Vita e Pensiero

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. Key words: Abduction, Inference, Risk, Explanatory Hypothesis, Insight.

The s.c. «third dimension» is one of the first definitions given in the sociological arena to define the development of a ate element that was not identifiable with generalist instances of the state or with those particularistic of the market. Deriving its conceptualization from the Husserlian theory, Ardigò through the use this approach emphasizing the need to reconstruct the crisis through new forms of transaction between the social system and life-worlds. The use of this conceptualization led to the identification of these intermediary organizations between different systems. The text takes a brief overview of the third dimension organizations and the way how they operate the reconciliation between inter-subjectivity and super-ordination present in the systemic sense. It is proposed a scheme of interpretation, drawn from the author in question, through which classifying not merely the organization but the possible interconnections between micro and macro and their consequences. It is concluded that the abandon of the analytical perspective proposed by Ardigò, primarily for the affirmation of a vision of an economic nature, was determined both by the theoretical vulgate established around of the 90, and the difficulty in operationalizing a definition that owed much to the knowledge from the phenomenology of the Bolognese scientist.

Moral hazard is the assumption of an extremely high risk of which positive consequences can bring an advantage to who has taken the risk, while the eventual costs are borne by someone else. Therefore, the assumption of risk, in this situation, can be incentivized by the possibility for one party to put its interest first with no eventual costs. The present article extends the economical notion of moral hazard to social sciences. More than an important object for sociology – via its link to the notion of social responsibility –, moral hazard has been the base of social criticism after the crisis. After introducing a brief history of the notion, relevant particularly in risk sociology, I’ll present the results of the analysis concerning the critics of moral hazard – appeared on «Financial Times», «Wall Street Journal», «Il Sole 24 Ore», «Les Echos» – during the three years after Lehman Brothers’ bankruptcy. Moral hazard stands here as the root of the opposition – between political and financial élites, on one side, and taxpayer or common citizens, on the other – fostered later on by not-specialized press and protest movements like M-15 and Occupy Wall Street. In this perspective, the notion of moral hazard brings a new light to the link between power, responsibility, inequality and risk in contemporary society.

This two-year study is currently being undertaken in Barbagia. Through local mediators, we have found groups of people in every community who have agreed to be interviewed about their own weddings. For every community or village, an average of six accounts have been recorded. The mediators were asked to find people of varying ages, without specifying gender. The interviews have been carried out by partially structured interviews and recorded digitally. From the start, it has been clear that marriage is strongly understood to be the business of the female side of society: for all, marriage is «a woman’s affair». From the initial examination of the material, three elements appear fundamental for the analysis of the rite of marriage: the role of the woman in the relationship between families and the relationships within their own family, the role of gifts and the presence of ritual foods.

The research activities in the area of social work are situated in the theoretical and empirical sociological tradition. From the latter is derives tools and attitudes needed to build up its own peculiar culture and to develop a sort of sociological imagination. The research in the field of social work draws from the sociological tradition, both tools and methodological attitude, always consistent with the object under consideration and the aims of the research itself. The evolution of the social work as subject matter and field of study has been framed within the debate among social sciences and in a tight relationship with them. However, the research side cannot be kept separated from the operational side of the social worker’s professional activities: both for historical reasons, but also because of the operative nature of the knowledge at stake. The paper presents a brief investigation into the meanings of the research activity in the current experience of the social work.