G. Valducci (2025), The Writing of the “Homo Criminalis” in Foucault: From “Fragments of Life” to Autobiography
Through a careful analysis of Michel Foucault’s thought, the paper explores the role of the written word in the construction of the delinquent individual and the possibility of it becoming a tool for discursive resistance.
R. Cornelli (2024), L'uso eccessivo della forza e gli strumenti per prevenirlo
What is the threshold beyond which the use of force by law enforcement officers becomes illegitimate violence? This contribution aims to answer this question by describing the legal constraints set by international and national regulations, while also assessing how effectively these constraints operate in specific situations.
R. Cornelli (2024), Il potere di definire la pace e di uscire dalla guerra
In this brief contribution published in the journal Politeia, the concept of peace is examined through the lens of language theory, with the aim of considering the centrality of power dynamics inherent in language with respect to peace.
L. Squillace (2024), Vulnerable Youth. Resolução 20 and Operação Verão: two security measures in Rio de Janeiro.
The article aims to examine two urban security measures, the Resolução 20 (Resolution 20) and the Operação Verão (Operation Summer), implemented in Rio de Janeiro, and targeting young people in situations of social vulnerability. The first is aimed at children and adolescents living on the streets, while the second, carried out at the city’s main beaches, focuses on controlling young people from the outskirts and favelas.
L. Squillace, R. Cornelli, I. Cano (2024), Fear and Surveillance on the Beaches of Rio de Janeiro: the Operação Verão
This article presents the findings of a qualitative study on Operação Verão (Operation Summer), a police operation on the beaches of Rio de Janeiro targeting collective thefts attributed to young people from the peripheries: the arrastão. It analyzes the perceptions of beachgoers and law enforcement officers and demonstrates how citizens’ fears have evolved into a perpetual panic, demanding increasingly harsh security measures.
R. Cornelli (2024), Fidarsi, affidarsi, fare affidamento. L’ambiguità della fiducia nelle istituzioni
A social order based on trust rather than force inevitably leaves behind residual spaces – both internal and external border zones – where actions take place outside the framework of trust. These spaces serve to preserve order, reinforce social bonds, or legitimize established authority. The challenge, then, is not to envision a conflict-free society governed solely by trust, but rather to examine where, in any given society, the “rule of trust” loses ground. It is in these frontier zones that intervention is needed to prevent trust-based sentiments from ultimately sustaining the “force of law”.
The waste of security and the reasons for inclusiveness
Published on YouTube Prof. Roberto Cornelli’s lecture in Italian on the waste of security and the reasons for inclusiveness given at the School of Political Culture at the Casa della Cultura in Milan.
C. Chisari (2024), Revisiting structural violence: Galtung’s legacy and power relations
The article offers a critical re-examination of Johan Galtung’s concept of structural violence, a foundational idea in the field of peace studies yet often challenged for its vagueness. The author addresses this weakness by bringing Galtung’s theoretical framework into dialogue with Foucault’s notion of the “state of domination,” understood as a arrangement of power relations that radically constrain individual freedom and perpetuate injustice and oppression.
Memory and Justice
Online: Prof. Cornelli’s lecture in Italian on “Memory and Justice”, delivered as part of the School of Political Culture (2024/2025) at the Casa della Cultura in Milan.
R. Cornelli (2024), È populismo penale? Il contrasto alla violenza di genere nelle società punitive
Through the reconstruction of the debate around feminist penal populism and, more broadly, the intersection between gender issues and criminal justice, the question arises as to whether and to what extent the penal-populist discourse, which is a key feature of the contemporary penal field, has influenced the feminist agenda and with what consequences. The proposal to consider three concurrent and competing trends in shaping public policies (anti-feminist populism, punitive feminism, and anti-punitive feminism) offers a more nuanced interpretive framework than the one emerging from Anglo-Saxon literature, allowing for a closer look at the Italian reality as well.