Shadows of militarism on the city. An urban perspective on military geographies. – Cities represent a relevant perspective for analysing military discourses and practices. Firstly, because the urban scale continues to be the key site of conventional warfare and a space of experimentation for new forms of militarism. Secondly, because the presence and the resulting construction of military discourse determine a complex system that influences both everyday practices and the dynamics of governance. The analysis of these influences allows us to highlight points of overlap between processes of militarization and forms of urban violence (to be understood both in relation to individuals and in connection to the construction/limitation of spaces). This contribution, through an analytical dialogue between the literature on military geographies and urban studies, aims to examine the relationship between militarism at the urban scale and the geographies of violence, in cities not directly involved in war conflicts.

The use of force in interstate relations: theory and evolutions in geo-political practice. – The use of force in relations between states and other players on the world stage: theory, practice and developments in political geography. Based on the experiences of the twentieth century (world wars, genocides, ideological-totalitarian degenerations, decolonization processes), the geopolitical thought of late modernity, starting from the 1960s, essentially develops in a “critical” sense. Then it assumes, among its favorite themes, the discussion on the essence of power (whether or not it is intrinsically “bad”), of the state and of politics (if they inevitably have to rely on the use of force); then it starts the development of a method targeted to regulation and prevention of conflicts, based on a process of deconstruction of alleged “false” ideas of power, to prevent the effects of escalation that have led the whole of humanity to the risk of destruction and self-destruction. These needs are translated operationally into the search for the so-called “insider” factors, that is, those that, in a certain scenario, beyond an immanent and self-evident “casus belli”, cause effects of permanent and out of control conflict, to the point of making war an element that justifies itself (an end, rather than a means). Effects that confuse any causal chain, which make it difficult to identify links and motivations, and therefore the search for a solution, and with it the pacification of crisis scenarios (which in fact tend to perpetuate themselves in areas of “endemic” conflictuality. All this proceeding on the basis of a neo-Enlightenment (possibly neo-liberal) assumption, which almost deterministically assumes the affirmation of an open society, refractory to violence, and the assimilation of “evil” to the mechanisms of democratization, to open market and capitalist prosperity. All this in a context of multilateral policy development, the establishment of international organizations, and the consolidation of a trans-national geo-economic apparatus, of civil society as an “answer to war”, with the aim of progressively limiting, up to cancel the same occasions of conflict; and this to the point that an idea of war as something obsolete spreads (perhaps in an illusory way). The latest events, however, and recent developments, seem to contradict this trend, re-proposing themes and tensions that ge-ographic-political theory seemed to have abandoned for some time. A fact made even more evident by the current invasion of Ukraine, which leaves you dismayed, like aggression to troglodytic times, when the invasion did not need to have a justification; it seems to cause deliberate violence and destruction on a large scale, so much so as to question the entire “critical” paradigm. Putin 24th February discourse deliberately denies the right of Ukraine to survive as a national human community. Evolutions that make it necessary to rethink the practices of limitation and regulation, of the intervention and prevention devices of war, and of the same method of study of the scenarios; perhaps a return to models that, just until a few months ago, were considered outdated.

Landscape education as a practice of geographical mediation in the processes of resignification of places and reduction of conflicts in San Lorenzo district in Rome. – San Lorenzo district has a marked historical-identity component which, however, has not managed to safeguard the neighbourhood from phenomena of deterritorialization and gentrification. The main cause of the recent condition of degradation and conflict has to be found in the urban layout which has triggered a series of interferences in the identity of the place, for example the external pressures exerted by the university. In this case, therefore, the “configurative profile” (Turco, 2010), made up of relationships, emotions and feelings, has been impoverished and has been transformed.
In this context are inserted the landscape education practices (Turco, 2020) promoted by geographers of Sapienza University of Rome, which propose themselves as cultural mediators in the process of re-signification of places and spaces. The presence in the field and the response to the cultural requests from the immediate surroundings of the University have been translated into events open to the public such as the International Night of Geography or the Roman Summer in San Lorenzo which combine the presence of institutions with activities of Public geography. The territory as a common good is such only if the community is the architect of its definition and recognizes the anthropological value of the space. In this direction, landscape education, strongly characterized on an emotional and cognitive level, contributes to implementing those reterritorialization processes which are the privileged tool of geography for the resolution of the impoverishment phenomena caused by situations of conflict and violence.

Conflict mitigation goes (also) through ecological economy. – «It is foreseeable that, once certain resources have been depleted, the scene will be set for new wars, albeit under the guise of noble claims»: this recent quote by Pope Francis (Laudato Sì, p. 57) has once again drawn the attention of world public opinion to the issue of the limitation of available resources, which already is one of the main causes of war and violence, and it is likely to cause even more in the future. The more the depletion of non-renewable sources, the higher the number of the conflicts, as well as their seriousness. In 2022, the Earth Overshoot Day underlined that mankind has depleted all the resources annually available on July 28th (a day earlier than 2021); moreover, land grabbing is out of control due to hyper-connection at the basis of global production chains. These processes also continued during the pandemic that, on one hand, mitigated overexploits thanks to lock-downs but, on the other hand, it has not driven to a U-turn in attitudes towards the environment and access to resources. In this essay, after a preliminary analysis of global value chains and of the social consequences with regard to the increase of fear and violence indirectly provoked by the quest to sources, we discuss an in-depth study of an ecological and circular economic development model, based on the regionalization of exchanges for the exploitation of domestic resources.

(Non)Violence of nature and violence to nature

The complicate role of violence in the interminable dissolution of multi-national territorial states. A comparison of Yugoslavia, the Soviet Empire and contempo-rary Russia. – The collapse in different ways of some multinational states at the end of the twentieth century (empires or micro-empires and apparent federations) prompted questions about the role that violence played in their disintegration. While some states have experienced peaceful separations (Czechoslovakia), others, such as the former Yugoslavia and only to a small extent the Soviet Union, have sought to violently hinder political-territorial disintegration, escalating violence and repres-sion to the extent of democides, genocides, ethnic cleansing, mass slaughter, and population displacement. This paper, developing personal reflections of the author and at the same time using a factual and theoretical analysis, aims to compare three case studies of disintegration (Yugoslavia, the Soviet Empire and contemporary Russia), seeking to identify the main factors (ideal and material) that stimulated, or conversely restrained, the use of violence in the course of disintegration. Indeed, these very factors may provide insight into whether those processes of disintegration have come to a halt or still underlie a long ongoing disintegrative phenomenon that former imperial centers are striving to stop with violence. While the degree of the latter may be limited and “settling” in the former Yugoslavia, contemporary Russia's attempt to restrain the long post-imperial disintegration for years has been involving a shift to open violence - that could affect even the internal dimension - along the lines of what occurred in Yugoslavia in the 1990s.

Bosnia and Herzegovina in front of an European war resurgence: violence does not stop, yet the word “war” does not exist anymore. – The end of the Cold war did not determine “the end of history”, nor it started a new era of world peace under the sign of political and economic liberalism, globally recognized values. On the contrary, starting with the early ‘90s there were wars even within Europe’s core that caused hundreds of thousands of victims and millions of refugees. Yet the word “war” is cancelled from the dictionary: nowadays conflicts are called “humanitarian bombings”, “peace missions”, or in the case of the Russian invasion of Ukraine in 2022, “a special military operation”. After the 1992-1995 Bosnian conflict, the institutional asset imposed through Dayton peace did not satisfy the Country’s national élite’s expectations. So much that, in a context of poverty and unemployment where the nationalists of the Republic of Srpska – which stretches on 49% of the BiH territory – call for independence from Sarajevo in their programs through a unilateral rescission of the constitutional pact formed in Dayton, since 2021 there has been significant risk increase, both perceived and objectively measurable, of a new Balkan war, emphasized by the outbreak of the war in Ukraine. Within this scenery of great insecurity for the Bosnian population it becomes clear that a rapid integration of the Western Balkans – the anti-historical residual black hole in the continent – into the EU is necessary.

The Society of Anthropocene in the material and immaterial diffusion of violence. – The contribution aims to reflect on the social dimensions of violence linked to the elements of the physical transformations of the Anthropocene. The hypothesis is that in the material and immaterial diffusion of violence there is a growing interaction and hybridization between the two dimensions and this is largely due to the globalization and the technology with a new spatio-temporal, transcalar and autopoietic configuration. This is called the Social Anthropocene.
This configuration is moving Anthropocene society into a dimension in which the abstract subsystems of the anthroposphere (society, economy, culture, politics) are increasingly dependent on the technosphere, a phenomenon already considered by other disciplines in an evolutionary dimension and extended to other living species.
From a geographical perspective, this dependence generates new relationships between abstract subsystems that relate resources, men and machines in an interdependence that generates violence, from the material to the immaterial world and in the interconnections between countries at different levels of development. This perspective, which can be explained empirically using data through the metaphorical potential of the Anthropocene, by not denying it shifts the theme of violence from a territorial perspective, linked to the individual local culture (interpersonal, familiar) and social (of an urban district, of a city or region) to a global one. It also shifts attention from a political to a biopolitic perspective.

Out of place, out of the norm. Anti-militarist feminist practices in Sardinia. – The spatialities of violence are central in the international reflection on the ef-fect of militarist practices. Legitimate state violence through military functions is everywhere, and its relation with gender dynamics, reproduction of hierarchical relations, and dynamics of domination of individuals and communities are under debate. The contribution adopts critical military geographies and proposes an analysis of opposition practices to military presence in Sardinia by informal feminist groups. A separatist positioning supporting alternative imaginaries to militarist spatialities emerges.

The “renewed” wars of the post-bipolar period and the “new peace”. Analysis and perspectives to highlight the lack of logical, spatial and temporal interruption of today’s phenomena of belligerence. – Since 1989, the global system seems completely changed. The paradoxical equilibrium of the ideological division of the CW faded away, giving way to a chaotic and complex system characterized by the change of the localization of conflicts, the new rules of war and the end of military order. Through the analysis of the debate on the wars and the investigation of existing conflicts, the aim is to highlight how the demise of the established relationship between territory, sovereignty and monopoly of violence, led to a renewal of conflicts and wars, characterized, however, by the persistence of the same logic of power. This does not imply any solution of continuity with the past, but an adaptive evolution that ensures survival; therefore, it is not about new wars but only renewed ones. At the same time, it is highlighted how the boundary between war and peace has now become so weak that it can be considered as a real “contamination” between them.

Gender Violence: Legislation and Dynamics. the case of the Messinese –The study is aimed at analyzing the spread of gender violence in our country, often linked to problems of urban and social marginality, examining its size and characteristics. After a brief examination of the interventions adopted by international organizations to combat the phenomenon, the current legislation in Italy regarding family relations and the civil consequences deriving from crimes against the family and gender is analyzed. By examining the statistical surveys conducted by Istat on the phenomenon and on the basis of the studies prepared on the subject by the Ministry of the Interior, the methods and spatial dimension with which gender violence has occurred in Italy in recent years are then analyzed. The survey then focuses on a specific spatial area, that the province of Messina, in order to understand the peculiarities and trends of this phenomenon with respect to the national context, trying to highlight any connections with the local socioeconomic dynamics and to identify a possible relationship between territorial criticality and the explosion of these criminal episodes.

Geographical observations on the Gilet jaunes movement: from inner-city violence to protest roundabouts. – Against a backdrop of economic crisis, climate catastrophe and anti-globalisation struggles, social protests characterised by a strong spatial rootedness have developed in the recent past. The contribution aimed to analyse the influence of spatial differences on the development and articulation of social movements, with particular reference to the role of space in violent expressions. In particular, the Gilet jaunes movement was analysed, which in terms of the complexity of political protest and the dialogue between protest demands and spatial context, seems to be a particularly significant case not only in terms of political symbolism but also in terms of spatial semiotics. Indeed, the movement developed in two main spatial contexts whose differentiations generated different declinations of the protest and different perceptual and representational processes.

L’articolo sostiene che la violenza di Stato contro le donne in Turchia continua a far parte di una strategia nazionale più ampia che ali-menta e perpetua un patriarcato eteronormativo sempre più disfunzionale e instabile. Lo studio analizza il discorso governativo e la copertura giornalistica della violenza contro le donne in Turchia e l’attuazione della Convenzione di Istanbul. Per fare questa analisi, lo studio si basa sui reportage delle versioni online di noti giornali turchi e internazionali (Hurriyet, Milliyet, Aksam, Sabah, The Guardian) e sui siti web ufficiali governativi e non governativi. L’articolo si concentra sulle notizie e sui discorsi del governo degli ultimi 15 anni. Inoltre, analizza le leggi e i regolamenti approvati dal governo turco in materia di violenza contro le donne, esaminandone la struttura e gli intenti.

The CAR (Central African Republic) crisis. Transcalarity between violence and resilience. – The Central African Republic has been experiencing a sequence of political-military crisis starting from its constitution (with the death of B. Boganda) to the collapse of Séléka regime (2013) and the current transitional phase, which is leading by K. Samba Panza. The ingredients of this crisis are cross-scale, with mobile factors that easily pass from a scale to another. On the "domestic" scene, as it is in itself very complex and marked by a plurality of actors even foreigners, take place regional, pan-african and global dynamics. Facing this changing framework plagued by violence, the development of a cultural resilience assures the endurance of Central African Republic as political and social entity.