Controversies around large-scale development projects offer many cases and insights which may be analyzed through the lenses of corporate social (_ir_)responsibility (CS_I_R) and business ethics studies. In this paper, we confront the CSR narratives and strategies of _WeBuild_ (formerly known as _Salini Impregilo_), an Italian transnational construction company. Starting from the Global Atlas of Environmental Justice (EJAtlas), we collect evidence from NGOs, environmental justice organizations, journalists, scholars, and community leaders on socio-environmental injustices and controversies surrounding 38 large hydropower schemes built (...) by the corporation throughout the last century. As a counter-reporting exercise, we code (un)sustainability discourses from a plurality of sources, looking at their discrepancy under the critical lenses of post-normal science and political ecology, with environmental justice as a normative framework. Our results show how the mismatch of narratives can be interpreted by considering the voluntary, self-reporting, non-binding nature of CSR accounting performed by a corporation wishing to grow in a global competitive market. Contributing to critical perspectives on political CS(I)R, we question the reliability of current CSR mechanisms and instruments, calling for the inclusion of complexity dimensions in and a re-politicization of CS(I)R accounting and ethics. We argue that the fields of post-normal science and political ecology can contribute to these goals. (shrink)

Controversies around large-scale development projects offer many cases and insights which may be analyzed through the lenses of corporate social (_ir_)responsibility (CS_I_R) and business ethics studies. In this paper, we confront the CSR narratives and strategies of _WeBuild_ (formerly known as _Salini Impregilo_), an Italian transnational construction company. Starting from the Global Atlas of Environmental Justice (EJAtlas), we collect evidence from NGOs, environmental justice organizations, journalists, scholars, and community leaders on socio-environmental injustices and controversies surrounding 38 large hydropower schemes built (...) by the corporation throughout the last century. As a counter-reporting exercise, we code (un)sustainability discourses from a plurality of sources, looking at their discrepancy under the critical lenses of post-normal science and political ecology, with environmental justice as a normative framework. Our results show how the mismatch of narratives can be interpreted by considering the voluntary, self-reporting, non-binding nature of CSR accounting performed by a corporation wishing to grow in a global competitive market. Contributing to critical perspectives on political CS(I)R, we question the reliability of current CSR mechanisms and instruments, calling for the inclusion of complexity dimensions in and a re-politicization of CS(I)R accounting and ethics. We argue that the fields of post-normal science and political ecology can contribute to these goals. (shrink)

Review of Alvaro Moreno and Matteo Mossio. 2015. Biological autonomy: a philosophical and theoretical enquiry.

Il 2021 segna gli ottant’anni dalla nascita di Mario Perniola, uno dei massimi filosofi italiani del secondo dopoguerra. Questo volume raccoglie interventi che esplorano la sua opera mostrandone la fertilità e sottolineando al tempo stesso la prossimità delle sue idee con le principali sfide del nostro tempo. Dall’Italia al Brasile, passando per gli Stati Uniti, l’Irlanda, la Francia, il Belgio, il Messico e la Cina, gli autori si soffermano su temi che comprendono l’estetica, la politica, la teoria della comunicazione, i (...) queer studies, il pensiero rituale e religioso, la sessualità e la letteratura, restituendo la plurivocità e l’originalità di un filosofo di respiro internazionale e più che mai attuale. (shrink)

Few data exist regarding treatment with antipsychotics in forensic psychiatric patient populations with high social dangerousness. We performed a secondary analysis of 681 patients treated with at least one antipsychotic, extracted from a 1-year observational retrospective study, conducted on 730 patients treated in the Italian Residencies for Execution of Security Measures. We aimed at investigating antipsychotic polypharmacy and high dose/very high-dose antipsychotics, as well as the possible factors associated with such therapeutic regimens. High dose/very high-dose antipsychotics were defined as a (...) prescribed daily dose to WHO-defined daily dose ratio greater than 1.5 or 3.0, respectively. Binary logistic regression analysis was used in three models to test possible predictors of antipsychotic polypharmacy, high-dose antipsychotics, and very high-dose antipsychotic prescription. Antipsychotic polypharmacy resulted in n = 308 of the patients, n = 346 received high-dose antipsychotics, and n = 96 very high-dose antipsychotics. The multivariate analysis disclosed an association between antipsychotic polypharmacy and male gender : 2.75 and 95% CI: 1.34–5.65), long-acting injectable antipsychotic prescription, and aggressive behavior in REMS. High-dose antipsychotics were also associated with male gender, LAI antipsychotic prescription, and aggressive behavior in REMS. The use of antipsychotic polypharmacy and high-dose antipsychotics is frequent in the REMS population. These results might depend on regulatory and organizational aspects of the REMS system, including variability in structures, lack of a common model of care, and lack of stratified therapeutic security. (shrink)

That non-human animals show genuine aesthetic experiences is (yet?) controversial. On the contrary, it seems that there is no doubt that human animal can do it. In this paper, however, we ask whether Homo sapiens has actually the biological capacity to make a truly aesthetic experience. The starting point for this analysis is the most important characteristic of the human species, the innate faculty of language. If you take into account the relationship between human body/mind and language is not at (...) all obvious that Homo sapiens could really prove a genuine aesthetic experience. On the contrary, such an experience would be biologically available only to non-human animals. (shrink)

The essay aims to examine some contributions of A. Schutz to general epistemological questions, starting from his view of the scientific theories and concepts formation, of type and model, of relevance, of proof and degree of belief. Great attention is paid to the resumption of Carneades’ mechanism, in which each operation of confirmation is linked to a level of credibility. The focus on these issues allows not only to understand Schutz’s context, but also to establish a comparison with Chisholm’s reading (...) of Carneades. (shrink)

La storia dell'architettura non è una storia lineare, ma piuttosto un percorso frammentato, un groviglio di diversi sentieri, costellata di molti "edifici provvisori". Uno spazio storico in cui la crisi diventa progetto di trasformazione. Muovendo da questi presupposti, il saggio analizza i fondamenti del pensiero di Manfredo Tafuri, uno dei pochi storici dell'architettura che si confronta senza sconti con le avanguardie artistiche e le ideologie sottese alle molteplici utopie del Novecento. La posta in gioco è la definizione della modernità partendo (...) dalle politiche dello spazio. Tafuri anticipa la critica a molti discorsi, affermatisi negli anni successivi, sia sull'architetto come ideologo del "sociale" sia sulla retorica della postmodernismo come superamento delle "grandi narrazioni", senza per questo avere come approdo un nuovo e rivisitato "realismo". La città prima e la metropoli dopo sono certamente per Tafuri i luoghi delle contraddizioni politiche e sociali, ma anche i terreni di una critica che cerca di andare oltre se stessa, oltre i confini disciplinari dell'architettura, della sociologia, della semantica. (shrink)