1,720,979 research outputs found
The Contentious Politics of Expertise. Experts, Activism and Grassroots Environmentalism
No full textBased on mixed-methods research and ethnographic fieldwork at various sites in Italy, this book examines the relationship between expertise and activism in grassroots environmentalism. Presenting interviews with citizens, activists and experts, it considers activism surrounding infrastructure in urban areas, in connection with water management, transport, tour- ism and waste disposal. Through comparisons between different political environments, the author analyses the ways in which citizens, political activists and technical experts participate in using expertise, shedding light on the effects of this on the structure and composition of social movements, as well as the implications for the mechanisms of participation and the formation of alliances. Bridging the sociology of expertise and contentious politics, this study of the relationship between contentious expertise and democratic accountability shows how conflict transforms, rather than inhibits, expertise production into a ‘contentious politics by other means’. As such, it will appeal to social scientists with interests in social movements, environmental sociology, science and technology studies, and the sociology of knowledge
Riconoscere, identificare, spiegare. L'arte di teorizzare e la sociologia di Alessandro Pizzorno
No full textThis essay draws a profile of Alessandro Pizzorno, one of the most prominent sociologists of postwar Europe. It focuses on the foundations of his theory which covers a broad set of sociological and political issues that go well beyond disciplines’ boundaries. The author traces a genealogy of Pizzorno’s theory of recognition from its inception with the early anthropological study on the mask to its more recent and complex sociological elaboration. While criticising the paradigms of rational choice Pizzorno founded his theory of recognition on a sustained dialogue with the social theories of Hegel and Hobbes. The explanatory role of sociology is therefore defined by a thorough and novel reconsideration of the relations between the theorist and the agent. From this perspective, the process of knowing is defined as a process of unveiling a foreign social reality where social life is considered through the metaphor of the stranger, expressing the foundational relation between the Self and the Other. In the author’s view, «theoretical pluralism» is what best describes Alessandro Pizzorno’s approach
Classico dell'epistemologia politica? Storia e attualità de L'Inchiesta Operaia di Marx
No full textoperaia di Marx può essere compresa solo all’interno della sua più generale
prospettiva metodologica volta a svelare scientificamente il carattere critico
e non naturale del mondo sociale. Ripresa in contesti storici e politici da
collettivi intellettuali e gruppi organizzati tra i più diversi a livello globale,
l'Inchiesta Operaia (1880) rivive in questa pubblicazione di Fondazione
Giangiacomo Feltrinelli introdotta da una ampia ricostruzione scritta da
Riccardo Emilio Chesta sulle tante vite di questa opera classica del filosofo di
Treviri
Tra Scienza e Letteratura. Intervista a Luciano Gallino sulla sociologia in Italia
No full textIl saggio-intervista affronta il percorso intellettuale di Luciano Gallino, riferimento fondamentale per le numerose generazioni che si sono affacciate sulla scena degli studi sociologici nel nostro Paese, con un profilo intellettuale che eccede gli stretti ambiti disciplinari accademici.
Autore di circa cinquanta monografie, nonché di numerosissime altre pub- blicazioni sotto forma di saggi e articoli su riviste specializzate, la sua produzione scientifica attraversa un arco temporale di circa cinquant’anni di sociologia
Book Review, Mario Diani 'The Cement of Civil Society' Cambridge University Press 2015
No full textReviewing The Cement of Civil Society means engaging with a book elaborated over
almost a decade of theoretically driven empirical work, aimed at updating the sociological
literature on collective action within a wide and sweepingly ambitious scope. Without
a doubt, Mario Diani’s latest work is worth reading and studying for scholars and students
of many different fields – among them network analysis, organizational sociology,
political sociology, and social movement studies. This is not to mention its general social
scientific interest beyond any of these particular niches.
This work attempts to account for how interactions shape social bonds, how collective
actors exchange resources, and how the combinations of all these factors definitively
“cement” social life – thereby forming some of the bedrock for what we generally
call “civil society.” Thus, the questions it poses are of relevance to anyone concerned
with general social mechanisms, and the dynamics affecting social life at a broad level
Stranger in his own Land. Gramsci and Italian Sociology
No full textI n contemporary debates in the social sciences,
critical sociology and Marxism are typically located
in the same box. In fact, their relationship is hardly
self-evident. The reconstruction of the discipline in
Italy after the Second World War perfectly illustrates the
struggle for the hegemony of the study of “the social” –
and the inherently confl ictual relations between sociology
and Marxism
On Baiocchi's 'We the Sovereign'
No full textEngaging with real and normative stances along with scientific and political
dilemmas, the Brazilian-American sociologist Gianpaolo Baiocchi tries to make
sense of contemporary political events and experiences through an intellectual
book which aims to speak to a wider audience than the usual academic one.
We, the Sovereign is an intellectual tool which has been written in a sort of ‘ontological
complicity’ with activists, engaged citizens and practitioners, developed
years after years of participatory observations and critical scholarship on urban
politics, social movements and political participation, whose goal is to inform
and foster reflexivity to concur in improving experiments of emancipatory politics.
For the reader in a rush, the book is structured around three concise themes.
Popular sovereignty is the first theme that emerges as an exercise of constant triangulation
between the dynamics of social movements and the state
What is critical about the crisis of expertise?
Full text linkParticularly in these pandemic times, appeals to the state of crisis as well as to the rethinking of expertise are omnipresent. Though published few months before COVID-19 disrupted ordinary frictions between politics and expertise, Gil Eyal’s The Crisis of Expertise (2019) helps us going directly into the vortex of this crisis, while at the same time avoiding any shortcut.
In contrast to sensational disquisitions regarding the death of expertise, claims about a “science under assault” and the spread of fake news, Eyal’s book is an intellectual contribution which tries to tidy up a long debate on expertise. Stuck in the hybrid nature of its public-scholarly aporias, this debate got further complicated by the public relevance of these controversies, characterized by conflicts of value or interests, and uncertainties about the legitimate procedures to solve them.
Despite these dramatic complications, Gil Eyal clearly moves away from purely normative or moralistic postures. In this essay, he gives a critical overview of key issues regarding the studies of expertise and offers important insights to interpret many of the most important experiments of technical democracy. He does it with a deep theoretical understanding, intellectual verve, and even a certain prophetic spirit characteristic of the sociology of science since Merton.
The result is an agile, but densely written book that clears some of the many misunderstandings of that obscure object of desire that takes the name of expertise. While re-defining many issues, The Crisis of Expertise poses new ones and begs the question: “if expertise is in a crisis, what is critical about expertise
Kaizen. Toyotismo e fattore umano oltre il determinismo tecnologico
No full textNegli anni Ottanta, iniziò ad imporsi nel settore automobilistico mondiale un modello o meglio una
filosofia produttiva di derivazione giapponese, conosciuto come toyotismo, destinato divenire un
modello produttivo egemone in tutte le imprese ad alta intensità di lavoro e innovazione tecnologica.
Un’autentica rivoluzione culturale – prima che organizzativa – che superando molti caratteri
fondamentali del fordismo ha segnato una nuova epoca del lavoro. Una rivoluzione che spazza via le
illusioni tecnologiche rifondando la produzione su una nuova concezione del lavoro umano, meglio
adatta alla complessità del mercato globale e della società odierni
Labour Movements, Gig Economy and Platform Capitalism
No full textFar from being a new phenomenon, the gig economy has been reshaped by the current rise of
platform capitalism. But while new technologies have introduced new challenges for labour,
new forms of worker mobilisation have emerged, renewing the forms of collective action and
unionism in the new phase of digital capitalism. The chapter looks at the specific challenges
coming from the transformation of the work and social relations more broadly and distinguish
between sectors of the digital economy characterised by new forms of organisations based on
solidarity (microwork, crowdwork), and those sectors where new forms of conflicts and mobilisation
are taking place (mobility, delivery). By linking critical labour studies and social movement
theories, it analyses the ways in which digitalisation can be considered as a factor that not
only disrupts traditional social relations at work through fragmentation and individualisation
but also, conversely, opens up new opportunities to reshape worker social relations and forms of
organisation. It will look at the interactions between digital transformation of platform work,
interaction dynamics among the relevant actors of platform capitalism, and opportunities and
constraints of worker mobilisation. In this sense, social movement theories can help addressing
more general issues regarding this new wave of labour mobilisation, by looking at the opportunity
structure, organisational resources, repertoires of action, and the claims of mobilisation.
While platform capitalism tends to fragment labour and design new forms of worker control
through new digital technologies, workers have under some conditions the power to respond
to these challenges, creating new forms of labour mobilisations with repertoires and claims that
in part renew the traditional forms of unionism
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