Starting from an analysis of the arguments advanced in support of social planning as a hermeneutic
practice, this paper will attempt to question the reasons that assign a distinctive value
to reflexivity. In particular, if the social planning is similar to a non-linear search of possible
solutions to complex problems that, as such, transcends unique ways of defining, the reflexivity
corresponds to a state of ‘suspended judgment’ that exorcises any attempt to pre-determine the
full range of stable preferences and values that govern the legitimacy of consensual decisions. So,
the reflexivity triggers mechanisms that shut down ‘monopolies’ of expertise and recognize to
‘secular consciousness’ an enormous potential for the advancement of knowledge; retrieves the
policy-making a ‘creative fruitfulness’, essential to the contingency and contextual embeddedness
of intervention measures.
The author presents a summary of General Sociology of Barry Barnes, illustrating the connections
and dependencies with the strong program in SSK. In particular, the article focuses
on the nature and function of rules in social order, understood as cognitive. Finally, the article
tries to give the constructionist sociology of Barnes a location in the context of contemporary
sociological theory.
Overall explanations for the rise of modern capitalism are usually divided between productivist
thesis which assign causal primacy to the production system and anti-productivistic thesis
which give consumer culture an active role in the process. I claim that a multi-causal approach is
more adequate if we want to better understand the interplay of production and consumption at the origin of modern capitalism; moreover, I suggest that a study of marketing is well fitted for
such a task, since marketing is the link between the production system and the spheres of consumption.
Drawing on the Nietzsche-inspired Weberian genealogical method and following the
path-breaking works on consumer capitalism in America, I delved into a study of the origin and
development of marketing in U.S. between 1890 and 1930 in order to outline a genealogy of consumer
capitalism. This research is the object of my Ph.D. dissertation which I present in the essay.
The article is the results of a qualitative research and describes how advocacy for children and
young people is manage in UK.
An advocacy service for children and young people needs to be independent, to guarantee
this feature is important reflect about stability of the services and the way to funding them. In UK
advocacy is a duty for Local Authority when children and young people are in some situations, in
Italy there is not a similar duty. The aim of the article is to reflect about the importance of advocacy
for children in child protection system, to understand what other Countries have done and
to learn from this in order to develop these services also in the Italian system of child protection.