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This chapter will use A Propos de Nice, filmed by Jean Vigo and Boris Kaufman in February and March 1930, as a case study to illustrate how city films created segmented views of quotidian urban life in both form and content. In terms of form, short clips are juxtaposed in a rapid montage to form a segmented portrait of the city. In terms of content, the segments in Vigo's film, and the city film genre as a whole, are full of everyday events such as drinking coffee, washing clothes, sunbathing, and playing boules. The portrait of Nice that emerges within the film, then, is one of quotidian segmentation. This chapter will conduct a visual analysis of the film as it progresses, situating it within the history of Nice, cinematic conceptions of the city prior to its production, the city film genre, and the French avant-garde.

This volume of Research in Urban Sociology derives from the conference ‘Everyday life in the segmented city’ held in July 2010 in Florence, and is composed of a selection of papers originally presented on this occasion. Starting from the epochal assumption that for the first time in human history the majority of the world's population lives in urban environment, the conference gathered a set of presentations dealing with issues of global urbanization, showing a multiplicity of approaches and points of view which we tried to preserve within the limits of this publication. Urbanization is a phenomenon inscribed into globalization process with enormous consequences in the transformation of urban space and the everyday life of citizens: a dynamics which is reflected also in a flourishing analytical discourse that increasingly transcends the boundaries of established urban disciplines. The progressive extension of the urban domain beyond the limits of the city, and across diverse scales, has its corollary in the progressive segmentation of the urban dimension along multiple lines of material, social, economic, cultural and ethnic nature. Here we have chosen the perspective of the everyday to analyse how practices and policy can overcome the spin towards fragmentation and anomy and reinforce social cohesion for a more just and liveable city, endorsing the ‘right to the city’ as postulated by the seminal work of Henri Lefebvre. Although not specifically focused on his work, this collection clearly reveals the fundamental influence of the French philosopher over the knowledge and critique of late modern spatial production (Lefebvre, 1991b), and the net of Lefebvre's concept which connect different papers constitutes an evident subtext to this volume of Research in Urban Sociology. The original structure of the conference foresaw five distinct thematic sections, entitled ‘Right to the city’, ‘Cinematic urbanism’, ‘Governance and planning’, ‘Re-appropriation of urban spaces,’ and ‘Suburbanization and post urban cities’. Ultimately, in composing this volume we decided not to adopt those thematic areas as distinct sections, as many papers demonstrated the interdependence of these topics, escaping a strong separation of the arguments. On the contrary, the five topics recur all along this volume as transversal issues connecting almost all contributions. In the Introduction we aim at retracing those connections, starting from the dialectic evocated by the title between ‘everyday life’ practices of the inhabitants and what has been named here ‘segmented city’ as an epitome of the contemporary city in the age of globalization.

This paper provides an extensive review of surveys and data-collection programmes focused on urban goods movement (UGM). Surveys investigating passenger urban travel have a decades-long tradition. The same is not true for UGM. The first specific UGM surveys appeared about 10 years ago in response to the rapid growth of car traffic, congestion, pollution and lack of space. Most of the time, these surveys have been carried out to resolve specific, local problems concerning traffic. Only a few of them have taken a global approach to urban logistics by including all logistics operators (own-account and carriers), all delivery vehicles (heavy and light vehicles), all deliveries and pickups (from express to full payload) and an entire metropolitan area and surroundings. Due to various European programmes, an inventory has been created to analyse urban goods data collection according to spatial level and methodology of capture. With this inventory, European urban freight indicators can be described, along with the units in which they are measured and their purposes. The relevance of urban goods transport surveys lies in their capacity to give decision-makers an account of urban freight transport functioning, ratios and data, so as to help in formulating planning, regulation and forecasting. It appears that focusing on the movement (delivery/pick-up), as the unit of analysis in establishment-driver surveys is the most efficient approach to describe the generation of vehicular flow in the city. This fact is revealed in the French UGM surveys, which take into account the complexity of urban logistics.

This paper aims to examine the elements of the main process of pilgrimage tourism (PT), occurring between pilgrims, hikers and tourists along a trail towards a holy site. PT is defined as a process consisting of three sub-processes over time and across contexts: pre-process, main process and post-process.

Explores the core reasons for PT through active participation and observation.

This study reveals different layers, levels, views, approaches and perspectives involved in people-based processes. The study attempts to conceptualize the elements involved between people committed and dedicated to PT.

The introduced model of PT stresses the processes and interfaces involved over time and across contexts between people, with the same or different sequences. There is, to the best of the authors’ knowledge, no previous research that explores and describes the processes and interaction between pilgrims, hikers and tourists.

The ultimate experience at an individual level differs, depending upon the outcome of the PT-elements of the model of PT (i.e. processes, interfaces, people and sequences).

From a social science perspective, the research examines the motives of different traveller types and looks at their different perspectives of being involved with the same physical activity of travel. The study emphasises that we can be involved in the same physical activity, but embrace it with different levels of personal and emotional engagement.

A conceptualized model of PT containing four elements (process, interface, people and sequence) – all of which offer a foundation for structuring and assessing empirical research, and provide additional insights and knowledge into the dynamics and complexity involved specifically in a people-based process consisting of interfaces and sequences when travelling.

This paper aims to celebrate the 100th anniversary of Einstein's works, published in 1905.

The paper presents a brief appraisal of Einstein's work.

The paper reminds the reader of the 1905 discoveries, such as photoelectric phenomena, special theory of relativity and Brown's motions.

The paper deals with the problem of how Einstein's concept contradicts or follows the Faraday concept of electromagnetic fields.

Most studies explore the success of mergers and acquisitions through ex ante analyses based on the compatibility of resources and capabilities between the acquirer and target. As more than half of them fail, there seems to be room for enhancing our understanding of when and how acquisitions can actually improve firms' competitiveness. Diverging from these conventional approaches, the authors posit that attention should be at the strategic level. The purpose of this paper, therefore, is to explore the existence of compatibility between acquirers’ and targets’ competitive strategies and its effect on post-acquisition business performance.

Through the Thomson Reuters Eikon financial and acquisition databases, the authors built a unique data panel of 174 acquirer–target matched acquisitions in the manufacturing sector from 24 different countries between 2000 and 2020. The authors used a two-step System-GMM approach to address the hypotheses proposed in this paper. This methodology allowed to isolate and easily compare the differential effects of each possible combination of strategic similarity and dissimilarity between the target and acquiring company on the latter’s post-acquisition strategies.

The need to unravel the motives behind successful acquisitions has gained enormous interest in recent years among academics and managers to improve – or maintain – firm competitiveness. Through a panel data of 174 acquisitions among manufacturing firms (2000–2020), this study shows that differentiated firms improve their business performance by acquiring firms with similar strategies; nevertheless, their performance worsens if the acquired firm follows a cost-leadership strategy. Concerning acquirers with a cost-leadership strategy, the lack of clear behavioral patterns suggests that the lower knowledge absorption capacity associated with these firms might be a decisive factor in being able to assimilate and efficiently exploit the acquired firm's knowledge.

Overall, this approach offers a new and valuable perspective for practitioners because it improves understanding of the possible causes of merger failure and opens new attentions to consider in maximizing success and long-term competitiveness. The results of this study bring, thus, an unexpected result to this research: the importance of the acquirer’s strategy beyond the similarity or dissimilarity of the strategies of the acquirer and the acquired company.

Through a survey of 200 employees working in five of the thirty establishments analysed in previous research about the microeconomic effects of reducing the working time (Cahier 25), the consequences on employees of such a reduction can be assessed; and relevant attitudes and aspirations better known.