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"Engel-Di Mauro, Salvatore"
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Antonio Gramsci
\"Antonio Gramsci is a giant of Marxian thought and one of the world's greatest cultural critics. Antonio A. Santucci is perhaps the world's preeminent Gramsci scholar. Monthly Review Press is proud to publish, for the first time in English, Santucci's masterful intellectual biography of the great Sardinian scholar and revolutionary. Gramscian terms such as 'civil society' and 'hegemony' are much used in everyday political discourse. Santucci warns us, however, that these words have been appropriated by both radicals and conservatives for contemporary and often self-serving ends that often have nothing to do with Gramsci's purposes in developing them. Rather what we must do, and what Santucci illustrates time and again in his dissection of Gramsci's writings, is absorb Gramsci's methods.\" -- Publisher description.
Book
Urban Squats as Eco-Social Resistance to and Resilience in the Face of Capitalist Relations: Case Studies from Barcelona and Rome
This article analyses continuities and discontinuities across time in Italy in the use of direct social actions, defined as forms of action that focus upon directly transforming some specific aspects of society by means of the very action itself, instead of claiming something from the state or other power holders. In doing this, this article offers two main illustrative hypotheses. First, that direct social actions represent a significant part of the repertoire of contention - at least in Italy - and that while they tend to be less visible than protest actions, they should still not be overlooked and treated like something “new” every time they resurface. Second, this article claims that the socio-economic context plays an important role in influencing the extended use of DSAs: if the supply of these forms of action by political actors is constant across time, what changes is the demand, that in times of economic hardship tends to characterise a broader constituency. We conclude by suggesting empirical methods to verify the hypothe-ses proposed, paving the way for future research on this topic.
Journal Article
Socioecological Contradictions in the Development of Socialist Collective Farming
Through a detailed exploration of the impacts of collective farming on local soils, Salvatore Engel-Di Mauro engages in key questions around the past and present of communal agricultural production. These insights shed light on not only specific projects, but future considerations for communal farming, framed by the dialectical relationship of nature and society.
Journal Article
Materialist Dialectics and Biophysical Worlds
Despite many applied examples, few have attempted to develop a materialist dialectics in the biophysical sciences. Insights from recent Marxist and anarchist work indicate that it is possible to elaborate on Engels' notion of a \"science of interconnections\" to address the issue of human specificity implied in dialectics (via praxis) and to formulate a methodological program more appropriate to studying the rest of nature. This involves (1) emphasizing interconnectivity and transformations in the study of biophysical processes; and (2) developing politically explicit and self-critical practices (ideological struggle).
Journal Article
Beyond the Bowers-McLaren Debate: The Importance of Studying the Rest of Nature in Forming Alternative Curricula
An analysis of the recent debate in this journal between Peter McLaren & C.A. Bowers about a critical pedagogic approach to teaching the natural sciences argues that any alternative curricula must present students with a deeper understanding of the impacts of capitalism & environmental degradation on the world. Bowers belief that education systems contain an environmentally destructive tendency that must be confronted through cultural change is an example of cultural reductionism that treats culture & the environment as static mutually exclusionary processes & establishes a false culture-nature dichotomy. Other contradictions of Bowers analysis are pointed out, along with the inability of McLarens otherwise excellent understanding of North American schooling systems to allow for teaching about physical environments without reducing them to what is human-induced. It is argued that the narrow understanding of the environmental crisis presented by Bowers & McLaren is a general tendency among critical pedagogues & it is necessary for all concerned to take action to reverse this trend in order to move towards the creation of ecologically sustainable egalitarian societies. J. Lindroth
Journal Article
An exploratory study of potential As and Pb contamination by atmospheric deposition in two urban vegetable gardens in Rome, Italy
PurposeA preliminary study was carried out in Rome (Italy) to assess the potential role of atmospheric deposition in trace element contamination in urban vegetable gardens relative to human health risk from crop consumption.Materials and methodsTwo sites were selected on the basis of previously known contamination issues. Atmospheric deposition, parent material, soils properties affecting trace element mobility, and various anthropogenic inputs were considered. Soil samples were taken at depth from two points in each garden, within 5 cm of sampled crops. Inputs and crops were sampled and analysed for As and Pb content. A rain and dust gauge was set up in each garden for the duration of 93 days (late spring to late summer) for atmospheric deposition sampling.Results and discussionAtmospheric deposition influx was high at both sites (2.22 and 2.32 As and 2.67 and 3.42 Pb μg m−3 day−1). Soil pH was between 6.70 and 7.57 and texture varied from loamy sand to clay loam (3.4 to 31.9 % clay content). CEC ranged between 21.6 and 54.2 meq/100 g within rooting depth, rising almost commensurately with soil organic carbon (SOC) content (1.87–8.37 %). Somewhat high total soil Pb content (80.8–522.7 ppm) contrasted with negligible exchangeability and crop content (<0.01 ppm). Total soil As (17.0–32.0 ppm) corresponded with exchangeable and crop As for one site in one of the gardens. Leaves evinced high As accumulation levels (16.0–41.2 ppm) in all crops. High amounts of atmospheric Pb combined with negligible amounts of extractable Pb and Pb plant tissue content point to particulate inhalation and ingestion as a main health threat in the case of Pb. In contrast, food intake seems to be of greater concern relative to high As contamination. Greater soil As solubility may be explanatory, but the mostly low amounts of extractable As and the high atmospheric As suggest an airborne route being playing an important role.ConclusionsPreliminary results suggest that research on trace element contamination in urban gardens should consider atmospheric deposition as a major contributing source.
Journal Article
Trace metal contamination and bioaccessibility in two Ulster County Urban Community Gardens, New York State (USA)
Purpose
In this short communication, soil trace element mobility factors are compared to the bioconcentration factor (BCF; plant tissue to soil total concentration) and evaluated for their effectiveness in estimating contamination pathways between soil and cultivated vegetables. These mobility factors are bioaccessibility (BAF, the ratio of exchangeable to total soil trace metal concentrations) and translocation (TF, the ratio of leaf to root trace metal total concentrations).
Methods
Kale was grown in two urban gardens in Ulster County, New York. Soil pH tests were carried out alongside analyses by ICP-OES on soil samples for total and exchangeable trace element concentrations and on kale roots and leaves for total metal concentrations (29 paired soil-kale samples), namely Al, Ba, Cd, Cr, Co, Cu, Pb, Sr, and Zn.
Results
Total soil Cd, Pb, and Zn were above permissible levels in weakly alkaline soil, and kale was contaminated with Ba, Cu, and Sr. It was found that BAF explains kale contamination by Ba, Cu, Sr, and Zn more than the other indicators.
Conclusions
The exchangeable fraction should be included in assessing trace metal contamination. This comparison of mobility indicators is a novel way of examining contamination problems in urban food production and improves the understanding of how evaluating soil dynamics helps identify ways to develop health-protective ecologically sustainable practices in cities.
Journal Article
Reflections on \The Struggle for the Rebel Body\
1 The simultaneously published book from which this essay is drawn, Caliban and the Witch, should be obligatory reading for anyone interested in ecosocialism and ecofeminism.2 The publication is also timely with respect to the Vatican's latest attempt at minimizing Papal responsibility for the mass murder of witches, who, as Federici reminds us, were mostly peasant women.3 Leftist reactions to this Papal disavowal continue to elide the importance of witch hunts in the development of capitalism.
Journal Article
Low-cost screening method for estimating inorganic arsenic in soil
People facing pollution do not always have the resources needed to investigate their environment for harmful contaminants. In this paper, we report on a low-cost, accessible method to screen soil for inorganic arsenic, a substance associated with a growing list of acute and chronic diseases. The method adapts a commercial water test kit, which measures inorganic arsenic between 0 and 500 µg L
on a quantitative, discrete color scale. We evaluated two extraction solutions in determining bioaccessible and total inorganic arsenic. We characterized soil samples and standards containing total arsenic between 0.8 and 3240 mg kg
(n = 151) with the screening methodology and established laboratory methods. While the total screening method requires additional investigation, we propose the bioaccessible screening method for two purposes. First, it estimates in vitro bioaccessible assay (IVBA) arsenic (
,
) to provide physiological insight. Second, it estimates a predicted minimum amount of total arsenic to compare to regulatory soil levels. Screening measurements above 82.5 and 132.0 µg L
are predicted to exceed the Arizona Department of Environmental Quality (AZDEQ) and New York Department of Environmental Conservation (NYDEC) regulatory soil levels: 10 and 16 mg kg
, respectively. False positives are almost entirely avoided, while the occurrence of false negatives increases approaching the predicted thresholds. Screening measurements in the ranges [0, 10), [10, 25), and [25, threshold] µg L
were false negatives (false omission rate) 0, 18.8, and 81.4% (AZDEQ) and 0, 8.7, and 68.5% (NYDEC) of the time, respectively. Our analysis supports screening total arsenic to at least as low as 8.5 mg kg
.
Journal Article