Having Lost for Fear of Losing: Culture, Individual Interests and the Negative Spiral of the Italian Case

Horizon Research Publishing CorporationThe present contribution stands as a wider sociological reflection of some empirical evidence resulting from a national research project entitled "Federalism, Local Autonomy and Quality of Democracy". In an attempt to understand the reasons for the substantial halt of the federal reform process in Italy, analysis of content of 60 interviews given by privileged witnesses of the administrative and local political system emphasized some cultural traits which played a seminal role. Above all, it has been detect the persistence of a ruling-classes political culture geared toward a "private" or group-oriented dimension of interest more than in accordance with public and collective aims, which creates a network of relationships between politics, society and the economy. This network is oriented to the defence of what has been achieved thanks to familistic (or neo-feudalist) mechanisms of interaction. By looking at the picture that emerges within a wider constructivist theoretical framework, it is possible to understand the Italian lack of engagement towards the bandwagon formed by countries that have managed to gain an advantage through the phenomena of globalization in terms of growth, competitiveness, development and democratization of decision-making processes in their political systems (by implementing, for example, inclusive decision-making practices supported by the use of new technologies of information and communication). The aim of the contribution is therefore a reflection on the Italian identity and political culture and their weight in shifting the impact of globalization from a potential added value for both national and local development to the virtual present loss of competitiveness of the whole system

THE DARK GLORY OF CRIMINALS NOTES ON THE ICONIC IMAGINATION OF THE MULTITUDES

This article explores the relationships between crime, collective responses to it, and the social production of so-called great criminals. It argues that crime, especially sexual and violent crime, produces significant imbalances in individuals habitually subject to instrumental actions, identitarian thinking and positive law. These imbalances are emotional as well as cognitive and, under certain conditions of communication, can generate states of multitude, that is, collective states linked to an intense affectivity and to the prevalence of mythic or symbolic thinking. These states reach their limits and become condensed in the mytho-historical figure of the great criminal. In this sense, great criminals are a function of such multitudinous states: points of imputation that concentrate and catalyze the affective imagination unleashed by collective effervescence

Crises, Hegemony and Change in the International System: A Conceptual Framework

The paper tries to shed light on the conceptual link between international crises like the one following September 11, 2001, the Asian financial crisis of 1997/1998, the end of the Cold War or major international conflicts, and processes of change in the international system. It argues that cultural structures rest on their continuous instantiation through social practices, thereby making them coterminous with process. Process is constituted by meaningful acts of social agents, and can thus only be grasped by analysing meaning. Meaning is transmitted by language. Meaningful language is never reducible to individual speakers; it is a social act. In the paper, I call this process discourse. Linking Critical Discourse Analysis (CDA) with the theory of hegemony developed by Ernesto Laclau and Chantal Mouffe, I will finally be able to show how hegemonic discourses serve as the nexus between crises and cultural structures and how they make cultural change possible.Crisis, change, discourse, poststructuralism, hegemony, international politics

La necesaria recuperación del diálogo social para abordar la regulación del impacto de las nuevas tecnologías en los derechos de los trabajadores

The European Union has urged the European Commission, Member States and social partners to establish rules for an economic sphere which is either deregulated or has significant gaps in regulation: digitilisation and the platform economy. The European Parliament has made a series of recommendations which establish the social guidelines necessary to regulate labour relations on collaborative platforms. Accepting changes in the fundamental nature of labour law requires the overcoming of untouchable axioms which survive in contemporary economic thought, such as the one which links rigid labour regulations to the delay in recovery from the economic crisis, to rising unemployment, and more recently, to a lack of adaptation of labour regulation to technological changes. Once again, changes in labour legislation are required in order to adapt correctly to the digital economy, although it is emphacised that this “new regulation” cannot be made without the social partners.La Unión Europea ha instado a la Comisión Europea, a los Estados miembros y a los interlocutores a normar un ámbito económico desregularizado o con lagunas en la regulación: la digitalización y la economía de plataforma. El Parlamento Europeo ha dirigido una serie de recomendaciones con las directrices sociales necesarias para que se regulen las relaciones laborales en las plataformas colaborativas. Es preciso superar intocables axiomas que perviven en el pensamiento económico contemporáneo, como el que vincula la rigidez de la normativa laboral al retraso en la salida de la crisis económica y al incremento del número de desempleados, a lo que ahora quiere añadirse la falta de adaptación de la regulación laboral a las nuevas tecnologías. De nuevo se exigen cambios legislativos en el orden laboral para lograr una correcta adaptación a la economía digital; si bien, es preciso subrayar que esta “nueva regulación” no podrá hacerse al margen de los interlocutores sociales

Building an Ethical Small Group (Chapter 9 of Meeting the Ethical Challenges of Leadership)

This chapter examines ethical leadership in the small-group context. To help create groups that brighten rather than darken the lives of participants, leaders must foster individual ethical accountability among group members, ensure ethical group interaction, avoid moral pitfalls, and establish ethical relationships with other groups. In his metaphor of the leader\u27s light or shadow, Parker Palmer emphasizes that leaders shape the settings or contexts around them. According to Palmer, leaders are people who have an unusual degree of power to create the conditions under which other people must live and move and have their being, conditions that can either be as illuminating as heaven or as shadowy as hell. 1 In this final section of the text, I\u27ll describe some of the ways we can create conditions that illuminate the lives of followers in small-group, organizational, global, and crisis settings. Shedding light means both resisting and exerting influence. We must fend off pressures to engage in unethical behavior while actively seeking to create healthier moral environments

National Business Associations under Stress: Lessons from the French Case.

Since its reform in 1998, the national association of French employers and industry, MEDEF, appears to be an example of strong interest organisation. Unlike trade unions, the peak business organisation has been stable and unified, especially in terms of membership density. Through a study of the collective action of businesses in France, this article sheds doubt on such an impression and argues that the national business association has been put severely under stress in recent years. Like all encompassing associations, MEDEF comprises a great variety of interests and constantly has to manage its internal heterogeneity. An analysis of the historical and institutional context of its recent reform demonstrates that MEDEF's forceful media campaign should not be understood as a display of actual strength and coherence; rather it is the last resort of collective action that the association can claim legitimately as its responsibility.

Trade Union Politics as a Countermovement? A Polaniyan Perspective

The article develops a conceptual proposal for the inquiry of trade unions. On the basis of Karl Polanyis theory, four patterns of political mobilization applied by trade unions in the current Transformation are pointed out

Unmet goals of tracking: within-track heterogeneity of students' expectations for

Educational systems are often characterized by some form(s) of ability grouping, like tracking. Although substantial variation in the implementation of these practices exists, it is always the aim to improve teaching efficiency by creating homogeneous groups of students in terms of capabilities and performances as well as expected pathways. If students’ expected pathways (university, graduate school, or working) are in line with the goals of tracking, one might presume that these expectations are rather homogeneous within tracks and heterogeneous between tracks. In Flanders (the northern region of Belgium), the educational system consists of four tracks. Many students start out in the most prestigious, academic track. If they fail to gain the necessary credentials, they move to the less esteemed technical and vocational tracks. Therefore, the educational system has been called a 'cascade system'. We presume that this cascade system creates homogeneous expectations in the academic track, though heterogeneous expectations in the technical and vocational tracks. We use data from the International Study of City Youth (ISCY), gathered during the 2013-2014 school year from 2354 pupils of the tenth grade across 30 secondary schools in the city of Ghent, Flanders. Preliminary results suggest that the technical and vocational tracks show more heterogeneity in student’s expectations than the academic track. If tracking does not fulfill the desired goals in some tracks, tracking practices should be questioned as tracking occurs along social and ethnic lines, causing social inequality

Editorial: Feminism, women’s movements and women in movement

Introduction to Special Issue that engages with the increasingly important, separate yet interrelated themes of feminism, women’s movements and women in movement in the context of global neoliberalism