being the international evaluator, present here some of my observations and impressions from the evaluation and present some reflections about the evolution of the Italian academic system and the subject, Economia Aziendale. My main conclusion, that the tradition of the subject is, at least in the short run, at threat due to the push towards internationalisation, could be regarded as rather pessimistic. But it is also a call for governed development, which should benefit all of us in the area, the whole international community.

Bank affiliation influence on life insurers’ performance before and after the financial crisis

IntroductionBoth in the US and in most European countries actuarial risk coverage is an exclusive domain of insurance companies. However, while the law forbids banks to perform this activity, it allows them to sell insurance products. Therefore, starting from the 1970s, European banks carved a role in the insurance business by distributing policies through their branch networks and creating the bancassurance phenomenon [Hoschka 1994].As documented in the following section, at least before the big crisis, European banks operating in the life insurance business through controlled insurance companies favoured the offer of financial policies - i.e. insurance products a limited actuarial risk protection content and whose main objective is producing returns by investing premiums either in index linked bonds or in mutual funds. On the other hand, players that were not competed in the traditional area of demographic and risk insurance, mostly selling with profit policies.The positive trend in markets' prices, lasting from the beginning of the 2000s until 2007, benefited insurers because it magnified the returns to holders of the products they marketed. New customers were enticed by the results coming from policies, enabling insurers to pocket part of considerable management fees [Fiordelisi & Ricci 2012]. On top of that, insurers could take advantage of lower distribution costs, due to the availability of their banking partners' distribution networks.The crisis changed all this, making products sold by non-bank insurers attractive again. Savers' increased risk aversion shifted demand towards safer investing, giving traditional insurers the chance to fight back banks controlled ones by offering products earning nice profits for them while being easy to sell by their agents.Has traditional insurers' performance benefited from this change, in spite of higher distribution costs? More in general, how relevant is being bank affiliated for succeeding in the life insurance business?In this article, we try to answer the above questions by analysing the performances of Italian life insurers from 2003 to 2013. We examine the impact that affiliation, product mix composition and distribution costs had on their economic results and the change that the big crisis determined on the influence that the above variables have on profitability.To our knowledge, this is the first systematic attempt at examining all the above factors' contribution to life insurers' performance. Moreover, we consid- ered their interaction macroeconomic conditions, adding value and generalization extent to our analysis.In order to shed light on the above topic, Italy is an interesting case from various points of view. First, banks accession to the life insurance sector through the acquisition of ownership stakes in established players has been particularly swift due to the virtual absence of cooperative insurers. The bancassurance phenomenon had been developing for a number of years before 2000, allowing us to analyse it when the presence of banks in the life insurance market was full-fledged.Second, during the timeframe of our analysis, Italy never exited the great crisis that hit Europe in 2008. Except for 2010, from 2008 to 2013 Italian GDP growth was zero or negative. While this is unfortunate for obvious reasons, it means that both and independent insurers had to adapt to economic recession because it became soon clear that it was not a temporary occurrence. We could therefore observe how insurance companies reacted to it.Third, the Italian life insurance market is the fourth in Europe for volume of premiums written, making it meritorious of an analysis of its own.Limiting our analysis to one country allowed us to be sure that the same legal and accounting framework applies to the entire sample, avoiding data manipulation that could bias our results. …

From Universalism to Nationalism: Italian Freemasonry and the Great War

During the period from 1914 to 1915, prior to Italy’s entry into the First World War, Freemasonry was a powerful force in Italian public life with a strong presence in every part of the nation and in the most vital organs of the State (parliament, public administration, the armed forces). Between them, the Grand Orient and the Grand Lodge of Italy counted 25,000 members and more than 500 lodges. Freemasons played a critical role in the campaign to mobilize Italian public opinion and political parties in support of Italy’s intervention in the war as an ally of France and Great Britain. To do so, they abandoned the movement’s traditional cosmopolitan and pacifist stances and adopted instead the objectives of the nationalists, a shift that would be consolidated during the war. Nonetheless, from 1917 onwards Italian Freemasons joined their counterparts in other European countries to press for the creation of a League of Nations to promote a new post-war universal order premised on the peaceful coexistence of independent and democratic nations. In examining the initiatives taken by Italian Freemasons in this period, this article focuses on the principles that inspired them, the language they adopted and the forms of communication and mobilization they used.

“Blockbuster movie, blockbuster location”: cineturismo e costruzione dell’immagine dell’Italia per il pubblico indiano

Combining the reputation of the Italian cultural heritage with the popularity of the Indian Film Industry, Italy and India have been collaborating to strengthen their economic relationships using the media as a spur for cultural exchange and a key-tool to enlarge the tourist market target. Many Italian Film Commissions have invested in supporting Indian productions, understanding the benefits of film-induced tourism. Specialised supplies and equipment have been provided to facilitate the incoming of Indian companies and organize educational tours to promote the locations of the Italian Peninsula. On the Indian side, the Made in Italy brand fascinates the upper-middle class interested in luxury products and the Italian life style. The settings of romantic movies promote the idea of Italy as a land to fulfil one’s own love story imitating the Bollywood stars. It is no surprise that honeymoon holiday packages are nowadays very popular and many sumptuous Indian weddings are celebrated in Italy. The paper analyses the representation strategies of Italy for the Indian audience as used both by tour operators, to enhance film-induced tourism, and by institutions, to enhance the cultural and economic exchanges between our countries.

Ignored and forgotten: Research on Jewish-Italian music during the 19th and 20th centuries

Why has research on Italian Jewish music been until recently almost nonexistent? This can only in part be explained by the small number of Jews living in Italy, compared to other European countries. Nor is racism a convincing answer. Even in the early years of Fascism, before Mussolini enacted the racial laws in 1938, the Jewish presence in Italy was not perceived, by and large, as ‘problematic’. Rather, what prevented people from gaining an awareness of Jewish culture was the peculiar form of the Italian nation-building project, which imposed an artificial notion of unified national culture upon a patchwork of local traditions. After unification, all Italians were forced to learn and speak one same language, forgetting their mixed origins—including their variegated musical traditions. In stark contrast to other European nations, where it was celebrated, folk music was ignored in Italy throughout the XIX century. Just as standard Italian overshadowed the many vernaculars, Opera became the only national musical language. A thorough investigation of the Italian Jewish tradition had to wait until the development, in the 1960s, of the international Folk Music Revival. Thanks to the work of ethnomusicologists like Alan Lomax and Leo Levi, the Jewish people’s contribution to Italian musical life is now beginning to be acknowledged.

Send in the clowns! Humour and power in Italian political, social and cultural life - Editorial

Send in the clowns! Humour and power in Italian political, social and cultural life - Editorial

Frantz Fanon in Italy

This introduction to the special issue on ‘Frantz Fanon in Italy’ provides an overview of Fanon's influence on Italian intellectual and political life, with special focus on the significant impact his writings had on the renovation of the Italian Left in the 1960s, as well as highlighting the continuities between Italian anti-fascism and anticolonialism. Fanon's Italian reception is interesting for postcolonial scholars in that it differs from the Anglo-American tradition of Fanonian scholarship, and reveals a ‘pre-postcolonial’ Fanon, prior to his revival through the ‘symptomatic readings’ of Homi Bhabha, Stuart Hall and other theorists in the 1980s. I also discuss the editorial history of Fanon's publication in Italian; Italy was the first country after France in which Fanon's work appeared, and Giovanni Pirelli's 1971 edition of Fanon's writings, Opere scelte, is possibly the only anthology that presents a selection of essays culled from Fanon's different texts. The Italian Fanon, then, not only offers us an interpretation of the thinker that is specific to Italy, but also serves to historicize his impact in relation to the intellectual and political developments of his time.

Should I Transplant This Patient with Paroxysmal Nocturnal Hemoglobinuria? a Cost-Effectiveness Analysis of Eculizumab Versus Allogeneic Stem Cell Transplant

Background: Paroxysmal nocturnal haemoglobinuria (PNH) is a rare clonal disorder of hematopoietic stem cells causing complement-mediated intravascular haemolysis, bone marrow aplasia and thromboembolic events. Allogeneic stem cell transplantation (SCT) has the potential to cure the disease but it is burdened by transplant-related mortality (TRM), which is lower in younger patients and with reduced-intensity conditioning regimens. Eculizumab is a monoclonal antibody suited to stop the abnormal complement cascade and capable of reducing thromboembolic events and related fatalities. Which of the two therapeutic options achieves the best health-care benefit to patients is uncertain as well as the economic burden of the two options onto health-care budget.Methods: We built a decision tree comparing upfront allogeneic SCT with lifelong eculizumab. Only patients with no prior thrombosis were analysed. A Markov model tracked PNH patients lifelong and accounted for persisting health-care modifications (states, such as transfusion-dependence, long-term disability related to severe thromboembolic events or GVHD, as well as for transitory modifications (events), such as acute phase of thromboembolic events and the first 3 months after SCT. TRM for sibling and unrelated fully matched donors was considered to be 15%, as reported by EBMT for patients transplanted for aplastic anemia after the year 2002 and by other institutions after reduced-intensity conditioning (de Latour 2012; Pantin 2014). However, patients 30-40 years of age were assigned a TRM of 20% and those older than 40 a TRM of 30%. The probability of thrombotic events was estimated based onthe reported cumulative rate of 40% in 15 years (de Latour 2008), but the risk was 4 times as higher for recurrent events. The fatality rate of thrombotic events was assumed to be 10%. The probability of death not related to thrombotic events was calculated based on the rate (8% in 10 years) reported by the French retrospective study (de Latour 2008) for individuals diagnosed after 1996. Patients being treated with eculizumab, however, were assigned thrice as higher the mortality probability of age-matched general population according to the 2008 Italian life tables (Hillmen 2011). Quality of life for PNH patients was calculated from EORTC scores reported by the International PNH Registry (conversion algorithm reported by Kontodimopoulos 2009): it was 0.81 in non-transfused patients, but decreased to 0.71 after thrombotic events, and to 0.51 in transfusion-dependent patients and in those with severe GVHD. Allogeneic SCT was assigned a cost of €80,000 upfront and €100 per month subsequently. Eculizumab was assigned a monthly cost of €20,000 assuming standard scheduling (600 mg weekly for 4 weeks followed by 900 mg biweekly). Future life years and costs were discounted by 3.5% per year, according to international guidelines. The model was built and analyzed with TreeAgePro2014.Results: At baseline analysis, patients aged 35 years would expect 41.32 life years after allogeneic SCT versus 35.0 on lifelong eculizumab. At two-way sensitivity analysis, we analyzed the role of TRM and relative survival of patients treated with eculizumab, as compared with healthy individuals. Allogeneic SCT is expected to provide better life expectancy so far as mortality in patients treated with eculizumab is >38% higher than general population. At TRM rates of 30%, allogeneic SCT keeps more effective than eculizumab only provided that PNH-related mortality is > 100% higher than general population. Similar results were obtained for discounted quality-adjusted life expectancy, which was 37.1 QALYs after allogeneic SCT versus 26.8 QALYs with lifelong eculizumab. In patients aged more than 52 years, eculizumab provided a better life expectancy than SCT. Lifelong discounted costs were estimated to be €113,341 after allogeneic SCT versus €8,362,079 with eculizumab.Conclusions: In an era of improved transplant yield and of budget constraints, allogeneic SCT should still be considered a therapeutic option for younger PNH patients with an aplastic phenotype. DisclosuresNo relevant conflicts of interest to declare.

Practicing Reflexivity in the Study of Italian Migrants in London

This article discusses the centrality of reflexivity in qualitative research through examples from my study on the role new media play in the lives of Italians in London. My hypothesis was that Italians were "in transit" in London and they were using new media to build "temporary" communities. I conducted in-depth interviews with members of the Italianialondra.com online community. I found they settled in London and the online community, instead of supporting "nomadic" identities, was used for re-territorialization. Through reflexivity I was able to determine the reasons for a partially wrong hypothesis. I also identified biases that clouded my interpretations of the object of study; thus promoting rich insight and enabling public scrutiny of the integrity of the research.

Advanced non-small cell lung cancer management in patients progressing after first-line treatment: results of the cross-sectional phase of the Italian LIFE observational study

LIFE (non-small cell Lung cancer management In patients progressing after First-linE of treatment in the metastatic setting) is a multicentre Italian observational study, including a cross-sectional and a longitudinal phase, with the aim of describing the therapeutic approach in clinical practice for advanced non-small cell lung cancer (NSCLC) patients, progressing after first-line treatment. In this paper, the cross-sectional phase is outlined, with the primary endpoint of describing the proportion of patients receiving second-line treatment among those progressed during or after first-line treatment according to clinical practice. From July 2011 to January 2012, 603 patients were enrolled and 541 (90 %) were evaluable. A total of 464 (86 %) patients received a second-line therapy outside clinical trials. Chemotherapy and targeted therapies were administered to 65 and 34 % of patients, respectively (1 % both). No tissue collection was required within the observational trial, and biomarkers analysis was performed at diagnosis or later in 314 patients (58 %). In details, activating epidermal growth factor receptor mutations were detected in 21 % of 311 evaluable patients, Kirsten rat sarcoma 2 viral oncogene homolog mutation in 22 % of the 77 evaluable patients and anaplastic lymphoma kinase translocations analysis was performed in 74 patients and resulted positive in 23 % of cases. These high proportions were probably due to enriched patient population tested. These results showed a pattern of care for NSCLC second-line therapy which reflects international guidelines recommendations and current expected clinical practice. Interestingly, biomarkers analyses were performed in a higher percentage than expected.

The Pope and Mussolini: The Secret History of Pius XI and the Rise of Fascism in Europe by David I. Kertzer (review)

Reviewed by: The Pope and Mussolini: The Secret History of Pius XI and the Rise of Fascism in Europe by David I. Kertzer Robert A. Ventresca The Pope and Mussolini: The Secret History of Pius XI and the Rise of Fascism in Europe. By David I. Kertzer. (New York: Random House. 2014. Pp. xxxiii, 553. $32.00. ISBN 978-0-8129-9346-2.) David Kertzer’s The Pope and Mussolini offers a vividly descriptive, highly readable yet partial account of one of the most consequential political relationships of the twentieth century, between Pope Pius XI (Achille Ratti) and Italy’s Fascist dictator Benito Mussolini. On the basis of extensive research in ecclesiastical and Italian state archives, Kertzer does an admirable job of working the archival material into an evocative narrative that is accessible to a general audience. With a keen eye for the illustrative anecdote and a theatrical appreciation for the dramatis personae at the heart of this all-too-real story (à propos, see the list of the “Cast of Characters” provided at the outset), Kertzer brings to life the complex interplay of mutuality, interdependence, incompatibility and conflict that characterized the relationship between pope and Duce, between Catholicism and Fascism, and between church and state in Italy on the eve of World War II. This book will convey to the general reader a history that is familiar to specialists—the tortuous evolution of church-state relations after Italian Unification, culminating in the momentous 1929 accords that restored to the Holy See territorial sovereignty and thereby furnished the papacy with juridical and diplomatic standing in Italian and international affairs. With the signing of the historical accords, Mussolini made peace with the Vatican, at least on paper. In return, the Duce expected the pope essentially to stay out of Italy’s political and foreign affairs; in short, to render unto Caesar that which was, ostensibly, Caesar’s. It was, as Kertzer puts it, “a peculiar partnership” with which neither pope nor Duce was “entirely comfortable” (pp. 121–22), as their voluble relationship, which Kertzer describes in colorful detail, amply demonstrated. Yet framing this relationship as a “partnership” risks underestimating the persistent tensions and conflict between Pius XI and Mussolini over various matters—tensions that exposed some basic ideological incompatibilities between Catholicism and Fascism and, in practical terms, tested the logic of the accommodation achieved in the 1929 accords. To speak as Kertzer does of the Church as a “willing partner” of the Fascist regime (p. xxx) is to conflate concordance with alliance, thereby imputing to the relationship a far greater degree of political-ideological compatibility and complementarity than existed. It also attributes to the Holy See and to Pius XI an exaggerated role and undue influence in the consolidation of Fascist rule. Kertzer goes so far—too far, one might argue—as to contend that by the time the 1929 accords were signed, the putative “Fascist revolution” already had been transformed into a “clerico-Fascist revolution” (p. 68). In Kertzer’s telling, Mussolini [End Page 630] and the Vatican forged “a new partnership” based on the shared vision of remaking Italy by re-Catholicizing it—hence the self-interested motivation behind the notoriously anticlerical Mussolini’s moves to “[shower] the Church with cash and privileges.” These ranged from powerful symbolic gestures such as returning crucifixes to honored places of public display, to substantive state patronage of Catholic ideals and institutions in the social, civic, and economic realms of Italian life (p. 61). In return, Mussolini expected Italian churchmen to contribute to consensus-building as the Duce worked in fits and starts to transform his fractious early political coalition into one-party authoritarian rule by the latter 1920s. Reading Kertzer’s account of the early years of the Fascist experience, the reader might very well conclude that certain influential prelates—many of whom were very close both to the Vatican and to Mussolini such as Jesuit priest Pietro Tacchi Venturi—were more fascist than the Fascists, in thought if not in name. To be sure, there were many areas of consensus and mutual self-interest driving the constant search for a workable modus vivendi between the Church of Pius XI and Mussolini’s...