Vita e Pensiero

The article discusses and criticizes a diffused narrative about «digital global generation»....

As there is no convergence between scholars regarding the definition of social cohesion, it is also difficult to translate it empirically...

Numero 3-4 del 2013

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.

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.