Vita e Pensiero

This article is part of a future research project on the figures of the autochthonous, cosmopolite and allochthonous in multicultural societies. In defining three fields (history, society, instruction) in which I will analyze the subjects of this work, I intend to produce two digressions for studying the distinction between concepts of diversity/difference and multicultural/multiethnic. This will allow me to analyze the autochthonous, the cosmopolite and the allochthonous in their relations with the language, the food and the place. I consider the probability that these subjects are residual figures of sociality without an effective correspondence to the facts. In multicultural societies the identities could be redesigned respect to those primordial and to the expectative created by our way of thinking. However, this outcome would be important to induce us to consider in a critical way our attitude toward the citizenship concept in multicultural societies.

The concept of community has known a wide spread use in sociology. However, although, it might seem simple to define community as one of the best known associative forms of human cohabitation, such a definition presents also some empirical problems. In the first place, because community has been often defined as something that dissolves itself with the coming of the modern world. Secondly, because recently such a concept has been used in sociological analysis with problematic meanings. This article attempts to explore such a concept in empirical terms and to offer a contribution to its redefinition referring to a field investigation which involved some communities of families. Starting from this, a definition of community is hypothesized in the form of a social relationship strongly anchored to the moment of intersubjectivity and capable of generating mutations in contratendency to the contemporary culture.

The article analyses the meaning of tattooing as a form of narration. Introducing the body as a text that can convey different forms of thought (derived both from philosophy and from sociology), the author maintains that the body modification is today as an open and living work whose interpretation has an influence on the individual identity and can be changed by means of the interaction with others. A thumbnail sketch of the history of the practice among traditional communities up to contemporary society is drawn to provide a series of fundamental usages for the inscription of the body. The concern here is to show tattooing as an expression of the whole individual (no longer divided into mind vs. body) and of his own perceived identity, underlying the relation of the chosen symbols (and of the symbolic ritual) with society, which remains the main source offering forms of representation and the main stage for the construction of identity. So that the whole final text can be read as the result of a process where the authorship is shattered among the society itself.

In the actual phase of capitalistic development, the features of a widespread culture du projet are emerging. Work and private life are series of time-limited projects that we can consider microspaces where it becomes possible to determine an order - differently from the network excluding any internal arbitrary division. At the same time, the economic axis, structuring the old left-right opposition, crosses the biopolitic axis where these political positions are reversed. It’s on this biopolitic field, as Boltanski describes it, that most of the conflicts about life’s reproduction take place today.

Late modernity is characterized by a crisis of institutional power in term of civic action and civic behaviour. In general, the crisis of institutional ability to grant directives about social conduct has produced a strong disorder among subjects. Durkheimian condition of «anomie» is the authentic scenario of occidental society at the time of globalization. Present globalization is interlaced with crisis of social behaviour agencies and there is a trend considering historical model out-of-date. In this context charismatic power is finding a new place, out of any reference to supernatural gifts. The recognition of the bearer of charisma is here founded on a free choice by subjects. While main lines of political and civic institutions are weakly recognised, charismatic institutions have a moderate but increasing agreement. By this fact it is possible to change status of subject in sociological thought. However it is difficult to recognize subject as a simple rational choice actor or at the opposite as a whole socialized subject. The term of «persona» suggests a good issue across several types of rationality. It is this «persona» that accepts charismatic institutions, in spite of normative institutions, and chooses his membership out of instrumental rationality and out of behavioural socialization.

Globalization has given rise to an intense and problematic detachment between companies and the territory they work within. This has narrowed the time horizon of the companies, which have been conceiving the territory as a very short-term resource, something to be exploited here and now, without plans for the future. In these condictions, the social responsibility of the company has been suggested as a strategy able to rebuild the lost bond and give the companies complete social subjectivity, that is made possible by the shift from the stoke holder theory to the stake holder one. Within this important change the debate is focused on whether it is right to consider the social responsibility of the company as an economic strategy, in connection with the new character of the citizenconsumer, or it is better to return it to the ethical sphere and found on it the ambitious plan of a responsible and joint society.

In the last few years there has been considerable attention on creativity seen from the point of view of several disciplines. This paper looks at the historical evolution of concept of creativity, by underlining its collective dimension (psychology and natural sciences especially contributed to this connotation). Until a decade ago, creativity was a marginal subject in sociological reflection, which from the initial stages has tended to focus mainly on the rational dimension of action. ‘Spread creativity’ is an effective key word to read some relevant phenomena of contemporary society: cultural economy, the rise of a new creative class, consumption as creative performance. In this context, I consider the condition of Italy, example of a ‘creativity without system’. Finally, I try to address the initial question: is creativity an expression of an individual genius or a social practice? The first definition is still maintained, but today the social dimension is prevailing. Recent studies actually underline the relevance of contextual components for creativity development. Creativity is an intersubjective value and contemporary societies are moved by a creative ethos. Creativity as a social motor requires further sociological inquiry, preferably carried out with qualitative and non-standard methodology.