Turismo di prossimità ed economia sociale e solidale: esperienze spagnole. – Il turismo di prossimità ha guadagnato terreno dall’inizio della pandemia di Covid-19. Tuttavia, questa espressione era già stata sviluppata in precedenza, come un’esperienza di viaggio e di svago più ecologica e significativa in un contesto di compressione dello spazio-tempo e di emergenza climatica. Inoltre, la prossimità è molto apprezzata nell’economia sociale e solidale (ESS), sebbene il turismo debba ancora essere generalizzato secondo i principi dell’ESS. Questo articolo analizza le iniziative sviluppate e pro-mosse all’interno di due reti turistiche dell’ESS in Spagna, El Camino ESS e La Xarxa. L’obiettivo è di far riflettere sul turismo di prossimità come strumento per lo sviluppo locale nella transizione socio-ecologica.

Il lavoro di Giulia Vincenti aggiunge un significativo contributo al dibattito scientifico improntato sul rapporto centro e periferia. In questa fase storica, caratterizzata sia dall’impetuoso sviluppo digitale e sia da azioni di programmazione post pandemia, le riflessioni dell’autrice offrono al lettore nuove chiavi interpretative.

La proposta di questo libro che, a scanso di equivoci, non si presenta come un trattato accademico ma come una sorta di rassegna ragionata in chiave geopolitica di prodotti fantascientifici, è di mettere in rilievo i legami che esistono tra questo mondo narrativo – nelle sue differenti diramazioni – e le grandi questioni geografiche, da quella ambientale a quella bellica, fino alla tematica dell’uso politico della comunicazione e alla pandemia.

NextGenerationEU between pandemic, war, and energy transition. – The energy transition has been strongly questioned by the pandemic and the invasion of Ukraine by Russia. The European Green Deal – designed and approved before the Covid-19 pandemic – became fully part of economic recovery program of the pandemic, and the war as well. Actually, the Green Deal becomes one of the fundamental pillars of the 2021-2027 Multiannual Financial Plan, as well as of NextGenerationEU and, consequently, of the various national plans related to it, including the Italian PNRR. As a typical win-win policy, NextGenerationEU must solve the problems related to the economic crisis, and those related to environmental quality, through the energy transition, as well. Obviously, the economic recover does not necessarily fit perfectly into an energy transition program. Actually, the policies to reduce greenhouse gas emissions might imply many issues, related to economy and labor policies. Added to this are the socio-economic gaps between the countries that make up the EU, which have produced an energy divide (different levels of energy demand, different efficiency, different composition of primary energy sources), which has also further increased. from the pandemic, which requires a “calibrated” approach. This condition produces a more complex energy transition, and in many countries - especially those with the lowest GDP per capita - it could create obstacles to economic recovery. Although a Just Transition Mechanism has been prepared, precisely to bridge these gaps, the energy transition could be perceived as an external interference and a brake on growth, becoming a lever for forms of nationalism and sovereignty in key anti-European. The proposed work - after analyzing the structure of the energy supply in the EU, highlighting the inconsistencies in it - will address the impact of the Green Deal in the energy transition process associated with the relaunch of the economy.

Bounce-back or new development paths? Some reflections on the concept of generative resilience in the post-pandemic phase. - Bounce-back or new development paths? Some reflections on the concept of generative resilience in the post-pandemic phase. – The concept of resilience, derived from scientific-technological disciplines, has been increasingly used in regional and geographic sciences as an interpretative tool, at territorial level, for analyzing the evolution of crisis situations. In particular, in the period of emergency after the pandemic, the term was widely used in the Italian National Recovery and Resilience Plan, in particular to identify those investments and actions that can promote recovery dynamics after shock and orient places towards new development trajectories. Starting from a theoretical study on the notion of resilience, this work explores the different factors that can influence the ability of systems to react to shocks and to activate new generative practices. Particular attention is given to two components that can affect the dynamics of resilience, especially in peripheral areas: the role of local actors and different forms of agency; the potential connected to socio-technological transformation and digitalization processes.

A un anno dall’approvazione formale da parte della Commissione eu-ropea (20 giugno 2021) del Piano Nazionale di Ripresa e Resilienza (PNRR) predisposto dall’Italia con il preciso obiettivo, come dichiarato nella premessa dal Presidente del Consiglio Mario Draghi, di far ripartire l’Italia fortemente colpita dalla crisi causata dalla pandemia di Covid-19, e di dar vita a «una più ampia e ambiziosa strategia per l’ammodernamento del Paese», aggiornando «le strategie nazionali in tema di sviluppo e mobi-lità sostenibile; ambiente e clima; idrogeno; automotive; filiera della sa-lute», lo scenario e gli obiettivi previsti stanno subendo dei significativi ripensamenti e aggiustamenti alla luce degli impatti derivanti anche dal conflitto russo-ucraino.

Crisi finanziaria ed economica in Russia durante la pandemia di Covid-19 e potenziali soluzioni. – La crisi finanziaria ed economica nella Federazione Russa causata dalla pandemia COVID-19 è stata caratterizzata da un impatto negativo sull’economia reale che ha portato a un deflusso di fondi di investimento in titoli e a una rapida svalutazione di azioni e obbligazioni. Questa crisi globale è unica nella sua natura, poiché non ha prerequisiti economici e inizialmente si è sviluppata principalmente attraverso linee non economiche. A causa degli squilibri del mercato causati dalla pandemia, il governo russo ha elaborato il modello di sostegno finanziario alle imprese, volto a stabilizzare la competitività delle imprese, delle imprese commerciali stra-tegicamente importanti e delle PMI, nonché a sviluppare nuovi settori di attività. Date le limitazioni delle sanzioni, è essenziale mantenere e aumen-tare la competitività delle tecnologie nazionali. Questo fornirà un’opportunità per facilitare l’indipendenza tecnologica dell’economia rus-sa e stimolare la crescita economica assicurando uno sviluppo avanzato dell’industria nazionale della costruzione di macchine. I piani di ripresa economica dovrebbero concentrarsi sul passaggio verso una società sostenibile e inclusiva, con investimenti statali che diano priorità al settore finanziario, all’economia reale, al commercio estero, al settore sociale, all’economia digitale e agli incentivi agli investimenti privati.

Thermal and SPA tourism in Italy: evolution, impacts and future perspectives. – Thermalism is a complex and articulated sector that in Italy over the years has changed its positioning. This study aims to identify the SPA tourism evolution and its contribution to the development of local economies, as well as how it can generates and increase a value proposition for the local sys-tems in the post pandemic. The data confirm the assumption of the importance of the SPA tourism in the sustainable development of the local economies that have specific resources. Furthermore, this contribution aims to state the objectives, which need to be achieved to reinvest, and regenerate territories devoted to SPA tourism in order to benefit from the possibility of reconstructing new models as a unique opportunity offered by the pandemic for this tourism sector, which represents an important resource in social and economic terms.

Health crisis and oil crisis. – The collapse in the oil price recorded in the early months of 2020 has far roots, but finds the contingent reasons in the health crisis caused by Covid-19. The health crisis Covid-19 produces a sharp drop in oil demand, first by China and then by other countries that gradually, after China, will suffer the effects of the coronavirus and proceeded to the so-called lockdown, that leads to the reduction of pro-ductive and commercial activities, limiting the movement of the population from their home. In this work we will highlight the connections between the health crisis and the oil price crisis, also highlighting the problems related to the international geopolitical context.

Covid-19: crisis of globalization and “revenge of the border”. The effects of the pandemic on the world economic and political future. – The rapid global spread of the Covid-19 virus has strongly highlighted, on multiple and transcalar levels, some problems that emerged worldwide after the end of bipolarism and the advent of the 21st century, i.e. the crisis of globalization and the “revenge of the borders”, which have clear repercussions on the world economic and political situation. The pandemic is entering a phase of global instability, linked to the tensions caused by the trade war between the United States and China, as well as the slowdown of the economy and the growth of populisms. In this sense, the consequences of the pandemic have caused the greatest shock to the international order since the Second World War.

Spatial and temporal dimension of the pandemic covid-19: from the territorial repre-sentation to the governance processes. – The Covid-19 has been increasing interesting and now it results widely argue. This theme is territorial and geographical studies are such important to the role of Italian territorial or-ganization to stem it. The methodology refers to the analysis of spatial and temporal dimensions unfolds along the effects of the spread of the Covid-19 pandemic in Italy on a regional and sub-regional scale with respect to the trend and the current scenario; according to a methodology specific to a position paper, taking into account the situation in the making, the contribution addresses the question of territorial organization and governance with reference to the state and local management of government processes triggered by the crisis and, in particular, the role played by public health. The acknowledgment of evolution and diffusion of Covid-19 is a necessary condition, but it is no sufficient too, despite the recognition of the government best level and the group of authorities. The last question of this topic is about a new proposal to individuate the best institution and the features: the role for the authorities and territorial for the dimension.

 

Safe and non-safe space: an investigation on new dwelling strategies in the context of Covid-19 pandemic. – The experience of Covid-19 gave us the need to rethink organisational methods of contemporary society, particularly public and domestic spaces. Our research used the pandemic struggle to examine current ways of looking at the safe and unsafe, entailing new practises of social action.
This research was structured in two different stages. First we investigated a series of behaviours and perceptions within public and domestic spaces. Second we examined the strategies through which the subjects reorient the spaces and define new habitus and practices of dwelling. In both cases we focused on hygiene procedures and alternative measures undertaken to diminish the risk of contagion.
The case studies are grouped by three different ranges of contagion in northern, central and southern Italy. They are discussed with reference to theoretical and methodological debates within social geography and cultural anthropology.

Covid-19 and tourism in Italy: from the devastating effects of the pandemic to the relaunch policy for a strategic sector. – The world is facing an unprecedented global health, social and economic emergency as a result of the Covid-19 pandemic. The Covid-19 has gravely wounded the world economy with serious consequences impacting all communities and individuals. Moving rapidly across borders, along the principal arteries of the global economy, the spread of the virus has benefited from the underlying interconnectedness – and frailties – of globalization, catapulting a global health crisis into a global economic shock. Travel and tourism is among the most affected sectors with a massive fall of international demand amid global travel restrictions including many borders fully closed, to contain the virus. Looking at this context, the contribution aims to evaluate the pandemic effects on this strategic sector. The research, in the future, opens a direct focus on the impact of the virus on some specific sectors of Italian tourism, to identify priority and useful guidelines for relaunching the sector.

The Covid-19 pandemic within an inner area of Campania: peripherality, density and virus diffusion in the province of Avellino. – In Italy the Covid-19 emergency hit some of the territories crossed by the thickest commercial networks and the intense flows of human mobility
The paper aims to reason on the factors of territorial vulnerability that may have facilitated the spread of the virus, trying to formulate a first hypothesis about the low density settlement structure has protected the more peripheral communities of the inner areas. Starting from the epidemiological data in an inner province of Campania - that of Avellino - the analysis will try to give a first possible framework of the relationship between the degree of peripherality from the service poles, population density and virus diffusion.

Geographies of the Pandemic and Capitalism of Surveillance: Italian Reflections. – The current pandemic is therefore a geographic matter that must be addressed according to diverse scales, also including the bodies of single individuals as a primary and smallest dimension. Moreover, since the virus especially affects fragile people and communities, it is sensible to study these phenomena with an intersectional approach. Since national governments have made a massive use of digital instruments to tackle the Covid-19 pandemic, the reflections of the present analysis will also be focused on digital issues, meant either as digital illiteracy and lack of access to digital technologies.
The aim of this study is thus to investigate the extent to which the digital weaknesses are affecting private and public spaces. The analysis provides a reflection on the new geographies that are emerging in Italy since February 2020.
More in detail, the reflection will focus on surveillance technologies devised to prevent the spread of the virus. In order to help limit people’s movements outside their private homes, national governments are often relying on digital technologies; these also include digital tracing systems useful to tackle infected individuals which are of great interest due to the many geographic implications.
Italy’s controversial contact tracing application, Immuni, has raised questions on the advance of surveillance capitalism, an issue that will be dealt with in the present analysis after an introduction on the geographic implications of the Covid-19 pandemic.

 

Covid-19: outcomes of the pandemic on spatial-temporal remodulation. – The Covid-19 emergency has modified the time and manner of experiencing everyone‟s space, but above all it has represented an historically unprecedented shock. In the face of this event, previously unknown in the long history of humanity and the promotor of profound consequences on a global scale, we should give some thought to both the geographical interpretative keys with regard both to the rhythms of time and the con-tractions and dilations of space, and the new forms of organization in living time and space.

Geopolitics of pandemic: soft and hard power as reading keys. - The Covid 19
pandemic is one of the hardest challenge of the last century. With its
m edical emergency, Covid 19 has created a lot of changes in the
international relationships and in the geopolitical equilibrium. In this
paper, we are attempting to show and analyze global governments’
behavior against the pandemic through the use of both h ard and soft
power. We’ll see, particularly, Chinese and American government’s use of
hard and soft power. Then we’ll examine how European Union deal with
this global emergency. Each nation has carried on different diplomatic strategies to face the pandemic and to promote is own international image. Hard and soft power, in this sense, will be useful also to implement the social and economic policies and to make them effective in the post pandemic phase.

The Italian agri-food industry between global and local: food habits before and during the pandemic virus Covid-19. – The pandemic generated by the virus known as Covid-19 is an expression of an unbalanced relationship between man and environment on which geography is called to investigate and also to redefine the spaces of intervention. It will be useful to propose the adoption of a trasncalar point of view that, if in one way widens the horizon to the entire globe in a contagion and in a need for collaboration that do not recognize nor can allow us to raise limits, on the other hand, it becomes a metaphor and a warning to create a new ecology and new social political relations to weave as much at a global level as at a local and personal level.
From the forced isolation – due to the rules of social distancing adopted in many European and non – European states – paradoxically emerged a glocal dialectic to interpret. As can be seen from observing what is happening in the Italian agri-food sector, on one hand we are forced to open our economic spaces recognizing the indispensable contribution of immigrant labour for the cultivation and harvest in the fields. On the other hand we are led to close the horizon of our primary needs without being able to address the question to our trusted provider and/or topographically closer even through the network that puts us in contact with the entire rural world. The authors, also thanks to the results of the direct survey, conducted on the purchases and the alimentary habits of the families during the pandemic, underline the opportunities of growth and valorisation of the Italian agricultural and food sector.

The Pandemic between Evidence and Knowledge. – The pandemic’s hold on our lives represents a moment of crisis with regards to what really impacts our ways of life, having introduced in our everyday existence not only the fear of infection but also the even more distressful fear of death. The fact that Covid-19 was an unpredictable event has made any form of defence impossible, thus acquiring the characteristic of a tragedy. This aspect has forced us to change our perspective on reality as well as forcing us to revise our belief in a Science capable of dealing with the consequences of the unthinkable, therefore losing the sense of security that its indisputable progress had led us to live in. Consequently, the need to reconsider the worth of some well-established ways of thinking, as well as reconsidering the importance of some categories of values such as ethics and the common good has come about.

Global Event and Local Responses: The Case of the Flu Pandemic 1918-1919. – The experience of the flu pandemic in the year 1918 is considered an important event for understanding the First World War. The flu showed the interconnection due to political-military, commercial, information and news that allowed the virus to be physically transported to every continent and from there to find the possibility of spreading in every nation. Beyond the medical- health characteristics and the consequences derived from its seriousness, this episode shows the ability reached since the early years of the twentieth century to think of itself as an interconnected network that was used by the disease to advance rapidly and pro-voke its harmful consequences.

For an Epistemology of the Pandemic. – As, during the last days of February 2020, Italy went into lockdown and the numbers of infected rose, with hospitals sorely overburdened, intensive care units facing the ethical tragedies that emergency medicine involves and army trucks transported the coffins of Bergamo to who knows where, several of us had the feeling that people were not understanding what was „really‟ going on. On the one hand they were seriously worried about the ineffective treat-ments that were all doctors were able to offer, notwithstanding a level of absolute personal dedication that often pushed them to sacrifice their own lives. On the other they were unsettled by the discordant voices of the many new figures who invaded the media in their capacities as „experts‟ on public health or on scientific and medical matters of which most know nothing. Above all they were disconcerted by the inadequate media response to the problematic nature of the crisis no less than to its multiple implications and ramifications. So it was that the idea of creating a multimedia course on “The Epistemology of the Pandemic” emerged and, between 24th march and 11th April, became a reality. What we now propose is a synthesis which renders the spirit, that generated and sustained that experience and determined its didactic and epistemic design.

Geographies of Pandemia in the Chile of Social Riots. New appraisals of urban-rural inequalities. – The global spread of the Covid-19 virus, its speed and mode of propagation, the implications on morbidity, social relations and local and state economic dynamics, redefine the social construction processes of the territories. We propose a reading of the Chilean case, in an attempt to relate the structural, economic and territorial conditions, with the evolution of the health measures adopted, read through the perspective offered by social questions at the center of the protests that have animated the country since 18 October 2019. The structural political framework is the hyperliberist economic model, imposed during the dictatorship of General Pinochet, preserved and enlarged by the center-left governments in the last twenty years, which has among its elements characterizing the maximum opening and dependence on markets international, a production sector flattened on the export of raw materials, the privatization of fundamental services (such as health). At a time when, due to the virus, individual states restore a generalized closure of borders, the Chilean model aims to perpetuate itself by depriving special economic interests of collective well-being, further accentuating internal inequalities between groups social and between territories. The objective of the contribution is to analyze how much the geographical peculiarities of rural areas (low settlement density, relative isolation in terms of connectivity, ecc.) can limit the spread of the virus and, at the same time, how the limited presence of essential services (such as specialized medical centers) may give rise to greater negative effects than in metropolitan centers. The adopted methodology foresees: – a quantitative analysis of the dynamics of the spatial diffusion of virus – a diachronic and micro-territorial analysis of the containment measures adopted by the central government, supplemented by an analysis of the discursive constructions of the main social actors - a discussion of the interrelationship between political actions, social and economic factors.