A. MANZATO, Mediated proximities: distance and responsibility in the media sphere
In a more and more globalized world, our relationship with distant others is particularly guaranteed
by media. More specifically, media are the devices through which we connect with images
and narrations of distant suffering. In this context, the question arises of how to react properly
to the suffering, thus approaching a moral dimension in media production and consumption.
The article draws in the first instance from Roger Silverstone’s latest work, Media and morality,
discussing how the space of appearance developed by media, the mediapolis, allows dialogue
and care for the distant other. A proper distance in representation is required, which does not
neutralize difference, nor makes it totally untouchable. Mediapolis has to be the space of hospitality
and polyphony.
Images of suffering, in a moral dimension, must involve a disposition to action that overcomes
emotions through an «acting word». In this sense, the risk of «compassion fatigue» and of
discursive strategies of denial has to be replaced by a personal responsibility as media producers,
audiences and citizens.
Key words: mediapolis, moral dimension in the media, proper distance, spectacle of suffering,
compassion fatigue.
C. OTTAVIANO, Active Aging: Grandparents in the Ambivalence Society
Active Aging, which the European Union has given great importance to for 2012, is a goal
that can be reached even by becoming grandparents.
In a society of an everymore aging population, the number of elders will increase more and more,
while there will be fewer children because of a fall in the birthrate. So, there will be more grandparents
than grandchildren in the near future. One might reconsider the importance of grandparents,
even non biological, and re-thinking their role in our contemporary risk and ambivalence society.
This essay describes (even through output of a quantitative-qualitative fiels research) the new
grandparents, above all the new grandmothers, who belonged to 68’generation, able to imagine a
new way to be young and to be an adult, and maybe even ‘to be with’ their grandchildren. People
who would know how to express their authority not because of their age and their experience,
but through a new way of being educators/mediators who give importance to limits, differences
and ambivalence as resourses.
Key words: Active Aging, Grandparents, Grandchildren, intergenerational bonds, mediation.
F. SACCHETTI, Abduction and scientific discovery in social sciences
In social sciences it is very important to be conscious of different argumentations that come
from different kinds of inference. In particular this paper aims to discuss the importance of
abduction as a way of thinking and as logic form of inference. Because of its logic construction,
abduction is the only inference that allows us to introduce new knowledge in reasoning. To be
more precise It leads us to a conclusion that is not included in the premises. The explanatory hypothesis
we introduce is the most important factor when it comes to identifying a higher or lower
degree of creativity in our inference. In social science research this kind of creative reasoning is
crucial to the process of insight that leads to cognitive restructuring of knowledge. This is also
important in what concerns the development of a new organization of mind categories.
V. MILIA, The Third Sector relationality: a methodological question
The paper presents the final results of a empirical research that investigates third sector using
a specific theoretical and methodological perspective: relational perspective. The principal purpose
of the research concerns methodology. The focus is on the capability of the methodological
triangulation used to examine and enphasize the relational nature of third sector analysing at the
same time structures and values, elements of sistem and individual components. The triangulation
combines the Social Network analysis techniques with the Lexical Correspondence analysis
techniques. The research was conducted on the complete third sector local network of Caltanissetta.
Key words: Third Sector, methodological triangulation, Social Network analysis, Lexical Correspondence
analysis, social relation.