The terms welfare and responsible are certainly not new but their combination in defining a specific welfare model risks generating different interpretations in relation to the cognitive frameworks used by those who are confronted with this concept. The innovative nature of the concept led the research team to think of the definition of the concept not as an a priori point of the research but as the result of a participatory process oriented towards the construction of meaning. The research design was oriented by a Concept Mapping Research method. The research process brought to light seven characteristics that allow the identification of the coherence of a practice with the proposal of responsible welfare. The shared model of Responsible Welfare described in this paper provides a much needed conceptual framework for the analysis of three key aspects of Responsible Welfare in European Welfare States: attitudes, policy frameworks and socio-economic context.
In this article, we discuss the interdependent nature of the social, economic, and ecological dimensions and how these impact on resilience and social vulnerability. We define resilience as a combination of assets, capabilities and positive adaptation that enables people and communities to cope with adversity. We identify and present four types of capabilities that can lead the social change during socio-economic and/or environmental crisis: absorptive, adaptive, anticipatory, and transformative. These capabilities are essentials for building individual and community resilience through five main actions: 1) promoting innovation cycle with focus on equality, sustainability, human rights; 2) Innovating the public policies; 3) building trust in government through citizen engagement; 4) building interprofessional and interdisciplinary organizations; 5) innovating education and educating for innovation.
The recent pandemic as a widespread social crisis shows the social relevance of resilience, e.g. the capacity of deal with unfavorable events through a flexible approach. Recent studies on resilience underline the ability of the social context to activate resilience: that is the community resilience. A concept linked to the resilience is vulnerability, e.g. the presence of properties that make people and communities less able to cope with risks. In this paper, we will consider vulnerability and resilience as linked each other: it means that in many cases increasing community resilience can reduce community vulnerability. The model of Responsible Welfare, with its characteristics elements, offers useful indications to improve the community resilience, because it acts both on the structural elements of the social system (for example, to reduce inequalities) and at the same time on the process ones. More precisely, the Responsible Welfare model has the advantage of emphasizing the skills of several social actors involved in the production of well-being. The presence of this plurality of subjects seems to show the effect of empowering each actor who chooses to be responsible. For that reason, the process elements of community resilience (the activity named community empowerment) are able to reinforce the structural elements of resilience, realizing an empowered community. These reinforced structural elements represent resources that the community can use to more and more improve its well-being, creating a virtuous cycle.
During the pandemic, the system of social and health services has been heavily put under pressure, while the widespread micro-network of individual and collective actors belonging to the third sector and informal volunteering has emerged as fundamental. Besides activating quickly, these actors managed to adapt to the use of digital technologies to develop remote proximity. The paper analyses the evolution of the Social Street Residents in Via Venti Settembre in Verona as a form of technologically-mediated sociality. Using semi-structured interviews and the social network analysis, the aim is to investigate whether the network of offline relationships has been transposed online, what types of support the members exchanged online, what roles the members played, and whether the Social Street developed ties with other actors of the neighbourhood. The results show a strong resilience of the Social Street, which uses digital technology to exchange psychological support and to organize responses to instrumental needs with other third sector actors of the neighbourhood. However, the potential for networking, communication, and generation of proximity spaces does not meet a local government capable of including the Social Street in a civic and urban responsibility chain.
The article addresses the topic of homelessness and discusses how welfare services in this area reacted to the first wave of Covid-19 in one of the most affected Italian provinces, Bergamo. Through 18 semi-structured interviews carried out with the socio-educational and coordination staff of the services, we illustrate the organizational changes, the new routines, and the relational and emotional capabilities triggered by the diffusion of the virus and the lockdown. From the analysis of the empirical data comes out both the critical issues affecting the regional and local welfare governance, and the resilience and responsibility capabilities developed by the Third Sector services that led to the creation of a social space of proximity for the safety and the wellbeing of homeless and operators of the services themselves.
The National Recovery and Resilience Plan (PNRR) by the Italian Government represents an opportunity to develop innovative practices in the health sector. The article proposes a specific reflection on the future role of the “Case della Comunità”, subjects who will be entrusted with the task of integrating services (social, socio-health and health) at the territorial level, according to a logic that fully complies with the perspective of Welfare Responsible approach. In particular, the article analyzes the areas of application of the co-planning tool, envisaged by the new Third Sector Code, as a lever to make the “Case della Comunità” also a governance subject capable of integrating the subjects of the National Health Service with the thousands of non-profit organizations active in the field of prevention and treatment of individuals in condition of health poverty.
The paper opens with a brief analysis of national work-life balance policies in Italy during the pandemic period, with reference also to the role played by corporations. The focus is then placed on the local dimension because it is the one that demonstrates greater levels of social innovation. The research presents a case study referring to the Beatrice project, developed by a Family Local Alliance in the province of Bergamo, Lombardy. In conclusion, attention is drawn to the need to work on new models of governance (experimentalist governance), thanks to the development of new professional figures (welfare manager) that operate through a innovative semantic of the territory, understood not as a geographical space but as a place of co-design.
In the context of community welfare experiences, within the paradigm of responsible welfare (Cesareo 2017), the contribution presents the results of a case study conducted through digital ethnography and concerning the theme of online communities of practice as potential spontaneous tools of resilience in case of crisis. The analysis of the development of online communities of practice, through the interpretative dimensions of community resilience, shows the importance of promoting a different model of welfare. Such a model should promote the inclusion of people who, in a spontaneous and responsible way, supported with online activities, the resilient response of the community in situations of uncertainty such as the Covid-19 health emergency. The analysed case study of the online community Noi Denunceremo - Verità e giustizia per le vittime di Covid-19 shows the sociological relevance of pursuing this avenue of research and opens up new questions about the role of social media in times of crisis.
The use of «creativity», «creative industries», or «creative cities» as leitmotifs within the literature on urban development is not new and it finds its antecedents in other more classical approaches such as the role of «bohemians», «cultural industries» and «culture-led urban regeneration». Creativity has led to different paradigm shifts in productive relations and in the generation of innovation over the course of history (Jason 2011). The context of prosperity and growth that took a turn for the worse in 2008 had unequivocal consequences also for the creative sectors. Several authors that have geared their research towards this field (Banks and Deuze 2009; Gill and Pratt 2008 among others), debunked the concepts of creativity and creative class, as defined by Florida and provided empirical evidence that address the emergence of new forms of relationships between workers in creative sectors which have lot in common with the collaborative economy paradigm. This article addresses collaborative economy as a new way of conceptualizing collaboration and competition within creating industries. Departing from an analysis of the most recent literature on the topic (Botsman - Rogers 2010; Arvidsson - Peitersen 2013; Kostakis - Bauwens 2014; Benkler 2004), the overall objective of this article is to apply an understanding of how collaborative economy is redefining creative sectors.
The essay focuses on local knowledge as an antidote to the crisis of social cohesion in areas which are experiencing a strong demographic decline. After critically reviewing the concept of local knowledge, the paper analyses the role of individual and collective social actors – including the role of political institutions – in promoting and supporting forms of development and social solidarity starting with the various skills related to local embedded knowledge. In this perspective, some results of a recent empirical research are presented in problematic terms. The study was carried out in an area in the north of Sardinia which is affected by a considerable depopulation process and it was mainly realized by using non-standard techniques. The research highlights a substancial presence of tangible and intangible resources as well as of experience-based knowledge. Whenever a strategic role has been assigned to these elements, virtuous development processes plus interesting and originals practices of social cohesion can be detected.
Analysing young people’s involvement in an ultras group that has opened its own self-managed social centre in Bologna (Italy), the article explores the relationship between young people and the public sphere, focusing on the relationship between social marginalization and civic-political participation. Participant observations and biographical interviews have been conducted with the young supporters taking part in the ultras social centre between 2015 and 2017 with the aim to analyse how participation emerges in the face of a protracted condition of social marginalization and stigmatization. Drawing on De Certeau’s distinction between «tactics» and «strategies», the article analyses the process of civic-political activation of the young people through the ultras centre as a practice of everyday resistance.
The proposal aims to highlight the self-representations of homeless – economic migrant who transform the personal project of a different life in Italy in an exercise of survival. This modifies the perception of the self through the subversion of specific categories of «presentified time» and space delimited by their skills of perceiving their immediate surrounding space as a branch of their own bodies. The reflection focuses on the effects of experience of 47 migrants interviewed in two different moments and after almost two years after the first interview. The focus of research is an analysis of concept of abjection as self-perception of an irreversible degradation condition that blocks any possibility of recovery for homeless.
The purpose of this article is an investigation on the use of the so-called Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) in Italy. A FOIA law was enacted in Italy in 2016 and became operational in 2017. In particular, by using different datasets, we try to correlate the use of FOIA by associations and organizations of civil society to their actions either as producers of social cohesion or as actors of welfare initiatives. Access to information, by increasing information capital of actors, enables the management of complexity.