Mascali,Mount Etna Region Sicily: An Example of Fascist Planning During the 1928 Eruption and Its Continuing Legacy

The 1928 eruption of Etna, Sicily, although the largest such event this century, has not been studied in detail. In this paper the nature of the eruption, the destruction it caused – including the complete devastation of the town of Mascali (pre-eruption population 2,000) – and emergency responses of the authorities to it are reviewed in the context of fascist politics and planning priorities. It is contended that, although at one level the response to the 1928 eruption was successful, at another fascism merely continued and enhanced a reactive, propitiatory approach to hazard mitigation. We argue that this legacy was not successfully overcome until the middle of the nineteen eighties. Finally contemporary Italian moves towards a more proactive approach to disaster planning, both generally and in the context of Etna, are discussed.     

Malaria and technological networks: medical geography in the Pontine Marshes, Italy, in the 1930s

This paper examines the struggle against malaria undertaken by the fascist regime in the Pontine Marshes, south of Rome, and relates it to discourses of domination of nature on the one hand, and modernization and civilization through technological networks such as health and medical networks on the other. The marshes'first nature' is described first of all, focusing on malaria and the difficulty of making an impact on marsh biology before the fascist enterprise and before the large-scale employment of modern technology for the subjugation, channelling and development of the marshes. Secondly, the paper focuses on the organization of medical anti-malaria networks in the marshes during the years immediately preceding and during the fascist period (1922–43). Thirdly, the 'second nature' produced in the marshes following the land reclamation and anti-malaria projects is examined, and an assessment is provided of the fascist anti-malaria project in the marshes.     

Signs of power: Fascist urban iconographies in Ethiopia (1930s–1940s)

The aim of the present paper is to compare two different patterns of urban iconographies in Ethiopia during 1930s: the one of the Amhara – the traditionally Ethiopian dominant ethnicgroup – and the one of the Italian fascism. The paper gives an historical account of the structure of the Amhara settlements, focusing on the ways the power of their politico-military chiefs, being they the Negus or the Ras, shaped the spatial order of these settlements. When the Italians conquered military Ethiopia in 1936, they started re-shaping this spatial order, erasing the signs of the previous power and imposing their new iconographic apparatus. This was mainly done through urban planning which was devised to `write' the Fascist concepts of progress, order, hierarchy, and racial segregation on the territory. Owing to the short duration of the occupation, the poor material conditions of the colony and the lack of financial resources, such town-planning projects turned out to be just a political rhetoric exercise.     

Bare life as a development/postcolonial problematic

Development studies and postcolonial studies conceptualize and examine the Third World in different ways, yet works associated with the two fields can usefully be combined to illuminate key issues in our time. This article focuses on postcolonial transitions in parts of Africa where the state actively injures or kills a local citizenry, sometimes in the name of development. Using Zimbabwe and Rwanda as very different examples of such transitions, and drawing on selected development and postcolonial writings – fact and 'fiction'– I argue for framing such cases as examples of the 'bare life', 'camp' biopolitics articulated by Georgio Agamben. These concepts enable us to see the widening spaces of exception to law that a postcolonial state can create in periods of crisis and defend on the grounds of post-coloniality, that is, as states always already injured by colonialism and its biopolitical development project. The terrain such states enter might be termed 'fascism'– a location of political economy that development studies has generally neglected in recent years but that novels depicting postcolonial contexts can make vivid.