The central topic of this paper is the role of the elementary school in the process of integration of the children of immigrants. The paper presents: a) the sociological approach through which A. Wimmer has profoundly changed the debate on integration; b) the main results of some empirical studies that have attempted to measure the ability of integration of the elementary school using the network analysis’ approach; c) the methodology of our empirical research, which was aimed to investigate some of the characteristics of ties experienced in and out the class by the students attending the class V of the elementary schools of the Province of Trento, in classes composed for 25% or more of students with non-italian citizenship; d) the main findings of the survey and some conclusions that confirm the validity of the approach used.
The traditional utopias of the city have evolved in recent years. The aesthetic and political attitudes are linked with technological aspects. Moreover, the new technologies influence the social relationships and can also be used for innovative practices of urban policy. So, time to time a perfect city can be defined as green, sustainable, smart, resilient and so on. This article highlights the different interpretative models that can outline the best cities in the international context. Afterwards, some main issues under discussion in the Italian reality are focused.
The goals of this essay are two: the first one is to analyze the relationship between the dignity and the construction of the social action (at individual, social and institutional levels) in the transition from industrial society and post-industrial national-based society to global networking society. Indeed, whether the social dignity was the main form of its in the first time of the modern age, the Human Dignity (together Human Rights) is the main one at the moment. On the basis of this analysis, the second goal is to focus on some perverse effects (for example, the additional spread of the populism or the weakening of the institution) in the social construction of the dignity; in particular, about Human Dignity, the most important claim for the building collective action of the global social movements.
Starting from the hypothesis that the speech on immigration position itself on two opposite poles – on one hand the immigrant as a resource, on the other hand the immigrant as a «realistic» and/or «symbolic» threat – the article recalls the attention on some problems relative to the relation between migration and the right to health, within the perspective of a «listening sociology» that moves from the concept of person. The idea on which work is based is that, starting from the concept of person is possible to go beyond the limits of the economic-individualist paradigm, promoting, even through the sociological research, a solidarity-based sociality that respects the different cultures.
In this paper we try to sketch a synthesis of the relations between energy transitions and social change (starting from biological evolution, with reference to fire domestication) in History, utilizing in an original way conspicuous contributions, such as Mumford’s, Cottrell’s, White’s, Adam’s, Elias’s, Innis’s and Schumpeter’s ones. We pay a particular attention to the use of more and more sophisticated forms of «energy converters», also the organization of human labor (what Mumford calls a «megamachine») being one of them. At the same time, we try to stress the links between energy transitions and communication, with a particular attention to the implications of those links for the relations of power within human societies.