Vita e Pensiero

Economic and social changes and common values shift involve a parallel change of institutional structures. But institutions are often very hard to change. This difficulty can be remarked by analysing three topics: first of all, the subsidiarity principle and local agencies in the European governance; then, political power and public administration in Italy; finally, the relationship between European parliament and political parties.

This article offers some data and reflexions collected by two sociological researches led in an area of North Italy: Bologna and its land (2001-2002). In the first research the object was the socioreligious practices of piety to the tombs in four cemeteries of the Diocese (one cemetery in the town of Bologna, two in the country and one in the mountaine). In a second time a survey about the ways to celebrate funerals was led in all the parishes of the town, which is the most secularized area in the Diocese. The collected findings show the persistence in the bolognese population of the social practices to commemorate the deads, and the large diffusion of christian simbols; yet one can note a lot of difficulties in the transmission to children of these practices, so that visit to the cemetery of young people are infrequent. Furthermore one can note a differentiation in the funerals: less people asks the mass celebrated in its parish and more people prefers the simple blessing, given to the dead in the chapel of the hospital or of the cemetery. These difficulties in the socialization arise some questions on the future of the cult of deads in this secularized area, while one can note a lot of socio-cultural changes, as the «naturalization of the death», or its rimotion from the “post”-modern culture, and the presence of religious minorities, as muslims; and all these tendences are new challenges to the Catholic church.

The revival of ethnic/regional/language minorities within European national states, one of the components of the oppositional “identity movements” of the sixties and seventies, has attracted wide attention from several disciplinary quarters: political science ( e.g. A. Smith,) sociology (A. Touraine), sociology of language (J. Fishman) and others. More recently, it has been linked to the theory of globalization (“glocalism”). In Italy, for a number of reasons, regional/ethnic issues have long been neglected by “mainstream” sociology, and considered only as a peculiarity of some remote Alpine border areas. However, in 1999, a national bill (n. 482) was passed in the national parliament, recognizing the existence throughout Italy of 12 “historical language minorities” (Albanians, Catalans, Croats, Greeks, Occitans, Franco-Provençals, and others) beside the ones already constitutionally recognized (French, Germans, Slovenes) and granting them some rights, guarantees, and token financial support. By far the largest groups are the Sardinians ( pop. 1.650. and the Friulians (pop. 900.000). After a general-theoretical introduction, the paper briefly sketches the history of ethnic/regional/linguistic/ minority movements in Italy, the history and structure of Law 482/99, and finally focuses on the case of Friuli, where since the early seventies a tradition of sociological studies on these matters have been established, and many empirical surveys have been carried out, making this by far the best researched language minority in Italy. In the conclusion, the results of such research are put in the context of the “reversing language shift” theory advanced by Joshua Fishman, and questions are raised on the possibility to save Friulian, as many hundreds or perhaps thousands other threatened minor languages, by legal decrees, in the face of the powerful socio-economic and cultural forces (nationalisation, globalization “homologation”) pushing them toward extinction.

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 necessity of reflecting on the aims and methodologies in use in the varied world of Developmental Cooperation has stressed the importance of the evaluation process. This essay contains a presentation of the major forms, typologies and techniques of evaluation used by the major organizations concerned with Developmental Cooperation. It also relates about the evaluation of a specific project realized by an Italian Non Governamental Organization in Ecuador.