Aboutdr. Cristina Carpinelli Expertise Cristina Carpinelli is a sovietolog. She deals with research works, from economic and social point of view, concerning Central-Est Europe (Hungary, Czech Republic, Slovakia and Poland), South-Est Europe (Bulgaria, Romania, balkan Countries), Russia and all Former Soviet Union Countries: all Countries in transition from a planned economy to a market one. Recently, She has become an expert in gender issues in Countries mentioned above. She can't answer the questions relative to other geo-economic and political areas or about other questions outside her competence/knowledge. She lives and works in Milan (Italy).
Experience Cristina Carpinelli wrote many articles and essays on the Ussr and on the transition of the Fsu from a planned economic system to a free market one. She wrote also some books. Now, She is collaborating with some magazines/reviews (The Calendar of People, Slavia, Cassandra, Antonio Gramsci today, Marxism today ecc.).
Organizations She is a member of Scientific Committee of Cespi (International Problems Study Center) of Milan (Italy)- www.cespi-ong.org. She is also a directing member of the Italian-Russian Lombardy Association and a member of Problems of Transition to Socialism Study Center (Naples - Italy). She is a journalist of the Italian Magazine "Wewomen".
Publications “Soviet society in the years of the perestrojka”, New Authors, Milan 1991; "Women and family in Soviet Russia", F. Angeli, Milan 1998; "Identities in Transition: Fsu Countries after the Collapse of Real Socialism", Cespi, December 2002; "Women and poverty in Russia under El’cin administration (the era of liberal transition)", F. Angeli, Milan 2004; "The contradictions of real socialism in Soviet Union" in 'Marxism Today' n.2/2007; "The Russia to pieces" (Achab, Verona 2008).
Education/Credentials Cristina Carpinelli graduated during the academic year 1983/84 with the thesis "The process of demografic ageing of the population in Soviet Union" - State University of Milan - Faculty of Political Sciences (Statistics Department). The thesis of degree was elaborated in the Ussr, at the State University Lomonosov of Moscow.
For a more detailed professional profile of Cristina Carpinelli, you can connected to: http://www.beepworld.it/members/criliberoit/curriculumenglish.htm
(sections: curriculumenglish and publications).
Question Do you think America should still be viewed as a "melting pot"? Elijah Anderson's perspective on race in America, is it good or bad?
Answer For Ray:
Today America is still a melting pot, even if its characteristics and features (ex: factors of inclusion or exclusions) are profoundly changed in the context of globalisation. I will stop here. The matter is very complex.
Regarding Elijah Anderson's perspective on race in America - is it good or bad?
I think He performs a crude, extremely realistic, analysis of the condition of blacks (especially young), and how this condition is very different (has changed compared to the America of fifties and sixties) in the context of the black community (of the black ghetto) in the America of early seventies and following years. Of course, the processes of urbanization, which have changed in those years the character of America from a country predominantly peasant to industrialized country, have aggravate the racial contradictions and conflicts. Anderson has written books, articles and critiques of the black urban situation in the United States, with one of his most prominent works being the book "The Code of the Street," an ethnography regarding life in the urban ghettos of Philadelphia during the 1990s.
I consider good his theory about the transformation of black ghetto in a heavily urbanized context, where discrimination and segregation assume strong forms and tones, which call practices often antagonistic pregnant of violence and nihilistic despair.
I do not believe, however, in an analysis of racial segregation, or deviance, or poverty, under the perspective of individual responsibility and capabilities of individuals to "suucceding in", despite the social, economic and political surrounding. I do not believe in the emphasis on "moral” nature of practices and subjectivities of the "urban poor", regardless of the worlds and activities more or less legitimate in which they are involved. I do not believe in an approach that transforms "the poor”, and more precisely the black city under proletariat, into ideals of morality, as this is the only way because blacks can be accepted. This approach refers to a neo-romantic vision steeped in stereotypes and in loser strategies.
Cristina Carpinelli
