In the actual phase of capitalistic development, the features of a widespread culture du projet
are emerging. Work and private life are series of time-limited projects that we can consider microspaces
where it becomes possible to determine an order - differently from the network excluding any
internal arbitrary division. At the same time, the economic axis, structuring the old left-right opposition,
crosses the biopolitic axis where these political positions are reversed. It’s on this biopolitic
field, as Boltanski describes it, that most of the conflicts about life’s reproduction take place today.
Late modernity is characterized by a crisis of institutional power in term of civic action and
civic behaviour. In general, the crisis of institutional ability to grant directives about social conduct
has produced a strong disorder among subjects. Durkheimian condition of «anomie» is the authentic
scenario of occidental society at the time of globalization. Present globalization is interlaced with crisis
of social behaviour agencies and there is a trend considering historical model out-of-date. In this
context charismatic power is finding a new place, out of any reference to supernatural gifts. The
recognition of the bearer of charisma is here founded on a free choice by subjects. While main lines
of political and civic institutions are weakly recognised, charismatic institutions have a moderate but
increasing agreement. By this fact it is possible to change status of subject in sociological thought.
However it is difficult to recognize subject as a simple rational choice actor or at the opposite as a
whole socialized subject. The term of «persona» suggests a good issue across several types of rationality.
It is this «persona» that accepts charismatic institutions, in spite of normative institutions, and
chooses his membership out of instrumental rationality and out of behavioural socialization.
The following dialogue with Edgar Morin stresses his anthropological theory which offers a
cross-disciplinar view of human identity. This approach becomes essential because of the nature of
the object itself, that is a complex synthesis of antithetical elements: nature, culture and society.
Putting every single discipline into a deep dialogue between each other Morin works out a theoretical
framework which connects different fields of knowledge becoming the only method able to reveal
and understand human complexity. This idea of complexity becomes also, in Morin’s thought, a useful
keyword to describe contemporary global society, ruled by uncertainty. According to Morin, to survive in this inhospitable condition, umankind must build a planetary consciousness and learn to
think itself as the citizenship of a unique planetary mother-country.
Globalization has given rise to an intense and problematic detachment between companies and
the territory they work within. This has narrowed the time horizon of the companies, which have
been conceiving the territory as a very short-term resource, something to be exploited here and now,
without plans for the future. In these condictions, the social responsibility of the company has been
suggested as a strategy able to rebuild the lost bond and give the companies complete social subjectivity,
that is made possible by the shift from the stoke holder theory to the stake holder one. Within
this important change the debate is focused on whether it is right to consider the social responsibility
of the company as an economic strategy, in connection with the new character of the citizenconsumer,
or it is better to return it to the ethical sphere and found on it the ambitious plan of a
responsible and joint society.
In the last few years there has been considerable attention on creativity seen from the point of
view of several disciplines. This paper looks at the historical evolution of concept of creativity, by
underlining its collective dimension (psychology and natural sciences especially contributed to this
connotation). Until a decade ago, creativity was a marginal subject in sociological reflection, which
from the initial stages has tended to focus mainly on the rational dimension of action. ‘Spread creativity’
is an effective key word to read some relevant phenomena of contemporary society: cultural economy,
the rise of a new creative class, consumption as creative performance. In this context, I consider
the condition of Italy, example of a ‘creativity without system’. Finally, I try to address the initial
question: is creativity an expression of an individual genius or a social practice? The first definition is
still maintained, but today the social dimension is prevailing. Recent studies actually underline the
relevance of contextual components for creativity development. Creativity is an intersubjective value
and contemporary societies are moved by a creative ethos. Creativity as a social motor requires further
sociological inquiry, preferably carried out with qualitative and non-standard methodology.
Both Pareto and Weber wrote their fundamental works between 1890 and 1920. They dealt
with the relationship between Sociology and Economics and other Human Sciences, especially
Psychology and History, but their results were quite different. Indeed, the Italian engineer developed
step by step a method which links logic and experience in order to achieve an objective and universal
knowledge by a (neo-)positivistic standpoint, whereas the German jurist followed the Neo-Kantian
philosophy of values and stressed the importance of the personal purpose. However, although Pareto
supported a kind of abstractive procedure whose range is much bigger than Weber’s Idealty-pus, they
ultimately agreed on the so-called “methodological individualism”, because of their commitment to
marginalist Economics.
The present contribution analyses in a comparative way the relation between schools and
migration in Europe, taking in account different experiences and societal models: the educational system of free choice in Netherlands, the recent arrival and the overlapping between language of the
hosting society and the language of the main migrants groups in the case of Spain, the accumulated
tradition and the permanent tensions in the management of migration in schools in the case of UK,
France and Germany. The contribution focuses on two main aspect: the educational achievement of
migrants and the process of educational segregation.