This paper examines the relationship between Internet use and reading. «Reading» refers to
non-work reading, the sustained reading of printed materials that people do for pleasure and information
in their leisure time. Do the two activities compete? Or is the competition image wrong? Can
people be both wired and well-read? The results about this questions, supported by some empirical
researches, can be resume in the following sentences: 1) Reading and the Internet do not compete for
time. The Internet is less greedy than television, so heavy Internet use does not displace reading the
way it does television; 2) Reading is greedy, however. While the Internet can be woven into the fabric
of everyday life, reading requires some time clearly demarcated as leisure time. Therefore there are
certain periods in the life course – college, and likely new parenthood or unusually intense times at
work – where reading declines. Once leisure time opens up, the reading habit reasserts itself; 3) The
Internet offers some support for reading in terms of reviews, author information, book orders, and
the ability to pursue particular topics. Reading supports Internet use as well.
This essay examines the opportunities offered by the cognitive turn and its possible effects on
political science. It focuses on the problem of group decision-making. After showing the existence of
two different approaches to rationality, the bulk of this essay reviews how social psychology has analyzed
group decisions: from experiments influenced by behaviorism, which employed concepts
derived from economics (preferences, equilibrium...), to works with an increasingly autonomous
approach (sections II and IV). A few researches that exemplify this turn away from economic concepts
and the experimental logic are examined (section III). After defining the concepts of cognitive
and rhetoric turn, the essay concludes underlining the risks and the opportunities of this new paradigm,
usually defined as «deliberative democracy» (sections V and VI).
Flexibility is one of the main aspects of post-modern and contemporary society.It is deeply
changing the labour market and consequentely the lifestyle of the subjects and their ability to make
plans for the future. Flexibility has a plural nature and the subjects adapt to it in different ways,
according to their sex, age and above all the acquired knowledge and competences. It becomes more
and more urgent the necessity to manage flexibility and the changes brought about by it.To this purpose,
politics must recover its role and function and decide on the aims, in order to restore the functional hierarchical relation with economy. This is very important so that people, though the flexibility,
learn to perform cooperative actions based on mutual trust and solidarity.
The purpose of this article is to stress on the value of the hypothesis of the rational action and
of the concept of generating mechanism for the theoretical modelling and for the empirical analysis
of educational opportunity inequality. Two theoretical approaches will be examined and compared:
on the one hand, the cultural capital theory; on the other hand, the rational educational choice
model. The analysis tries to show that the former has a limited congruence degree for many points
with empirical data whereas the latter brings to light some essential aspects of statistical structure of
educational opportunity inequality. The basic argument of this paper is that the restricted explanatory
power of capital cultural theory comes from its main theoretical limits: namely, the underestimation
of rational action and the lack of research for generating mechanisms. On the contrary, the rational
educational choice model founds its own logic and explanatory structure precisely on these two
analytical elements. In conclusion, some theoretical and empirical development of such a model will
be outlined.
The article aims to test Mario Diani’s definition of the novelty of social movements in the case
of a political system lacking a shared legitimacy. A social movement should be considered ‘new’ not
on the basis of the issues it addresses or the ideas it supports, but insofar as it shapes new solidarities
and group belongings that break some traditional political cleavages. This conceptual framework is
applied to the case of the civil rights mobilization of the Northern Irish minority in the 1960-70s. After
outlining the premises, causes, and phases of the Catholics’ political protest, the article addresses the
persistence of the social and political dualism in the province. As it is suggested, it is not easy to unambiguously
identify the character of novelty of a social movement according to Diani’s scheme. In
Northern Ireland, the various groups emerged to claim equal civil and political rights for Catholics
have deeply altered the political arena and government’s agenda, but not modified the social bases of
the political system. Rather, they have been channelled through the dominant ethno-religious cleavage,
and brought about an exacerbation of the political conflict between the two communities, opening
up the way for the extremes to mobilize.
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