Blog

In our paper, ‘Digital heritage politics from the perspective of relational sociology: the case of Nüshu culture in China’ we develop a new conceptual framework that systematises and comprehends the complex dynamics of cultural heritage politics in China. While current discourse theory acknowledges that heritage-making entails complex relationships that structure this making, there is as yet no systematic theoretical account of how these relationships co-exist, mediate and transform heritage-making. To address this gap, we have developed a relational sociological framework based on the work of John Dewey and his idea of consider self-action, inter-action and trans-action, but have also taken inspiration from Chinese scholars …

My paper, ‘The Art of Bribery! Analysis of police corruption at traffic checkpoints and roadblocks in Kenya’ shows how police corruption at roadblocks in Kenya involves specific logic, practices and coded languages and how actors are recruited and regulated. Or how they invent and conceal evidence, establish players or networks, form norms and normalise corrupt practices. This is what I describe as the Art of bribery. Generally, this study presents ethnographic data on how the state works in Africa and how corruption impacts its effective operation in Kenya. Its main findings are as discussed below. Bribery as a network of ‘good fellows’? …

Millions of Ghanaians rely on “tro-tro”, the ubiquitous minibuses, to get around. Ghana’s tro-tro is equivalent to Nigeria’s danfos and Tanzania’s daladalas. The tro-tro industry supports daily life, creates employment and contributes to the larger economy in profound ways by providing low cost/highly adaptable/resilient and, largely frequent transport services that generate substantial access for millions of people; services which the state has historically failed to provide. The drivers, however, are said to contribute to Ghana’s risky driving problems including overloading, over speeding and reckless overtaking. The popular media and policy narratives often attribute the problem to the drivers themselves–their unruliness/bad attitude or stubborn resistance to positive behavioral change. Often little consideration is given to how …

Social change in China has been one of the fascinating research topics among researchers from within China and many other countries for the past few decades, despite the growing negative views and assessments of a rising China before and during the COVID-19 pandemic. China has long ago entered its era of rapid social changes, and the analytical concepts of social change and dynamics were also applied in numerous studies soon after the country opened the door to the outside world in the late 1970s.  In the past four or so decades, a significant amount of research efforts has been made …

Shops are often landmarks and compasses for the city life. In other words, commercial spaces are some of the elements that help navigating the city, but they also embody an array of sentiments: Time, continuation, change, and nostalgia, among others. It comes as no surprise that, beyond being ‘doers’ of a place, in many places across the world shopkeepers are often also the pawns and the active players of that ‘identity game’ set in motion by ‘populist’ forces that put the locality at the center of their offer. Populism is certainly a catch-all word whose capability of explaining what is …

The “extraordinary” conditions in which smart working (SW) has spread in Italy has not allowed an evaluation of its effectiveness but reading some implications due to the forced experimentation of this practice has allowed us to reflect on the risk, or not, of SW becoming a new mechanism of (re)production of gender inequalities. In our article we discussed data collected through a web survey to working women launched in April 2020 during the first lockdown. The profile of smart workers reached by the survey is characterized by highly educated women placed in medium to high-skilled professional positions. The study identified …

In the past two months, we have all been consumed by the war in Ukraine, with terrible images of buildings on fire, people fleeing the country and utter destruction filling our screens, newspapers and minds. In this tragic situation, the insecurity and precarity of platform work has become an even clearer reality. In the past few years, the platform economy has found in Ukraine a particularly thriving environment to expand. Thanks to a workforce that is very well-educated, tech-savvy and fluent in English, Ukraine has been a particularly attractive country for companies looking for online freelancers to provide a range …

This year, the Chilean animated short film Beast has been nominated for an Oscar, and in 2015, Bear Story won the award in this same category. Both productions are inspired by the Chilean dictatorship. The first film focuses on a woman torturer while the second concentrates on exile. The topics were not chosen by chance nor were they a strategy; they are part of the social concerns of the post-dictatorship that were not resolved during the so-called transition to democracy. The Chilean dictatorship (1973-1990) is part of the country’s recent past, and fiction has been the predominant mode of expression since 2013, the year …

The first COVID-19 case in Italy was registered on 21 February 2020, thrusting Italy into a state of emergency which quickly produced burdensome economic and social effects. The decrees approved by the Italian government introduced restrictions on travel and socializing, culminating in lockdown. Although all these measures made it possible to limit the risks of contagion, they had numerous consequences regarding men and women’s personal and professional conditions.  Considering the full extent of the effects brought on by the pandemic would involve a lengthy in-depth analysis, so we choose to limit our attention to how social institutions, family and school …

One year and a half into the COVID-19 pandemic, Italy has gone through three pandemic waves, with related closures, restrictions, and reopenings. With around 75% of the population vaccinated, the media talks about reaching herd immunity, while the government recently enforced the use of a vaccine “Green pass” to prevent a new surge of cases. Alternating tensions and relaxations in social distancing and access to public spaces, however, have not always trickled onto the world of birth and birthing, in which a certain policy rigidity lingers. The three of us have spent a significant part of our research time conducting …