The environmental discourse on small island states is structured around a set of
geographical cat... more The environmental discourse on small island states is structured around a set of geographical categories. Among these, the category of smallness reflects the assumption that such spaces are vulnerable on account of their reduced size, reinforcing an image of islands as ‘prone’ to environmental threats and in need of ‘external support’. Such support is often provided by international actors, specifically international agencies, NGOs and sponsors, who consequently influence domestic policymaking processes. This paper offers a theoretical discussion of this influence in relation to environmental policies, drawing on concepts from the fields of international studies, development studies and island studies. I argue that the influence of international actors may be viewed as a form of leadership that is legitimised by the narrative of island vulnerability, the development paradigm, the authority attributed to reports and rankings, the symbolic functioning of global environmental threats and the overuse of geographical categories such as ‘small’ or ‘developing’. In the second part of the paper, I propose four research questions for future studies on the political outputs of this influence in the Republic of Maldives: an icon of the environmental challenges threatening small island states.
One of the contributions made by the children’s geographies to the field of geography is the incl... more One of the contributions made by the children’s geographies to the field of geography is the inclusion of children as agents that create space, because children use and produce space as well as adults do. We understand that schools should benefit from this knowledge and include it in the teaching of geography, so learners can better understand how they use space. The aim of this paper is to connect the fields of children’s geographies and geography education in order to enrich the latter. We propose a model for doing so based on four main ideas: children must be considered as social actors that produce space; how children appropriate their space and places is relevant; their spatial representation of places and spaces is essential; as well as to study the children’s places.
Over the last three decades, the human geography of the Maldives has been passing through a compl... more Over the last three decades, the human geography of the Maldives has been passing through a complex set of transformative forces that go beyond the discourse on the environmental fragility of archipelagic states (Baldacchino, 2004). Due to these geographical and historical processes, the narrative identifying climate change as the main perturbative driver of socio-environmental relationships, as well as controversial, is quite incomplete, especially if we consider the local scale. The social response (Kates 1971) of the Maldivian communities must be read taking into account a broader body of practices, technologies, roles and cultural traits that characterize resilience strategies at local scale. Within this context, observing both the international documents (e.g the reports published by UNDP or UNESCO) and the national framework, the role played by women, especially within the smaller islands and the peripheral atolls, is a promising research topic. Since 2012, the Marine Research and High Education Center (MaRHE Center) has been carrying out researches on the social response to change, within the community of Faaf-Magoodhoo. These studies address the importance of women (both considering the informal and institutional levels) in the reproduction of the strategies and knowledge local communities adopt to cope with the environmental change. In this contribution, we discuss both the methodological backgrounds and outcomes of a project aiming to understand the perception of environmental changes and to study the waste management system.
The climate change vulnerability discourse in the Maldives coexists with a pervasive set of criti... more The climate change vulnerability discourse in the Maldives coexists with a pervasive set of critical environmental factors of significance to the socio-environmental systems of small peripheral islands. This implies the need to strike a balance between global challenges associated with environmental processes at the supra-national scale and the adjustments and strategies implemented at the local scale in response to change. The current paper offers a discussion of this dialectic, in reference to both the broader contemporary debate in island studies, and the political and environmental context of the Maldives. We first outline the international scenario, and then go on, in the second part of the paper, to provide a reading of environmental policy on these islands. We argue that emphasizing the country’s environmental vulnerability has reinforced a ‘lexicon of risk’ within the environmental discourse and that, in recent years, this narrative has been one of the main forces driving the construction of contemporary Maldivian ‘nation-ness’.
Tourism and visual culture, Volume 2: Methods and cases, 2010
Citation: Anzoise, V., & Malatesta, S.(2010). Visual and Tourist Dimensions of Trentino'... more Citation: Anzoise, V., & Malatesta, S.(2010). Visual and Tourist Dimensions of Trentino's Borderscape. In P. Burns, JM Lester, & L. Bibbings (a cura di), Tourism and Visual Culture. Methods and Cases (pp. 44-61). Wallingford: CABI.
Citation: Anzoise, V., & Malatesta, S.(2010). Visual and Tourist Dimensions of Trentino'... more Citation: Anzoise, V., & Malatesta, S.(2010). Visual and Tourist Dimensions of Trentino's Borderscape. In P. Burns, JM Lester, & L. Bibbings (a cura di), Tourism and Visual Culture. Methods and Cases (pp. 44-61). Wallingford: CABI.
El Paisaje: de los exploradores a los turistas, 2015
Nell’agenda della comunità internazionale il 2014 è stato proclamato come Anno Internazionale ded... more Nell’agenda della comunità internazionale il 2014 è stato proclamato come Anno Internazionale dedicato agli Small Island Developing States (SIDS). Si è trattato di un’opportunità per discutere le politiche di resilienza di fronte ai cambiamenti, per valorizzare la ricchezza del patrimonio culturale delle popolazioni che abitano i piccoli stati insulari e, in seno alla comunità accademica, per riflettere sullo stato dell’arte della ricerca. Il nostro articolo si inserisce all’interno di questo dibattito discutendo i meccanismi che hanno portato le Maldive a diventare uno dei simboli dell’immaginario insulare, paradisiaco e tropicale proposto ai turisti, soprattutto in Europa. Il primo paragrafo, seguendo l’impostazione riproposta dai recenti studi di Baldacchino (2008, 2013), si sofferma sul significato d’insularità in termini spaziali e sulla costruzione del paesaggio tropicale nell’immaginario europeo. Nel secondo mostriamo come il ruolo del turismo, nella sua declinazione politica e di pianificazione territoriale, ma anche nella sua funzione di produttore di discorso, sia stata la molla principale per l’affermazione delle Maldive come simbolo di un immaginario geografico tropicale, isolato e transitorio. In questo senso risulta centrale la reificazione di questo immaginario in uno specifico paesaggio, divenuto l’oggetto portante ai fini della vendita sul mercato turistico internazionale del “prodotto Maldive” come sinonimo, per eccellenza, di “isole paradisiache”.
Miscellanea Geographica - Regional studies on development, 19, 2, 2015
The 2010 UNPD’s Assessment of Development Results defined the Maldives “a vulnerable Small Island... more The 2010 UNPD’s Assessment of Development Results defined the Maldives “a vulnerable Small Island Developing State” by pointing out the influence of both external and local human factors on their fragile ecosystems. This impact is deeply related to a main geographical feature: the high dispersion of land mass and population, both of them spread over a distance of 860 km. Above all, this dispersion has an effect on two environmental issues: energy distribution and solid waste management. The latter is particularly interesting for the geographical analysis of Small Island Countries. Due to centre-periphery distance and cost benefits analysis, in the Maldives public and private actors have developed different solid waste management models: central and regional waste management dumpsites, hybrid systems implemented by resorts and “informal” practices still followed by local communities. In this paper, we discuss these systems stressing on the relevance of combining infrastructural measures with “informal” practices at local level. Furthermore, we report the outcomes of The Right Place, a participatory waste management action carried out by MaRHE Center (a Milano-Bicocca Research Center) in Faafu Magoodhoo Island
State and peripheries: the political geography of the Maldives between uniformity and
segregation... more State and peripheries: the political geography of the Maldives between uniformity and segregation. (Abstract) The Republic of the Maldives during the last decades, at least since the Nineties, has been involved by a complex body of transformative forces due to some factors: the increasing foreign investments in the tourism market; the dependency on oil producing Countries; and the introduction of new consumption models. The literature focused on a “culturalist” approach to these transformations. We aim at proposing an alternative analysis based on two pivotal concepts of Political Geography: the Center- Periphery Model and the idea of “Political Landscape”, according to Reynaud and Lacoste. The contribution stresses how the central State, during the last decades, has imposed a control on local communities, how such control can be read through these two interpretive models, and how the political geography of the Maldives can be understood by adopting the spatial categories of segregation and uniformity. In this paper we develop our analysis both by reading two political acts, and by observing a specific local context, Faaf-Magoodhoo, an island where the authors carry out researches on environmental and social geography hosted by the MaRHE Center of the University of Milano- Bicocca.
Milan. A few meters from Duomo’s Square. Beginning of October. We are under the “Galleria” waitin... more Milan. A few meters from Duomo’s Square. Beginning of October. We are under the “Galleria” waiting for Shahida Zubair and Paolo Galli. Paolo is the Director of the Marine Research and High Education Center (MaRHe Center) on Faaf-Magoodhoo (Rep of Maldives); while Shahida is the founder of the company Island Organics Maldives Pvt. Ltd, which pioneered the first Maldivian organic farm on Maarikilu in Baa Atoll. It is a rainy day and we can’t help thinking “how nice would it be to have this meeting on Maarikilu or at the MaRHe Center?”
Shahida came to Milan because she is involved in some exhibitions and projects connected to Expo2015 and we couldn’t miss the opportunity to meet her. Apart from being a real pioneer, Shahida is a crucial contact for the MaRHe Center, in particular on the community-based development research being carried out on Faaf-Magoodhoo. The groundbreaking work of Island Organics is an example of resilience on a local level and we are quite interested in understanding how it could be transformed into a model applicable to other contexts or scales.
Journal of Research and Didactics in Geography (J-READING), 2, 2, Dec., 2013, pp. 57-66, Dec 2013
"Citizenship Education is currently a consolidated issue within several European curricula. It ha... more "Citizenship Education is currently a consolidated issue within several European curricula. It has been integrated in national educational laws in different ways: as cross-curricular education UK, Italy), as a subject (France, Spain) or as a skill (Ireland). Despite these differences, there is a common agreement on the ethical value of Citizenship Education and on its main aim: to foster students’ sense of local, national and European citizenship. In some ways this goal has been inspired by Morin’s path to a “plural” education and a planetary citizenship (Morin, 2000).
Social sciences, and in particular Geography and History, keep the function of giving tools able to show how a dialogue among the different scales is possible. Nevertheless European citizenship is undergoing a constant redefinition due to the European enlargement process, the role of Europe inside national jurisdictions and to the changes in national curricula. This evolution directly affects the guiding function conferred to school in terms of skills, aims and themes; therefore competences and methods adopted by teachers may have to be reconsidered.
This essay presents the first results of the updating of the state of the art of this issue that has been carried out by the Citizenship Education Research Group of the VOICEs Comenius network (The Voice of European Teachers). The main aim of this international research group is to face the challenge of building a European citizenship by developing a comparative analysis of teachers’ practices and strategies in different local, regional and national contexts, aiming to contribute, with renewed ideas, to the debate on this promising field of research."
The study of flood hazard has been a key theme within the spatial analysis of natural hazards. A ... more The study of flood hazard has been a key theme within the spatial analysis of natural hazards. A number of authors have expanded on this tradition by adopting a society-oriented approach to risk perception. Thus a new framework has become available for exploring social response to risk and describing the relationship between human communities and hazards in terms of contemporary interpretative categories such as social representation and “stigmatization,” the latter defined as the process by which media and social actors mark places affected by disastrous events as dangerous and unsafe sites. This literature has made a vital contribution to the geographical reading of flood hazard, showing how flood risk generates both space- and place-making processes. In this paper I discuss the relationship between these two processes, suggesting that the political response to flood hazard may be viewed as a hetero-directed strategy that influences place-making at a local level. I illustrate this perspective using a field research conducted in 2006–2007 on the Po River Basin in Piemonte, an Italian region with high flood risk that has been affected by a series of events in recent decades.
GIACCARIA P., PARADISO M., (a cura di), Mediterranean Lexicon / Lessico Mediterraneo, Società Geografica Italiana, Roma, pp. 117-128., 2012
The continuing geographical impact of tourism on the coastlines of the Mediterranean, due in grea... more The continuing geographical impact of tourism on the coastlines of the Mediterranean, due in great part to the large-scale construction of accommodation facilities, not only generates debate from a number of perspectives but has become a wholly self-evident phenomenon. Nonetheless, the facile conclusion that mass tourism inevitably causes environmental degradation may easily be refuted with regard to the Mediterranean. This coastal region has all too frequently been the object of preconceived opinions, leading it to be viewed – not only by the majority of tourists, but also by tourist industry professionals and experts in the tourism sciences – as a homogeneous area without shades of variation; nonetheless, it is possible to identify numerous instances in which tourist development and conservation of the environment have been virtuously reconciled. This paper provides a brief overview of tourism in the Mediterranean (para. 1) before focusing on two specific aspects, specifically accommodation facilities certified as “sustainable” (para. 2) and “ecotourism” practices (para. 3); it is concluded that such strategies are essential to the creation of a new model of tourism development with the power to enrich the geographical imagination of the Mediterranean of those visiting it as a holiday destination.
Scripta Nova. Revista Electrónica de Geografía y Ciencias Sociales, XVI, 418,, 2012
In this contribute we discuss the political and social issues of Carlo Collodi’s Viaggio per l’It... more In this contribute we discuss the political and social issues of Carlo Collodi’s Viaggio per l’Italia di Giannettino published between 1880 and 1886. In Italy the XIX Century has been a crucial phase both for the nation-builing process and for the political and social achievement of the Bourgeois class, in particular through the role played by writers and philosophers. Carlo Collodi, known mainly as the author of Le avventure di Pinocchio, gave his contribute to these processes by publishing Viaggio per l’Italia di Giannettino, a novel that tells a young boy’s journey across Italy. Collodi, by emphasizing the beauties of the Italian cultural heritage, aimed at inspiring the future generations’ patriotism. Despite not being an official textbook, many teachers used this novel as a recommended reading within their classes and this success shows how important children's literature has been both for the development of the nationalist discourse and for the achievement of the bourgeois values during the XIX Century.
The environmental discourse on small island states is structured around a set of
geographical cat... more The environmental discourse on small island states is structured around a set of geographical categories. Among these, the category of smallness reflects the assumption that such spaces are vulnerable on account of their reduced size, reinforcing an image of islands as ‘prone’ to environmental threats and in need of ‘external support’. Such support is often provided by international actors, specifically international agencies, NGOs and sponsors, who consequently influence domestic policymaking processes. This paper offers a theoretical discussion of this influence in relation to environmental policies, drawing on concepts from the fields of international studies, development studies and island studies. I argue that the influence of international actors may be viewed as a form of leadership that is legitimised by the narrative of island vulnerability, the development paradigm, the authority attributed to reports and rankings, the symbolic functioning of global environmental threats and the overuse of geographical categories such as ‘small’ or ‘developing’. In the second part of the paper, I propose four research questions for future studies on the political outputs of this influence in the Republic of Maldives: an icon of the environmental challenges threatening small island states.
One of the contributions made by the children’s geographies to the field of geography is the incl... more One of the contributions made by the children’s geographies to the field of geography is the inclusion of children as agents that create space, because children use and produce space as well as adults do. We understand that schools should benefit from this knowledge and include it in the teaching of geography, so learners can better understand how they use space. The aim of this paper is to connect the fields of children’s geographies and geography education in order to enrich the latter. We propose a model for doing so based on four main ideas: children must be considered as social actors that produce space; how children appropriate their space and places is relevant; their spatial representation of places and spaces is essential; as well as to study the children’s places.
Over the last three decades, the human geography of the Maldives has been passing through a compl... more Over the last three decades, the human geography of the Maldives has been passing through a complex set of transformative forces that go beyond the discourse on the environmental fragility of archipelagic states (Baldacchino, 2004). Due to these geographical and historical processes, the narrative identifying climate change as the main perturbative driver of socio-environmental relationships, as well as controversial, is quite incomplete, especially if we consider the local scale. The social response (Kates 1971) of the Maldivian communities must be read taking into account a broader body of practices, technologies, roles and cultural traits that characterize resilience strategies at local scale. Within this context, observing both the international documents (e.g the reports published by UNDP or UNESCO) and the national framework, the role played by women, especially within the smaller islands and the peripheral atolls, is a promising research topic. Since 2012, the Marine Research and High Education Center (MaRHE Center) has been carrying out researches on the social response to change, within the community of Faaf-Magoodhoo. These studies address the importance of women (both considering the informal and institutional levels) in the reproduction of the strategies and knowledge local communities adopt to cope with the environmental change. In this contribution, we discuss both the methodological backgrounds and outcomes of a project aiming to understand the perception of environmental changes and to study the waste management system.
The climate change vulnerability discourse in the Maldives coexists with a pervasive set of criti... more The climate change vulnerability discourse in the Maldives coexists with a pervasive set of critical environmental factors of significance to the socio-environmental systems of small peripheral islands. This implies the need to strike a balance between global challenges associated with environmental processes at the supra-national scale and the adjustments and strategies implemented at the local scale in response to change. The current paper offers a discussion of this dialectic, in reference to both the broader contemporary debate in island studies, and the political and environmental context of the Maldives. We first outline the international scenario, and then go on, in the second part of the paper, to provide a reading of environmental policy on these islands. We argue that emphasizing the country’s environmental vulnerability has reinforced a ‘lexicon of risk’ within the environmental discourse and that, in recent years, this narrative has been one of the main forces driving the construction of contemporary Maldivian ‘nation-ness’.
Tourism and visual culture, Volume 2: Methods and cases, 2010
Citation: Anzoise, V., & Malatesta, S.(2010). Visual and Tourist Dimensions of Trentino'... more Citation: Anzoise, V., & Malatesta, S.(2010). Visual and Tourist Dimensions of Trentino's Borderscape. In P. Burns, JM Lester, & L. Bibbings (a cura di), Tourism and Visual Culture. Methods and Cases (pp. 44-61). Wallingford: CABI.
Citation: Anzoise, V., & Malatesta, S.(2010). Visual and Tourist Dimensions of Trentino'... more Citation: Anzoise, V., & Malatesta, S.(2010). Visual and Tourist Dimensions of Trentino's Borderscape. In P. Burns, JM Lester, & L. Bibbings (a cura di), Tourism and Visual Culture. Methods and Cases (pp. 44-61). Wallingford: CABI.
El Paisaje: de los exploradores a los turistas, 2015
Nell’agenda della comunità internazionale il 2014 è stato proclamato come Anno Internazionale ded... more Nell’agenda della comunità internazionale il 2014 è stato proclamato come Anno Internazionale dedicato agli Small Island Developing States (SIDS). Si è trattato di un’opportunità per discutere le politiche di resilienza di fronte ai cambiamenti, per valorizzare la ricchezza del patrimonio culturale delle popolazioni che abitano i piccoli stati insulari e, in seno alla comunità accademica, per riflettere sullo stato dell’arte della ricerca. Il nostro articolo si inserisce all’interno di questo dibattito discutendo i meccanismi che hanno portato le Maldive a diventare uno dei simboli dell’immaginario insulare, paradisiaco e tropicale proposto ai turisti, soprattutto in Europa. Il primo paragrafo, seguendo l’impostazione riproposta dai recenti studi di Baldacchino (2008, 2013), si sofferma sul significato d’insularità in termini spaziali e sulla costruzione del paesaggio tropicale nell’immaginario europeo. Nel secondo mostriamo come il ruolo del turismo, nella sua declinazione politica e di pianificazione territoriale, ma anche nella sua funzione di produttore di discorso, sia stata la molla principale per l’affermazione delle Maldive come simbolo di un immaginario geografico tropicale, isolato e transitorio. In questo senso risulta centrale la reificazione di questo immaginario in uno specifico paesaggio, divenuto l’oggetto portante ai fini della vendita sul mercato turistico internazionale del “prodotto Maldive” come sinonimo, per eccellenza, di “isole paradisiache”.
Miscellanea Geographica - Regional studies on development, 19, 2, 2015
The 2010 UNPD’s Assessment of Development Results defined the Maldives “a vulnerable Small Island... more The 2010 UNPD’s Assessment of Development Results defined the Maldives “a vulnerable Small Island Developing State” by pointing out the influence of both external and local human factors on their fragile ecosystems. This impact is deeply related to a main geographical feature: the high dispersion of land mass and population, both of them spread over a distance of 860 km. Above all, this dispersion has an effect on two environmental issues: energy distribution and solid waste management. The latter is particularly interesting for the geographical analysis of Small Island Countries. Due to centre-periphery distance and cost benefits analysis, in the Maldives public and private actors have developed different solid waste management models: central and regional waste management dumpsites, hybrid systems implemented by resorts and “informal” practices still followed by local communities. In this paper, we discuss these systems stressing on the relevance of combining infrastructural measures with “informal” practices at local level. Furthermore, we report the outcomes of The Right Place, a participatory waste management action carried out by MaRHE Center (a Milano-Bicocca Research Center) in Faafu Magoodhoo Island
State and peripheries: the political geography of the Maldives between uniformity and
segregation... more State and peripheries: the political geography of the Maldives between uniformity and segregation. (Abstract) The Republic of the Maldives during the last decades, at least since the Nineties, has been involved by a complex body of transformative forces due to some factors: the increasing foreign investments in the tourism market; the dependency on oil producing Countries; and the introduction of new consumption models. The literature focused on a “culturalist” approach to these transformations. We aim at proposing an alternative analysis based on two pivotal concepts of Political Geography: the Center- Periphery Model and the idea of “Political Landscape”, according to Reynaud and Lacoste. The contribution stresses how the central State, during the last decades, has imposed a control on local communities, how such control can be read through these two interpretive models, and how the political geography of the Maldives can be understood by adopting the spatial categories of segregation and uniformity. In this paper we develop our analysis both by reading two political acts, and by observing a specific local context, Faaf-Magoodhoo, an island where the authors carry out researches on environmental and social geography hosted by the MaRHE Center of the University of Milano- Bicocca.
Milan. A few meters from Duomo’s Square. Beginning of October. We are under the “Galleria” waitin... more Milan. A few meters from Duomo’s Square. Beginning of October. We are under the “Galleria” waiting for Shahida Zubair and Paolo Galli. Paolo is the Director of the Marine Research and High Education Center (MaRHe Center) on Faaf-Magoodhoo (Rep of Maldives); while Shahida is the founder of the company Island Organics Maldives Pvt. Ltd, which pioneered the first Maldivian organic farm on Maarikilu in Baa Atoll. It is a rainy day and we can’t help thinking “how nice would it be to have this meeting on Maarikilu or at the MaRHe Center?”
Shahida came to Milan because she is involved in some exhibitions and projects connected to Expo2015 and we couldn’t miss the opportunity to meet her. Apart from being a real pioneer, Shahida is a crucial contact for the MaRHe Center, in particular on the community-based development research being carried out on Faaf-Magoodhoo. The groundbreaking work of Island Organics is an example of resilience on a local level and we are quite interested in understanding how it could be transformed into a model applicable to other contexts or scales.
Journal of Research and Didactics in Geography (J-READING), 2, 2, Dec., 2013, pp. 57-66, Dec 2013
"Citizenship Education is currently a consolidated issue within several European curricula. It ha... more "Citizenship Education is currently a consolidated issue within several European curricula. It has been integrated in national educational laws in different ways: as cross-curricular education UK, Italy), as a subject (France, Spain) or as a skill (Ireland). Despite these differences, there is a common agreement on the ethical value of Citizenship Education and on its main aim: to foster students’ sense of local, national and European citizenship. In some ways this goal has been inspired by Morin’s path to a “plural” education and a planetary citizenship (Morin, 2000).
Social sciences, and in particular Geography and History, keep the function of giving tools able to show how a dialogue among the different scales is possible. Nevertheless European citizenship is undergoing a constant redefinition due to the European enlargement process, the role of Europe inside national jurisdictions and to the changes in national curricula. This evolution directly affects the guiding function conferred to school in terms of skills, aims and themes; therefore competences and methods adopted by teachers may have to be reconsidered.
This essay presents the first results of the updating of the state of the art of this issue that has been carried out by the Citizenship Education Research Group of the VOICEs Comenius network (The Voice of European Teachers). The main aim of this international research group is to face the challenge of building a European citizenship by developing a comparative analysis of teachers’ practices and strategies in different local, regional and national contexts, aiming to contribute, with renewed ideas, to the debate on this promising field of research."
The study of flood hazard has been a key theme within the spatial analysis of natural hazards. A ... more The study of flood hazard has been a key theme within the spatial analysis of natural hazards. A number of authors have expanded on this tradition by adopting a society-oriented approach to risk perception. Thus a new framework has become available for exploring social response to risk and describing the relationship between human communities and hazards in terms of contemporary interpretative categories such as social representation and “stigmatization,” the latter defined as the process by which media and social actors mark places affected by disastrous events as dangerous and unsafe sites. This literature has made a vital contribution to the geographical reading of flood hazard, showing how flood risk generates both space- and place-making processes. In this paper I discuss the relationship between these two processes, suggesting that the political response to flood hazard may be viewed as a hetero-directed strategy that influences place-making at a local level. I illustrate this perspective using a field research conducted in 2006–2007 on the Po River Basin in Piemonte, an Italian region with high flood risk that has been affected by a series of events in recent decades.
GIACCARIA P., PARADISO M., (a cura di), Mediterranean Lexicon / Lessico Mediterraneo, Società Geografica Italiana, Roma, pp. 117-128., 2012
The continuing geographical impact of tourism on the coastlines of the Mediterranean, due in grea... more The continuing geographical impact of tourism on the coastlines of the Mediterranean, due in great part to the large-scale construction of accommodation facilities, not only generates debate from a number of perspectives but has become a wholly self-evident phenomenon. Nonetheless, the facile conclusion that mass tourism inevitably causes environmental degradation may easily be refuted with regard to the Mediterranean. This coastal region has all too frequently been the object of preconceived opinions, leading it to be viewed – not only by the majority of tourists, but also by tourist industry professionals and experts in the tourism sciences – as a homogeneous area without shades of variation; nonetheless, it is possible to identify numerous instances in which tourist development and conservation of the environment have been virtuously reconciled. This paper provides a brief overview of tourism in the Mediterranean (para. 1) before focusing on two specific aspects, specifically accommodation facilities certified as “sustainable” (para. 2) and “ecotourism” practices (para. 3); it is concluded that such strategies are essential to the creation of a new model of tourism development with the power to enrich the geographical imagination of the Mediterranean of those visiting it as a holiday destination.
Scripta Nova. Revista Electrónica de Geografía y Ciencias Sociales, XVI, 418,, 2012
In this contribute we discuss the political and social issues of Carlo Collodi’s Viaggio per l’It... more In this contribute we discuss the political and social issues of Carlo Collodi’s Viaggio per l’Italia di Giannettino published between 1880 and 1886. In Italy the XIX Century has been a crucial phase both for the nation-builing process and for the political and social achievement of the Bourgeois class, in particular through the role played by writers and philosophers. Carlo Collodi, known mainly as the author of Le avventure di Pinocchio, gave his contribute to these processes by publishing Viaggio per l’Italia di Giannettino, a novel that tells a young boy’s journey across Italy. Collodi, by emphasizing the beauties of the Italian cultural heritage, aimed at inspiring the future generations’ patriotism. Despite not being an official textbook, many teachers used this novel as a recommended reading within their classes and this success shows how important children's literature has been both for the development of the nationalist discourse and for the achievement of the bourgeois values during the XIX Century.
Beyond the tropical paradise and beyond the fear of climate change effects, the Maldives is a fas... more Beyond the tropical paradise and beyond the fear of climate change effects, the Maldives is a fascinating island country that faces social, cultural, economic and environmental transformations. Atolls of the Maldives: Nissology and Geography provides a spatial analysis on some key challenges the Maldivian society has to deal with, and guides the reader in the discovery of the human and environmental geography of this Indian Ocean archipelago. Geographers, political scientists, sociologists, geologists, biologists and experts in environmental policies help the audience to move through the complex systems of interrelations, connections and disconnections that shape the environment and the geography of this extraordinary archipelagic country.
Perché abbiamo bisogno di una «geografia dei bambini»? In fondo la letteratura geografica è molto... more Perché abbiamo bisogno di una «geografia dei bambini»? In fondo la letteratura geografica è molto ricca di studi sulla didattica e sull’educazione, soprattutto nella scuola primaria. L’importanza dell’orientamento nello spazio o dell’osservazione diretta, il ruolo sociale e politico della nostra disciplina all’interno della scuola, le connessione con i temi della cittadinanza e della sostenibilità: questi nodi sono stati discussi a fondo da diversi autori. Eppure, nel pensiero geografico contemporaneo, è emersa con forza la necessità di isolare un ambito di lavoro, indipendente dalla ricerca sull’insegnamento della geografia, indirizzato nello specifico allo studio dei luoghi, delle pratiche e delle rappresentazioni che «costruiscono» le geografie dell’infanzia. La Children’s Geography di matrice anglosassone si è affermata, innanzitutto, come un passaggio fondamentale per definire i bambini e le bambine non più come degli «individui in transizione verso l’età adulta» ai quali fornire le coordinate per essere, un giorno, degli adulti capaci e responsabili, in seguito, si è convertita in uno strumento indispensabile per considerarli degli attori protagonisti dei luoghi che abitano tutti i giorni: la casa, la scuola e gli spazi pubblici. Questo libro si apre proprio con un’argomentazione a favore di questa autonomia e con la discussione del posizionamento intradisciplinare della «geografia dei bambini». Prosegue proponendo un’applicazione dei principali nodi teorici della Children’s Geography ai luoghi che maggiormente influenzano l’esperienza spaziale dei bambini e delle bambine. Chiarisce, infine, che pensare i bambini e le bambine come protagonisti delle geografie del quotidiano equivale a compiere un atto politico, in quanto prevede la presa di coscienza del ruolo sociale che i bambini e le bambine rivestono non solo a casa o a scuola, ma nella società civile. Da questa ultima affermazione, forse, vale la pena iniziare la lettura di questo volume.
Stefano Malatesta, Marcella Schmidt di Friedberg, Enrico Squarcina
Università di Milano Bicocca
... more Stefano Malatesta, Marcella Schmidt di Friedberg, Enrico Squarcina
Università di Milano Bicocca
May 16th, 2:30 pm
Room U6/3061
Abstract
Boundaries are a consolidating subject in the contemporary study of human geography. Newman’s observations justify an analysis of the persistent geopolitical and cultural action played by these objects in all their forms, even if consider contemporary spaces as de-territorialized and borderless and regions only as elements of a global network. In fact material and non-material limits are meaningful sources of information for reading the structure of territories and for understanding their social, cultural political, ecosystemic and historical relationships: boundaries leave landmarks (material and non-material) on landscapes, immediately related to their own geopolitical function, these landmarks become objects of human perception (primarily visual) and are also the subject of political representation (landscapes); boundaries are the primitives of spatial knowledge on which peoples build their own geographical images of places; boundaries are a mighty basis of the mimetic function played by the cartographic language. Therefore, considering both their physical and narrative dimensions, we can state that geographical boundaries rather than being limits or barriers, are places directly involved in the diffusion of cultural traits. This issue will be discussed focusing on the role played by limits and boundaries on landscapes, cartography and mental representations of space.
The seminar is part of the CISEPS project “The diffusion of cultural traits”, whose goal is to trigger interdisciplinary debates, emphasizing common problems and peculiarities among economics, philosophy, anthropology, geography, history, biology and many more fields. Thinking in terms of cultural traits – i.e., characters depending in some way on social learning – doesn’t imply exhaustion of cultural processes; rather, it means thinking critically to scientific models and metaphors for studying culture.
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Papers by Stefano Malatesta
geographical categories. Among these, the category of smallness reflects the assumption that
such spaces are vulnerable on account of their reduced size, reinforcing an image of islands
as ‘prone’ to environmental threats and in need of ‘external support’. Such support is often
provided by international actors, specifically international agencies, NGOs and sponsors, who
consequently influence domestic policymaking processes. This paper offers a theoretical
discussion of this influence in relation to environmental policies, drawing on concepts from
the fields of international studies, development studies and island studies. I argue that the
influence of international actors may be viewed as a form of leadership that is legitimised by
the narrative of island vulnerability, the development paradigm, the authority attributed to
reports and rankings, the symbolic functioning of global environmental threats and the overuse
of geographical categories such as ‘small’ or ‘developing’. In the second part of the
paper, I propose four research questions for future studies on the political outputs of this
influence in the Republic of Maldives: an icon of the environmental challenges threatening
small island states.
forces that go beyond the discourse on the environmental fragility of archipelagic states (Baldacchino, 2004). Due to
these geographical and historical processes, the narrative identifying climate change as the main perturbative driver of
socio-environmental relationships, as well as controversial, is quite incomplete, especially if we consider the local scale. The
social response (Kates 1971) of the Maldivian communities must be read taking into account a broader body of practices,
technologies, roles and cultural traits that characterize resilience strategies at local scale. Within this context, observing both
the international documents (e.g the reports published by UNDP or UNESCO) and the national framework, the role played
by women, especially within the smaller islands and the peripheral atolls, is a promising research topic. Since 2012, the
Marine Research and High Education Center (MaRHE Center) has been carrying out researches on the social response to
change, within the community of Faaf-Magoodhoo. These studies address the importance of women (both considering the
informal and institutional levels) in the reproduction of the strategies and knowledge local communities adopt to cope with
the environmental change. In this contribution, we discuss both the methodological backgrounds and outcomes of a project
aiming to understand the perception of environmental changes and to study the waste management system.
segregation. (Abstract)
The Republic of the Maldives during the last decades, at least since the Nineties, has been involved by
a complex body of transformative forces due to some factors: the increasing foreign investments in the
tourism market; the dependency on oil producing Countries; and the introduction of new consumption
models. The literature focused on a “culturalist” approach to these transformations. We aim at
proposing an alternative analysis based on two pivotal concepts of Political Geography: the Center-
Periphery Model and the idea of “Political Landscape”, according to Reynaud and Lacoste. The
contribution stresses how the central State, during the last decades, has imposed a control on local
communities, how such control can be read through these two interpretive models, and how the
political geography of the Maldives can be understood by adopting the spatial categories of segregation
and uniformity. In this paper we develop our analysis both by reading two political acts, and by
observing a specific local context, Faaf-Magoodhoo, an island where the authors carry out researches
on environmental and social geography hosted by the MaRHE Center of the University of Milano-
Bicocca.
Shahida came to Milan because she is involved in some exhibitions and projects connected to Expo2015 and we couldn’t miss the opportunity to meet her. Apart from being a real pioneer, Shahida is a crucial contact for the MaRHe Center, in particular on the community-based development research being carried out on Faaf-Magoodhoo. The groundbreaking work of Island Organics is an example of resilience on a local level and we are quite interested in understanding how it could be transformed into a model applicable to other contexts or scales.
Being a Resilient Community: An Interview with Shahida Zubair. Available from: https://www.researchgate.net/publication/269931906_Being_a_Resilient_Community_An_Interview_with_Shahida_Zubair [accessed Apr 21, 2015].
Social sciences, and in particular Geography and History, keep the function of giving tools able to show how a dialogue among the different scales is possible. Nevertheless European citizenship is undergoing a constant redefinition due to the European enlargement process, the role of Europe inside national jurisdictions and to the changes in national curricula. This evolution directly affects the guiding function conferred to school in terms of skills, aims and themes; therefore competences and methods adopted by teachers may have to be reconsidered.
This essay presents the first results of the updating of the state of the art of this issue that has been carried out by the Citizenship Education Research Group of the VOICEs Comenius network (The Voice of European Teachers). The main aim of this international research group is to face the challenge of building a European citizenship by developing a comparative analysis of teachers’ practices and strategies in different local, regional and national contexts, aiming to contribute, with renewed ideas, to the debate on this promising field of research."
geographical categories. Among these, the category of smallness reflects the assumption that
such spaces are vulnerable on account of their reduced size, reinforcing an image of islands
as ‘prone’ to environmental threats and in need of ‘external support’. Such support is often
provided by international actors, specifically international agencies, NGOs and sponsors, who
consequently influence domestic policymaking processes. This paper offers a theoretical
discussion of this influence in relation to environmental policies, drawing on concepts from
the fields of international studies, development studies and island studies. I argue that the
influence of international actors may be viewed as a form of leadership that is legitimised by
the narrative of island vulnerability, the development paradigm, the authority attributed to
reports and rankings, the symbolic functioning of global environmental threats and the overuse
of geographical categories such as ‘small’ or ‘developing’. In the second part of the
paper, I propose four research questions for future studies on the political outputs of this
influence in the Republic of Maldives: an icon of the environmental challenges threatening
small island states.
forces that go beyond the discourse on the environmental fragility of archipelagic states (Baldacchino, 2004). Due to
these geographical and historical processes, the narrative identifying climate change as the main perturbative driver of
socio-environmental relationships, as well as controversial, is quite incomplete, especially if we consider the local scale. The
social response (Kates 1971) of the Maldivian communities must be read taking into account a broader body of practices,
technologies, roles and cultural traits that characterize resilience strategies at local scale. Within this context, observing both
the international documents (e.g the reports published by UNDP or UNESCO) and the national framework, the role played
by women, especially within the smaller islands and the peripheral atolls, is a promising research topic. Since 2012, the
Marine Research and High Education Center (MaRHE Center) has been carrying out researches on the social response to
change, within the community of Faaf-Magoodhoo. These studies address the importance of women (both considering the
informal and institutional levels) in the reproduction of the strategies and knowledge local communities adopt to cope with
the environmental change. In this contribution, we discuss both the methodological backgrounds and outcomes of a project
aiming to understand the perception of environmental changes and to study the waste management system.
segregation. (Abstract)
The Republic of the Maldives during the last decades, at least since the Nineties, has been involved by
a complex body of transformative forces due to some factors: the increasing foreign investments in the
tourism market; the dependency on oil producing Countries; and the introduction of new consumption
models. The literature focused on a “culturalist” approach to these transformations. We aim at
proposing an alternative analysis based on two pivotal concepts of Political Geography: the Center-
Periphery Model and the idea of “Political Landscape”, according to Reynaud and Lacoste. The
contribution stresses how the central State, during the last decades, has imposed a control on local
communities, how such control can be read through these two interpretive models, and how the
political geography of the Maldives can be understood by adopting the spatial categories of segregation
and uniformity. In this paper we develop our analysis both by reading two political acts, and by
observing a specific local context, Faaf-Magoodhoo, an island where the authors carry out researches
on environmental and social geography hosted by the MaRHE Center of the University of Milano-
Bicocca.
Shahida came to Milan because she is involved in some exhibitions and projects connected to Expo2015 and we couldn’t miss the opportunity to meet her. Apart from being a real pioneer, Shahida is a crucial contact for the MaRHe Center, in particular on the community-based development research being carried out on Faaf-Magoodhoo. The groundbreaking work of Island Organics is an example of resilience on a local level and we are quite interested in understanding how it could be transformed into a model applicable to other contexts or scales.
Being a Resilient Community: An Interview with Shahida Zubair. Available from: https://www.researchgate.net/publication/269931906_Being_a_Resilient_Community_An_Interview_with_Shahida_Zubair [accessed Apr 21, 2015].
Social sciences, and in particular Geography and History, keep the function of giving tools able to show how a dialogue among the different scales is possible. Nevertheless European citizenship is undergoing a constant redefinition due to the European enlargement process, the role of Europe inside national jurisdictions and to the changes in national curricula. This evolution directly affects the guiding function conferred to school in terms of skills, aims and themes; therefore competences and methods adopted by teachers may have to be reconsidered.
This essay presents the first results of the updating of the state of the art of this issue that has been carried out by the Citizenship Education Research Group of the VOICEs Comenius network (The Voice of European Teachers). The main aim of this international research group is to face the challenge of building a European citizenship by developing a comparative analysis of teachers’ practices and strategies in different local, regional and national contexts, aiming to contribute, with renewed ideas, to the debate on this promising field of research."
Questo libro si apre proprio con un’argomentazione a favore di questa autonomia e con la discussione del posizionamento intradisciplinare della «geografia dei bambini». Prosegue proponendo un’applicazione dei principali nodi teorici della Children’s Geography ai luoghi che maggiormente influenzano l’esperienza spaziale dei bambini e delle bambine. Chiarisce, infine, che pensare i bambini e le bambine come protagonisti delle geografie del quotidiano equivale a compiere un atto politico, in quanto prevede la presa di coscienza del ruolo sociale che i bambini e le bambine rivestono non solo a casa o a scuola, ma nella società civile. Da questa ultima affermazione, forse, vale la pena iniziare la lettura di questo volume.
Università di Milano Bicocca
May 16th, 2:30 pm
Room U6/3061
Abstract
Boundaries are a consolidating subject in the contemporary study of human geography. Newman’s observations justify an analysis of the persistent geopolitical and cultural action played by these objects in all their forms, even if consider contemporary spaces as de-territorialized and borderless and regions only as elements of a global network. In fact material and non-material limits are meaningful sources of information for reading the structure of territories and for understanding their social, cultural political, ecosystemic and historical relationships: boundaries leave landmarks (material and non-material) on landscapes, immediately related to their own geopolitical function, these landmarks become objects of human perception (primarily visual) and are also the subject of political representation (landscapes); boundaries are the primitives of spatial knowledge on which peoples build their own geographical images of places; boundaries are a mighty basis of the mimetic function played by the cartographic language. Therefore, considering both their physical and narrative dimensions, we can state that geographical boundaries rather than being limits or barriers, are places directly involved in the diffusion of cultural traits. This issue will be discussed focusing on the role played by limits and boundaries on landscapes, cartography and mental representations of space.
CISEPS
http://dipeco.economia.unimib.it/ciseps/
ciseps@unimib.it
The seminar is part of the CISEPS project “The diffusion of cultural traits”, whose goal is to trigger interdisciplinary debates, emphasizing common problems and peculiarities among economics, philosophy, anthropology, geography, history, biology and many more fields. Thinking in terms of cultural traits – i.e., characters depending in some way on social learning – doesn’t imply exhaustion of cultural processes; rather, it means thinking critically to scientific models and metaphors for studying culture.
More info: cultural.traits@gmail.com