Italian Sociological Review

Homes Becoming Religious Transnational Spaces: The Impact of COVID-19 Immobility on the Religious Activities of Migrant Muslim Women

Gül Ince-Beqo — 2024-10-01

Since the outbreak of the COVID-19 emergency, the marked division between the home and public space has been increasingly emphasized, and the concept of ‘home’ has become more and more connoted with the values of security and control. The question that arises is this: how did the ‘stay-at-home’ period affect (and continues to affect) the home-based life of migrant Muslim women and their collective religious practices? Drawing upon the narratives of Turkish Muslim women living in Northern Italy, the research reported in this paper focused on their frequency of religious participation both during the pre-pandemic period and during the ‘stay-at-home’ one by identifying how they adapted to online meetings, courses, or collective prayers. If collective religious activity in mosques for these women, in addition to spiritual support, was a remarkable opportunity for them to interface with public space, allowing them to retreat from the everyday family commitments of their home, virtual participation in religious events organized by both the country of origin and the diasporas created a highly transnational dimension for them in that same home. Considering Italy’s peripheral diasporic position, particularly in terms of religious organizations, in the Turkish diaspora in Europe, this expanded, albeit virtual, participation of migrant women is significant because it seems to give them the opportunity to reinvent the meanings of place and the migratory experience, about both their peers in Turkey and to those living in the diasporas, and to develop awareness about identity issues.

Stranger Times. Heterotemporality and the Spiritual Experience of Illness

Nicola Pannofino — 2024-10-01

As highlighted in the medical humanities and narrative medicine the onset of a severe pathology constitutes a biographical disruption that on the one hand alters the patient’s temporal perspective throughout the therapeutic process, and on the other can trigger existential and spiritual questions and needs. The direct connection between temporality and spirituality in the subjective experience of illness is, however, little investigated in the sociological literature.

Based on the analysis of personal illness narratives collected through qualitative interviews using the creative technique of time-box with cancer patients in Piedmont, this article shows how the relation with the disease is inscribed as an “other” time or “heterotemporality” in the patient’s life course, producing estranging effects on identity and agentivity from which emerges a spirituality focused on time as a resource for coping with suffering. These results can provide indications for implementing spiritual care strategies in healthcare and clinical contexts.

Unsustainable Fashion: SHEIN and the Fast Fashion Consumption Model

Piergiorgio Degli Esposti — 2024-10-01

Fashion, which has always played an important role in the economy and culture of many countries, is a sector with a high environmental impact, responsible for significant water consumption and the production of a large amount of waste. In particular, fast fashion, a business model based on offering consumers new, cheap and trendy products, seems to be one of the main drivers of the constant quest for innovation in fashion products, with a consequent increase in the environmental and social impacts of this policy. Among the companies in the sector, the SHEIN platform, founded in China in 2008 under the name Zzko, has become a real competitor to global industry giants such as Inditex and H&M, leading to a business model that can be defined as ultra-fast fashion.

The article presents the results of a qualitative research project aimed at understanding the consumption model, purchasing motivations and possible concerns about sustainability of young female Italian consumers who use the platform. To this end, 30 semi-structured interviews were conducted with a sample of university students, who are SHEIN customers, to identify their main purchasing motivations, their consumption habits, and the importance they attribute to sustainability issues. The results show that the main drivers for the platform success are the low price of the clothes and the wide variety of styles available. Students also proved to be quite sensitive to the issue of the company’s unsustainable production practices, although this awareness does not automatically translate into a decision to stop buying the brand’s products.

The Objects and Ikea’s Environmental Imaginary

Francesco Barbalace — 2024-10-01

The purpose of this article is to illustrate the sociological implications of everyday objects, highlighting the social connections they establish within the collective imaginary. Through theoretical research on the role of objects, it examines the social imaginaries created and institutionalized by specific objects and the community of consumers involved. Ikea, the narratives crafted by corporate marketing, and its products are the specific focus of this study. In the conclusions, the meanings associated with the environmentalism imaginary (of which Ikea is an example) are explored to understand current social dynamics.

Work and Technological Innovation in the Retail Sector. The Case of Fast Fashion Stores in Italy

Cecilia Manzo — 2024-10-01

The impact of technological innovation on employment has been a subject of extensive study, particularly regarding job polarization, where routine, medium-skilled jobs are more likely to be automated compared to high-skilled and manual jobs. However, medium-skilled jobs requiring face-to-face interaction, such as those in the retail sector, are less susceptible to automation. This article examines how technological innovation is transforming the roles of frontline service workers in the retail sector, focusing on sales assistants in the fast fashion industry in Milan.

Retail is not a leading industry in technological innovation, making it a suitable example for studying gradual changes in job roles due to technology. The research investigates how the integration of online sales and digital tools has impacted the work organization and job quality of sales assistants. Despite the rise in online sales, brick-and-mortar stores have not been entirely replaced, but the nature of in-store work has become more complex.

Drawing on three strands of literature—technology’s impact on employment, digitalization and algorithmic management, and job quality—the study uses interviews with workers, managers, and trade unionists and maps recent changes that occurred in fast fashion stores. Findings reveal that technological innovation in retail has made sales assistants’ jobs more demanding but has not necessarily improved job quality or wages, highlighting a need for better training and economic recognition to support these workers through the ongoing transformations.

Cities and Street Art. A Sociological Research on 1UP, Mr. Paradox Paradise, Cranio, Blu and Mr. Woodland

uliano conti — 2024-10-01

The paper analyzes the phenomenon of street art and the relationship between street art, graffiti, cities and social actors, such as the audience of the artworks. The paper presents the state of the art related to phenomena of street art, graffiti, and the related subcultures. Then, the article considers original aspects and changes of the relationship between street art and graffiti. This analysis is possible thanks to reference to urban artworks of 1UP collective, Mr. Paradox Paradise, Cranio, Blu, and Mr. Woodland. These artists mark a turning point in the relationship between street art, graffiti, and social actors, and their works are considered as examples for the proposed arguments. In this sense, the global relevance of urban contexts such as Berlin, where some of these artists began their activities, emerges. The changing relationship between street art and graffiti is analyzed in the German capital from the perspective of visual sociology through photographic field research. Photographic research makes the artworks observable and analyzable ex-post. Street art emerges not as a homogeneous phenomenon, but shows different forms of expression, some closely related to traditional graffiti, others profoundly different. Emerging characters are analyzed through the concepts of audience, shock, collective innervation and aura, which refer to the sociological tradition of Walter Benjamin and Siegfried Kracauer, viewed as conceptual lenses for the study of contemporary street art.

The Hikikomori Phenomenon and Its Evolution in Modern Society: A Systematic Literature Review

vincenzo esposito — 2024-10-01

This paper intends to thoroughly examine the phenomenon called Hikikomori., which was initially studied in Japan in the late 1990s (Saito, 1998). Importantly, in recent years there has been a significant surge in current research efforts aimed at investigating the many aspects of this complex phenomenon.

This article’s objective is to effectively organize and classify various articles discussing the Hikikomori phenomenon. It considers critical factors such as the type of researcher involved, the specific angle or focus of the article, and the disciplinary perspective underpinning it. By examining these elements, readers can gain a more comprehensive and nuanced understanding of this complex and often misunderstood phenomenon.

To achieve our goal, we followed a structured process. Firstly, we extracted articles through Sciilit academic indexing platform. Then, we created an analysis form to enter the collected data. Finally, we analyzed the data using various techniques.

Intergenerational and Intragenerational Responsibility: How Does Environmental Law Deal with the Principle of Non-refoulement?

CINZIA CILENTO — 2024-10-01

While intergenerational responsibility commonly refers to the satisfaction of the needs and demands of present and future generations (Roemer, 2007), intra-generational responsibility implies the concept of justice in a broad sense, for instance equity in measured terms of quality of life, availability of essential goods and access to equal opportunities according to capabilities and resources, guaranteed to each community member (Padilla, 2002). Both definitions are increasingly finding their way into constitutional environmental law and especially within the climate change debate, but in which respect are they interconnected? How do inter- and intra-generational responsibilities approach the issue of “climate refugees” and the principle of non-refoulement? The following paper aims to investigate what are the main features of environmental inter- and intragenerational responsibility and how normative developments related to the environmental law arena are equipped to embed intergenerational equity and the principle of non-refoulement through the case study of Ioane Teitiota, a farmer of the Republic of Kiribati who emigrated from the island of Tarawa to New Zealand prompting his displacement because of climate change.

Sociological Ambivalence in Reproduction: Natural Childbirth and Technological Conception

Daniela Bandelli — 2024-10-01

Procreative choices and discourses in contemporary society are steered by the insistence on nature and the trust in biomedical technologies. Whilst biomedical technologies are increasingly used in conception, the critique of medicalisation in childbirth is a matter of collective sensitivity. Through the theory of sociological ambivalence, this study sheds lights on the strategies adopted by childbirth professionals to cope with the nature/technique polarity. Results of a qualitative study conducted with midwives, doulas and trainers in Italy are presentede.

Media Representation of Pakistani Transgender People in Newspapers’ Blogs Through Corpus Approaches

Tehseen Zahra — 2024-10-01

Media (mis)representation of transgender people has become crucial in shaping the perception, attitude and behaviours of the masses towards them all over the world. Pakistani media is not an exception regarding the portrayal of transgender individuals living in Pakistan. The current study focuses on revealing media representation of Pakistani trans people through blogs published in the country. The current study employs corpus approaches to explore this representation of transgender identity by analysing newspapers’ blogs published on the subject (i.e. on transgender people) in Pakistan. The concordance lines of the first ten recurrent content words including transgender, community, people, rights, Pakistan, gender, society, persons, government, and identity from the word list were analysed to explore the themes related to the identity of transgender people in the country. The study found linguistic expressions of transgender apartheid in Pakistan at all levels of the social fabric of the country. However, at the same time discourse of solidarity towards transgender identity was also noticed in the data of the current study. The study proffers an insight to the linguists in general and corpus linguists, in particular, to extend theoretical conceptualization, application of linguistic methods and corpus linguistic techniques to highlight the issues/problems faced by transgender people.