“What Shall We Do With It Now?”: The Palazzo della Civiltà Italiana and the Difficult Heritage of Fascism

This article uses the Palazzo della Civiltà Italiana (PdCI) in the Rome suburb of EUR as a case study to explore how Italians have negotiated the “difficult heritage” of Fascism since 1945. Following Sharon Macdonald, the paper understands the term difficult heritage to refer to a historically significant past that remains materially visible through sites, buildings, artworks, monuments and other artefacts, but which is difficult to reconcile with “a positive, self-affirming contemporary identity”. The paper employs a biographical approach to reveal and analyse the post-Fascist “lives” of the PdCI, one of the most recognisable — and, in recent decades, most admired — examples of Fascist monumental architecture in Italy. With reference also to other examples of difficult Fascist heritage in Italy, and to sites associated with the difficult heritage of Nazism in Germany, the paper offers new insights into how Italy has confronted its Fascist past and places the Italian experience of difficult heritage within the broader international context.     

Web 2.0: a new chapter in development in practice?

This brief paper describes a range of facilities and new developments in Web-based and Internet services. While many of the applications are being used for publishing, dialogue, research, and feedback in development, the question still remains: how profoundly is the development of communications, and in particular the Internet, changing the international development community and the way in which it works?     

Christianity and punitive mentalities: A qualitative study

According to David Garland (1990) scholars should be concerned about the cultural foundations of punishment in modern western society, such as religion. To this end, Garland conceptualizes punitive mentalities and sensibilities that provide the cultural support for structural systems ofpunishment. Punitive mentalities are ways of thinking about punishment, whereas punitive sensibilities are ways of feeling about punishment. Garlandsuggests that religious traditions are an important source of punitive mentalities and sensibilities. This research is an empirical analysis ofpunitive mentalities and their cultural roots, using qualitative research.Research questions focus on the following: Are there distinctively punitivementalities? How do punitive mentalities influence the desire for officialpunishment? Data from a previous study (Cook, 1998a) are analyzed here to explore terrains of punitive mentalities within the contexts of Christianity.Findings identify four distinct categories: anti-punitive, non-punitive,retributive and vengeful mentalities where Christian (non)belief systemsare important cornerstones. Respondents in each group have specific desires regarding the state's use of punishments, especially the ``death penalty''.     

Schools and the prevention of petty crime: Search for a missing link

Earlier research on the relation between school features and petty crime suggests that schools can intentionally influence the crime rate of the pupils. These findings were the starting point for a Dutch study at secondary schools of the same type in Dutch towns. The study focused on effects on the delinquency of third-year low-stream pupils (aged 15–17). For the study a control theory was formulated, a conditional control theory, which, in contrast to Hirschi's social control theory, recognizes possible delinquent influences of the pupils' network. In the study a strong statistical relation between integration of pupils in school and petty crime was found. However, I found almost no influence of the studied school features on integration and petty crime. These results led to the question whether the real important feature of schools had been neglected in the study. This seems not to be the case. A multilevel analysis shows that it is unlikely that there is major impact of schools on the integration of pupils, on delinquency, or on the relationship between integration and delinquency. This can be the result of special aspects of the Dutch school system and of the neglect of theory in earlier research.     

Defining risk

Risk is the focal topic in the management of many activities and technologies. For that management to be successful, an explicit and accepted definition of the term risk is essential. Creation of that definition is a political act, expressing the definers' values regarding the relative importance of different possible adverse consequences for a particular decision. Those values, and with them the definition of risk, can change with changes in the decisionmaker, the technologies considered, or the decision problem. After a review of the sources of controversy in defining risk, a general framework is developed, showing how these value issues can be systematically addressed. As an example, the approach is applied to characterizing the risks of six competing energy technologies, the relative riskeness of which depends upon the particular definition used.     

Reviews

Barbara Caine and Rosemary Pringle (eds), Transitions: New Australian Feminisms (Allen & Unwin) 1995.

Peta Tait, Converging Realities: Feminism in Australian Theatre (Currency Press) Sydney, 1994.

Pauline Johnson, Feminism as Radical Humanism (Allen & Unwin) St Leonards, 1994.

Denise Russell, Women, Madness and Medicine (Polity Press) Cambridge, 1995.

R.W‐ Connell, Masculinities (Allen & Unwin) St Leonards, 1995.

Margaret Maynard, Fashioned from Penury: Dress as Cultural Practice in Colonial Australia (Cambridge University Press) Melbourne, 1994.

Joy Damousi, Women Come Rally: Socialism, Communism and Gender in Australia, 1890–1955 (Oxford University Press) Melbourne, 1995.

Susan Sheridan, Along the Faultlines: Sex, Race and Nation in Australian Women's Writing, 1880s—1930s (Allen & Unwin) Sydney, 1995.     

Reviews

Anders Aslund, How Russia Became a Market Economy. Washington, DC: The Brookings Institution, 1995, xviii + 378 pp., £25.75/£9.95.

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Diego Cordovez & Selig S. Harrison, Out of Afghanistan: The Inside Story of the Soviet Withdrawal. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1995, ix + 450 pp., $35.00.

Andrei S. Grachev, Final Days. The Inside Story of the Collapse of the Soviet Union. Boulder, CO: Westview Press, 1995, xviii + 222 pp., £22.50.

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Katerina Clark, Petersburg, Crucible of Cultural Revolution. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1995, xii + 377 pp., £25.50.

Anna Feldman Leibovich, The Russian Concept of Work: Suffering, Drama, and Tradition in Pre‐ and Post‐Revolutionary Russia. Westport, CT and London: Praeger, xv + 166 pp., £44.95.

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Michael Bourdeaux (ed.), The Politics of Religion in Russia and the New States of Eurasia, The International Politics of Eurasia, Volume 3. Armonk, NY and London: M.E. Sharpe, 1995, xiv + 321 pp., $49.95 h/b, $19.95p/b.