The present paper is the second of three, constituting a whole project of translation and commentary composed of translated extracts from the "Catalogo n. 2 - Le madri di tutte noi," published by the ...Milan Women's Bookstore in 1982. The idea for the project was conceived by Silvia Niccolai and Angela Condello, who selected the extracts and provide the written commentaries on the original texts. The Yellow Catalogue, in which we find collective discussions, pages of personal diaries and, overall, the enterprise of a group of women debating over their literary symbolic mothers (who to read? And why?), is an interesting example of political use of literature. After forty decades from its publication, it still proposes inspiring and fresh suggestions for feminist political action and critique, while representing an interesting occasion for researching the philosophical roots of Feminism. The projects is composed like follows: Paper No1, In search of a feminine symbolic, by Angela Condello, already published on Law & Litterature and Paper No2, From Novels to the Figures, themes and strategies for a political practice. Paper No 2 is structured in two parts. Part One is the article here presented (Part One. "Interest in Reality." For every woman's autobiography) written by Silvia Niccolai; Part Two is the article Sexual difference: an occasion for being, coauthored by Angela Condello and Silvia Niccolai, which will be published in a forthcoming issue of this Journal.
The present paper is Paper No. 1, and forms part of a series together with Paper No. 2 (From novels to figures: themes and strategies of a political practice - Part I), and Paper No. 3 (From novels ...to figures: themes and strategies of a political practice - Part II; Sexual difference: an occasion for being). Papers No. 2 and No. 3 are forthcoming in Law & Literature. The three papers constitute a whole project of translation and commentary composed of translated extracts from the "Catalogo n. 2 - Le madri di tutte noi," published by the Milan Women's Bookstore in 1982. The idea for the project was conceived by Silvia Niccolai and Angela Condello, who selected the extracts and provide the written commentaries on the original texts. The Catalogue, in which we find collective discussions, pages of personal diaries and, overall, the enterprise of a group of women debating over their literary symbolic mothers (who to read? And why?), is an fascinating example of the collective work of feminist groups of women, the themes they addressed and their methodology. In particular, the debate on the literary "mothers," on the female authors that can contribute to the formation of a feminine symbolic, shows the kind of concerns of difference feminism in Italy (especially during the Seventies). The text offers, in other words, the opportunity to enter a world that nowadays - with the new, varied streams of feminism and the battles over the neutralization of sexual identity - is less frequent, and nevertheless we find it important in order to understand the social, political and cultural power of feminism.
A personal narrative describing the selling and publishing of books in Baghdad in the 1940s in the old Suq Al Saray where virtually all bookshops were located at that time. The essay also includes ...consideration of Al Mutanabbi Street which became associated with the public marketing
of books and other publications. It is shown that the period considered reflects on a society, city and a country that had many positive features such as cohesion, aspirations and strengths that have virtually little resemblance to the Iraq and Baghdad of recent decades.
This article introduces the Chinese bookstore-café, which indicates a change of lifestyle occurring in the contemporary big cities of China. Based on the concept of “third place,” which was first ...introduced by sociologist Ray Oldenburg to indicate places that are neither home nor a workplace, we argue that the bookstore-café represents the emergence of a new lifestyle. Oldenburg’s “third place” concept is deployed as a framework to explore the role of the bookstore-café in Hangzhou, China, based on a study conducted at three popular bookstore-cafés in central Hangzhou, to clarify its involvement in urban life. As part of the study, we used the observational method to help determine consumers’ visual behavior and an on-site survey questionnaire to collect data for measuring the qualities of the bookstore-café. The research findings contribute profound insights into the bookstore-café in Chinese urban life and deepen our understanding of Oldenburg’s “third place” concept.
Nourished by the cultural exuberance of second wave feminism, Helaine Victoria Press was a home-grown effort of two young women, Jocelyn Cohen and Nancy Poore, who learned how to print, established a ...printshop, and became the first publishers of women’s history postcards. The authors of Women Making History demonstrate that by creating postcards, Helaine Victoria Press aimed to do more than provide a convenient writing surface or even affect collective memory. Instead, they argue, the press generated feminist memory. The cards, each with the picture of a woman or group of women from history, were multimodal. Pictures were framed in colors and borders appropriate to the era and subject. Lengthy captions offered details about the lives of the women pictured. Unlike other memorials, the cards were mobile: they traveled through the postal system, viewed along the way by the purchasers, mail sorters, mail carriers, and recipients. Upon arriving at their destinations, cards were often posted on office bulletin boards or refrigerators at home, where surroundings shaped their meanings. This is the first book to demonstrate the relationships between the feminist art movement, the women in print movement, and the scholars studying women’s history. Readers will be drawn to both the large quantity of illustrative materials and the theoretical framework of the book, as it provides an expanded understanding of rhetorical multimodality.
The development of second-hand bookstores has received ample attention in the book industry. However, research on their operational strategies is still in its infancy, especially concerning how they ...compete with new bookstores. We used the Hotelling model to investigate second-hand bookstores’ differentiation strategy. We analyzed how product mismatch problems and consumer preferences affect bookstores’ strategies and profits. We came to three major conclusions. First, second-hand bookstores can effectively compete with new bookstores using a product differentiation strategy. Moreover, it is better to set high prices for special old books. Second, a higher breadth and depth of mismatching will increase revenue for second-hand bookstores and lower revenue for new bookstores. Third, new bookstores’ profit decreases with consumers’ preferences for special old books, while the influence of such preferences on the second-hand bookstores’ profits depends on the transportation cost. These findings provide valuable insights for second-hand bookstores to compete with new bookstores. An important implication of this study is that using a differentiation strategy for second-hand bookstores needs to consider the mismatch problems and consumers’ preferences.
In 2020, as Statista published in 2022, over two billion people purchased goods or services online, and during the same year, e-retail sales surpassed 4.2 trillion U.S. dollars worldwide. These ...numbers are possible thanks to a wide internet access and the digitalization of the retail landscape and the convenience online shopping provides to the customers. The book industry considered a traditional one faces also a considerable digital transformation of the business models and customers benefit as a consequence of a variety of products, lower prices and convenience, as they can buy from all over the country. The present paper is the first of one trilogy that explores the preferences for bookstores among the Romanian readers, namely the preferences for online bookstores. The authors applied an online questionnaire to a non-probabilistic sample of 493 respondents, who had to express their preferences by providing points on a 5-point Likert scale. The main findings of the study reveal that: the cheaper online price is considered, the more respondents evaluate online buying as more convenient. Also the general public tends to present higher levels of pragmatism, browsing books in bookstores and buying them online.As the Romanian book market and in particular the bookstore businesses are barely studied, this paper is worthy for both academic and business environments.
This article explores how a local community came to value a Latinx bookstore as a supplementary knowledge space for Latinx history, literature, and culture. Findings detail how the bookstore served ...as a catalyst for a heterogeneous group of Latinx families and educators to (1) access empowering reflections of Latinx histories that were not found in traditional K–12 school curricula and (2) build alternative libraries in homes and classrooms that centered Latinx communities’ sociopolitical worlds.
