Vita e Pensiero

The article deals with tradition and folk music. After a preliminary close examination regarding the relationship among music, linguistic communication and rhythm, the essay shows that, in the age of globalizzation, in which the experience understood as erfharung results less and less probable and the continuous changes produce disorientation and a progressive weakening of the sense of social affiliation, the rediscovery of the tradition represents one of the sources of identification for the construction of the identity. Particularly, the values of authenticity and autonomy, attributed to traditional music, constitute the central feature of the expressive identity. Among the treated matters, particular attention is reserved to the main forms of expression of folk music as work of art. Finally, the paper investigates the modalities of socialization to instruments of folk music: the concept of social practice is used for underlining the great importance of «bodily apprehension» in the processes of acquisition of the necessary techniques to play traditional instruments.

The social consequences of the progressive degradation of common natural resources (or commons) are the focus of debate among scholars of environmental change. Towards the end of the twentieth century, two areas of research on the commons consolidated: the Theory of Common-Pool Resources and Environmental Sociology. On one hand, three decades of empirical research have revealed many rich and complicated histories of commons management. Elinor Ostrom and scholars of Indiana University have shown that the logic of commons management depends on a set of assumptions about human motivation, about the rules governing the use of the commons, about the character of the common resources and about institutional framework. On the other hand, starting from Riley Dunlap, environmental sociology has investigated the field of social impact of environmental crisis emphasizing the crucial role of the human social behaviour to response environmental problems. These two strands of research have proceeded independently of each other, but the complexity of the relationship between society and environment now requires a rapprochement. This paper provides a necessarily selective overview of this new integrated framework and examines the opportunities it offers.

The job market is changed. The increasing women’s entrance has modified its features and dynamics, but this change it’s not complete and not ended yet. Although these changes, the job world is always a male world. Women have to confront with big problems yet, to consolidate and to assert their presence in it. Big problems both in quantitative terms and in qualitative ones. The phenomenon of vertical and horizontal segregation (ceiling glass and wall glass) is completely existing yet. In spite of this, an increasing number of women invade public and private organizations also in typically male sectors and positions of activity. This research is focused on personal and professional courses of some of women-managers.

Gianni Gasparini is a sociologist and at the same time he is also a poet and a critic. The sociological glares of its work become, in the virtuous encounter with the poetical pen, as many literary reflectors on the human condition. It is necessary to comprise better, after the reading of its poem One hundred kites, if with Gasparini the poetic writing becomes sociology and if the sociology comes used for the construction of the poetic interlacing. If the poetry (and the literature) sociology is made because it narrates sociological types or because it puts in scene social processes sociological utopies like that many times over evoked of the «Community of the kites» composed from one hundred individuals «united and distinguished/communicating and silent».

This article explores the strong tie betweeb writing and anthropology. For Social sciences in general and for anthropology in particular writing has always been a fundamental feature of field research. So the recent transformations in anthropological ephistemology and methodology have changed not only anthropology research objects bur also the role of writing, that has become even more important. Marc Augé is one of the most important anthropologists whose thought has taken to a significant renewal of that discipline and in this paper he offers his authoritative poin of view on writing and anthropology.

In this article the author supports the hypothesis that a sociologist, or generally speaking a social scientist, is a writer, even it is necessary to distinguish between uno scrivente (a sheer writing subject) and uno scrittore (a writer strictly speaking), the difference being represented by the quality of writing of the latter as compared to the former: in particular, a writer-sociologist will make use of personal and discretionary choices as concerns written language. On the other hand, the author illustrates some examples drawn by contemporary poetry in order to show how literary production can contribute to give remarkable sociological insights. In conclusion, the article suggests that social sciences can learn about their own subjects and issues from literature.

The essay should give pleasure, as Virginia Woolf would put it, the essay must be «pure like water or pure like wine». Unfortunately, most efforts in this direction are being destroyed these days since writing in a standardized, arid, and academic English is a must if you want your essay to be accepted and taken seriously by the scientific community. Over the last decades the essay in the social sciences received valuable contributions from poetry, literature and philosophy. The contaminatio generum contributes in a positive way to the pleasure on the part of the reader, and of «tired people coming home in the evening» (V.W.), too. This phenomenon happens to occur, for instance, in Gasparini’s sociological writings, where the contributions of his different souls (the poet, the critic, the social scientist) amalgamate in a most agreeable and pleasant «interstitial» writing.

After the linguistic turn in Social Sciences, the investigation on how Sociology should be communicated has become a central issue for postmodernists. The choice of pursuing a narrative sociology is not inspired only by the new paradigm of communication. It takes into account the changes in the sociological field which affect the ways of communication, the relation with expert audiences and the self-representation patterns of this discipline. The theory of this essay is that, within the context of the ethnographic research on the field (in particular the Grounded Theory), the sociologist engages in practices which have a certain affinity to literary work, as he plays a role of storyteller and painstaking manager of the written material related to the collection and interpretation of data. In all the main stages of the research process Sociology builds theories and at the same time communicates its results by means of an articulated writing which should be treated with the greatest care and attention.