Vita e Pensiero

The object of this paper is training sociologists in «person-centered» ethnographic research, i.e. centered upon the social actor, protagonist of the cultural contexts to study. A training model is proposed, based on two cultural approaches: one being spiritual and the other psychological. More precisely, we refer to the spirituality of St. Ignatius of Loyola (founder of the Society of Jesus) and the psychological approach of Carl Rogers (psychologist of the humanistic approach). The goal is to provide useful operational tools in various stages of ethnographic research, enabling researchers to: a) choose the identities through which to have the best access to the field of study, b) establish face to face interactions that are based on the respect of the social actors involved in the study, c) transform those who are called «subjects» of research, in the classic approach of participant observation, into «collaborators of the ethnographer», d) adapt quickly to sudden changes of the field that often characterize studies of «other» cultures.

This paper aims to report a resistance process that was carried on by black quilombolas community (slave descendant) in the Alcântara region (Maranhão-Brazil). These communities have been in contrast through the times with the military institutions which ordered them to leave their traditional lands. Basing themselves on the international, federal and national legislation, and rediscovering their cultural ethnic heritage, and economic specificity, the different communities have carried on experiences of community opposition and cohesion, of political association, and have introduced new identity pronouncements, on which they have built their social and cultural ransom paths, as well as those of leadership recognition. The theme offers the opportunity to discuss some political anthropology issues, such as identity politics, the concept of power, and the social relationships.

The Phenomenology says that every knowledge is a perspective knowledge, because every knowledge is situated in a time and in a space. The human’s embodiment discloses a perspective overview on the world. The paper claims the aim to analyze how the sexual and gender dimensions, which are incarnated in a determinate body, are present in the qualitative research, specifically into the ethnographic observation. First for all, we hypothesize that the gender is a border for the access into a field and not in other, so to be man or woman is not neutral for the knowledge of a specific social context. Moreover, the performative dimension of the gender, which shows the norms that pre-exist and that conduct the role’s interaction (i.e. the role’s gendered content and the role’s gendered language) is another tie in the participant observation. The awareness that all the knowledge is gendered, requires to the fieldworker to play a double competence (ability). The researcher must use the self reflexivity to point out his gender identity and his background on this theme: he must point out his background frame relatively to the gender, his gender behaviour’s expectations in the interaction, and his correlated opinions. The researcher, moreover, must know that exist a cultural mainstream about the gender, but that the concrete gender playing is based on the interaction in a concrete frame. So, we have a lot of concrete ways in which the gender is embodied. The researcher on the field, so, must enter in a knowledge’s circulation in which must point attention to: the epistemic interdependence, i.e. the knowledge borns in the symbolic interaction between the researcher and the subject; the gendered nature of the communicative interaction between the researcher and the subject; the negotiable nature of the concrete managing of the gendered role in the interaction.

In most of Western countries, leisure studies have a rather consolidated tradition. Although still considered somehow marginal, this area of study has collected a number of researches and theoretical reflections that are both quantitatively and qualitatively significant. In Italy instead, even if some studies have been conducted, especially in the last thirty years, research appears quite fragmentary. This study intends to focus either on the relevance of leisure time as an object of study for sociologists or on the results leisure studies have attained so far. In particular, looking at the current literature, I shall focus on the different meanings of leisure as well as on the sociological aspects of this important «finite province of meaning». The study ends with a reflection on the characteristics of leisure in contemporary society.

For many years violence was neglected by sociology. Still today there is not enough awareness of the fact that violence can be a social force. An instrumental conception of violence exists in sociology which we have inherited from the classic authors. Side by side with this we must formulate another conception which will be called modernist, according to which violence is a social force loaded with meaning and endowed with a capacity to give structure (i.e., boundaries, a hierarchy, a sense of belonging) to a group. An essential point of the study of collective violence is that these two notions have to be used together. The events we have to explain are the result of their interplay. The paper attempts: 1) to recall the instrumental notion of violence; 2) to compare the two conceptions cited above 3) to elaborate on the notion of modernist violence and its crucial elements: connection between reason and emotion, invention of an enemy, the body of the victim transformed into matter to be shaped. The paper gives a number of empirical examples such as the genocides of the second part of the twentieth century, nationalist ethnic cleansing, and mass rape in Bosnia. It also discusses violence against women in Italy from the standpoint of this new perspective.

Social distance is a persistent topic in the history of human sciences. In Italy, theoretical studies on this subject have been recently published (Cesareo 2007). Therefore, the aim of this article is to offer only a few complementary suggestions. First of all, some references to social distance in common sense and literary language (as we can see in novels of various countries) are explored. Secondly, the historical and scientific research frame in which Bogardus experimented his social distance scale is outlined, as well as some subsequent international studies on social distance between different ethnic groups. Thirdly, the article considers both qualitative or micro-sociological research (Goffman 1959; 2002; 2008, Doxiadis 1968, Watson 1972) and macro-issues, such as social stratification or intercultural processes. Last, some recent analyses based on computational models are mentioned, such as Schelling’s models of spatial segregation (1969, 1971).