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In this paper, the aim is to highlight the importance of Maurice Merleau-Ponty's unfinished work, Le visible et l'invisible, and its connection to his broader project, Être et Monde. This project, comparable to works by Heidegger and Sartre, explores a new "indirect ontology" that captures the complexity of human perception. Key concepts such as "chair" (flesh) and intercorporeality underscore the dynamic relationship between the self and others. Merleau-Ponty's ideas on embodiment and alterity offer profound insights into the sacred/human relationship, presenting it as a transformative, relational process. These reflections deepen our understanding of human interaction with the world and the divine. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The purpose of this article is to highlight the tension between some juridical and philosophical-conceptual categories and the new technological frontiers, represented by the Metaverse and its possibilities of human interaction. The legal arrangement of marriage will be taken as a point of reference to verify on the one hand, whether under a philosophical profile the traditional concepts of "place" and "acting subject" can still be considered unchanged and on the other hand, whether an act performed in the metaverse has any relevance in the legal framework. At the end of this paper, I will try to demonstrate how the metaverse leads to a resemantization of some conceptual categories, thus opening up the possibility of considering any act inside the Metaverse as effectively performed. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper describes the changing relationships between FCA-Sata workers and its implications on worker solidarity construction. Although plant restructuring has fragmented work and hampered social interactions between workers, new forms of complicity and collaboration based on a sense of solidarity arise from reconfigured work practices. These solidarity relationships emerge in the space of the workshop, involving various occupational profiles, but also in the interstitial spaces of work, such as in the buses that take the workers to the factory. Finally, this article will explore the field of action of FCA-Sata workers and the related phenomena of opposition and adaptation to the factory system. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Emotions today seem to play a fundamental role. In fact, emotions make social interaction between individuals possible and it is thanks to them that communication processes develop and make dynamics of social integration possible. In this paper, emotions are analysed as transformative resources, whose strength appears almost revolutionary for the subject's ability to act. Despite the widespread processes of individualization in contemporary society, the individual appears to be looking for new ties and new relationships not only in the emotional sphere but also in other contexts which, although elusive and difficult to identify, are crucial for social life. What are the new scenarios in which emotions manifest themselves? What kind of bonds are generated in the practices of social interaction nowadays? It is in this perspective we intend to investigate emotions such as altruism, solidarity, gratitude, empathy induced thanks to the commitment of the Tuscan Voluntary Association Auser Abitare Solidale. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Some sociologists contributing to the foundations of relational sociology on the international stage have been recently remarking a kind of affinity between both notions of social relation and social life: they particularly refer to the pioneering views of Georg Simmel, who is largely mentioned and concerned in the following paper. The interaction among social subjects generates unexpected and emergent forms which sociologist must detect and inquiry: the interactive feature of any relation refers to the "content" of the social relation itself. Form and content stand for social life. This paper aims at addressing and deepening relational perspective, as regarded by Pierpaolo Donati, towards a Lebenssoziologie: in short, it hints to concern sensu strictissimo social relations as forms of social life. This lucky locution (i.e. Lebenssoziologie), adopted by Scott Lash more than ten years ago into a new interpretation of Simmel's social theory, concerns social life in terms of stream which fits with analysis on such themes as media and ICT. In this contribution, Donati's relational sociology is challenged and thematised in relation of a critical and relational Lebenssoziologie. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Copyright of Rivista Italiana di Educazione Familiare is the property of Firenze University Press and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites or posted to a listserv without the copyright holder's express written permission. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use. This abstract may be abridged. No warranty is given about the accuracy of the copy. Users should refer to the original published version of the material for the full abstract. (Copyright applies to all Abstracts.)

Nowadays consumption dynamics analysis is carving out a growing important role within the reflection on youth condition. Consumption choices play a basic role within the identity building process, as well within the mechanisms of social interaction, and gain credit as a further medium for relationships and sharing. The paper aims to analyze the meaning of a specific consumption experience, that one of tattoos, more and more widespread among the new generations. In the article, we’ll analyze, in particular, the results of a qualitative research project carried out on a Millennials sample, young people born between 1981 and 1996, in order to pick out the reasons which in most cases drive them to tattooing. The elements we collected by means of some focus groups and semi-structured interviews have stressed a double reading: for one part of the sample, the meaning of tattoo has to be spotted just in the right drawing chosen by the individual, while for another it’s tattooing itself, the experience lived in real terms, to take the prevailing meaning, sometimes even regardless of the figure inked onto the skin. When tattoo reflects the will to expressly convey something, its meaning seems to be traced back to three different purposes: the one bound to one’ identity, the one peculiar to a rite of initiation and the one that points out an emotional bond. In conclusion, for the Millennials choosing tattooing seems to be a way of claiming their own individuality tangibly, changing their body into one of the means thanks to which they can tell the others their own story. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Copyright of Sociologia (Gangemi Editore S.p.A.) is the property of Gangemi Editore S.P.A. and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites or posted to a listserv without the copyright holder's express written permission. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use. This abstract may be abridged. No warranty is given about the accuracy of the copy. Users should refer to the original published version of the material for the full abstract. (Copyright applies to all Abstracts.)

Copyright of Form@re is the property of Firenze University Press and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites or posted to a listserv without the copyright holder's express written permission. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use. This abstract may be abridged. No warranty is given about the accuracy of the copy. Users should refer to the original published version of the material for the full abstract. (Copyright applies to all Abstracts.)

This article focuses on processes of social inclusion/exclusion of four different Roma groups living in Apulia, in Southern Italy: a) Italian Roma living in some municipalities in the province of Lecce; b) Roma Xoraxane currently residing in a settlement ("Campo Sosta") in Lecce; c) some romanian Roma living in emergency housing conditions in Lecce; d) a group of Bulgarian Roma employed in seasonal agricultural work in the province of Foggia, under exploitative conditions. The essay aims to highlight the way in which the inclusion/exclusion conditions are politically and socially constructed, affecting different Roma groups present on the same territory. Starting from such cases, the paper inquires into the possible influence of policies-making, processes of social interaction and socio-economic changes on social and territorial inclusion/exclusion of different Roma groups. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The aim of this paper, is to highlight the impact of the novel coronavirus on those entering and undertaking legal education. It seeks to explore the opportunities that mass-disruption to the status quo presents both within the classroom and the wider extra-curricular experiences of law students at the undergraduate and postgraduate level. Additionally the authors seek to examine the key challenges faced by technology enabled, socially distanced legal education and considers whether these challenges will remain should a more technologically enabled, flexible approach to legal education provision survive pandemic conditions. The paper draws upon some of the key themes raised in other papers in this edition of the Journal of Ethics and Legal Technologies. This paper will also offer some reflections on the impact that the pandemic has had on Coventry Law School, and seeks to identify specific areas for development/ consideration by legal education providers in the post-Covid era.

This paper aims at incorporating the concept of migration into mainstream thinking and revealing that there are better ways of understanding it: rather than a sectoral phenomenon taking place within a specific social sub-system, it should be seen as an integral part of contemporary society. Accordingly, the theoretical stake when describing, understanding and researching migration points to the creation of concepts and categories for imagining societal structure and its change as a whole. The paper considers three conceptual shifts in the study of migration, constituting three progressive steps to overcome the curbs in the sociological capacity to imagine the phenomenon. The first one comprises overcoming the distinction between immigration and migration, entailing a passage from a nation state-based perspective of migration to a systemic (or ecological) view of migration. The nation state-based frame is already insufficient for understanding the broader socio-economic implications of migration, not to mention for intervening and regulating it. The second step is to overcome the assumption that migration is an essentially one-way process oriented towards the integration and final settlement of migrants. In this respect, integration can be regarded not so much as a 'sociological problem', i.e. a problem sociology faces in the description of external social phenomena, but more as a 'problem of sociology', i.e. a problem that calls sociology into question as a discipline, with both its conceptual apparatus and its links to the social world. Finally, the third step is to overcome a naturalist conception of territory and to undertake the consequent shift towards a relational conception of territory. This means that territory is not land, but a social process that need not be anchored in space, as it cuts across scale levels, visibility thresholds and actors themselves. A relational conception of territory ultimately enables migration to be regarded integrally as legal pluralism, radically understood, i.e. legal pluralism not simply as a coexistence of concurrent legal orders, but as a multiplicity of relational forms that shape the architecture of human interaction at each scale level. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

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The contributions collected in Oltre i confini. Il dialogo transnazionale nelle discipline storiche e filologiche, as the title itself shows, gravitate around two poles, that of philological-literary research and that of historical criticism. The papers illustrate the semantic potential of the word border and of the different ways of passing beyond, of overcoming the barriers between countries, concrete or abstract, but no less strong and insidious: mental, ideological or cultural barriers, which inevitably mark the human interaction and research. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The contributions collected in Oltre i confini. Il dialogo transnazionale nelle discipline storiche e filologiche, as the title itself shows, gravitate around two poles, that of philological-literary research and that of historical criticism. The papers illustrate the semantic potential of the word border and of the different ways of passing beyond, of overcoming the barriers between countries, concrete or abstract, but no less strong and insidious: mental, ideological or cultural barriers, which inevitably mark the human interaction and research. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

"Scientific" psychology, after great apparent successes, didn't seems able to account for qualifying features of the human mind and action like those implied in the concept of identity. On the ground of contributions kept out of psychology's mainstream, like Mead's symbolic interactionism and Vigotsky's action theory, some psychological theories were developed in which, on the contrary, identity stays as the essential feature of human beings embedded in historical contexts, but playing an active role inside them. Thus identity becomes a sort of litmus paper for any psychological theory, and not only opens new research directions, but also suggests ways for coming back critically onto psychology's method and object and for reopening the fruitful exchanges of its beginnings with the other human sciences. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

What are the roles of home and neighbourhood on the family well-being experience? In which extent the urban-architectural space influences the social cohesion constitution? Starting from a survey conducted in two similar planned neighbourhoods, the paper shows that the physical spaces could create most opportunity about informal exchanges, family and individual ease. In one of the two settlements is present an inhabitant organization that takes care about the collective areas. So, comparing this two neighbourhoods we can see that this organization increases the social relation opportunities within the physic space. The neighbourhood relations also change in quality, frequency and distance. The reciprocity is the principal mean about the constitution of the internal community cohesion and it also creates - in people - an openness and trust attitude that goes beyond the neighbourhood boundaries. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Copyright of Methodological Horizons / Metodički Obzori is the property of Juraj Dobrila University of Pula and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites or posted to a listserv without the copyright holder's express written permission. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use. This abstract may be abridged. No warranty is given about the accuracy of the copy. Users should refer to the original published version of the material for the full abstract. (Copyright applies to all Abstracts.)

In current theoretical and policy debate concerning urban regeneration in Europe, the neighbourhood has re-emerged as an important setting. This paper addresses the theme of urban regeneration drawing on a research study about a specific «area and people-based» program, realized in two neighbourhoods in Turin. In these selected areas some estates, originally built to host athletes and journalists during the Olympic Winter Games (2006), were converted into social housing units meant to promote social mix among less and more well off inhabitants of the area. The aim of the study is to gain a better insight into the development and the outcome of the program. Evidence is offered from a survey on orientations and behaviours concerning social relationships in one of the two neighbourhoods, after two years from the intervention. The core question of the paper is whether the effect of cohesion and cooperation among people living in the same area, but belonging to different social classes, has taken place as expected. The paper explores factors and mechanisms explaining the partial failure of this social and urban experiment, focusing on the experience of daily inclusion/exclusion from a specific shared place. Concepts from institutional economy are introduced to enlighten the complexity of this experience. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Copyright of Sociologia del Lavoro is the property of FrancoAngeli srl and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites or posted to a listserv without the copyright holder's express written permission. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use. This abstract may be abridged. No warranty is given about the accuracy of the copy. Users should refer to the original published version of the material for the full abstract. (Copyright applies to all Abstracts.)

Nowadays, the topic of interactivity has permeated the media landscape to a high extent: it has fully modified not only the internet services but also the main-stream media industry and its rules, languages and approaches to the audience. A theoretical recognition of audiovisual interactivity will be carried out in this paper, together with a clear focus on new trends toward user's participation and content generation. The passage from a "static" interactivity -- intended as process for modifying pre-constituted contents -- to a dynamic and participatory interactivity is analyzed throughout several case studies from an international context. Finally, the paper explores the Italian scenario and, thanks to the analysis and different quantitative data, it attempts to define and propose some interpretative frameworks which will be useful to interpret audiovisual interactivity as an innovation process deeply embedded and dependent on this specific and culturally situated scenario. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper addresses the question of the relationship between creativity and autonomy - originally related to each other in the concept of the self as one of the crucial parts of the Meadian and symbolic interactionist heritage - and asks how we should construe this relation today. After a brief reconstruction of the history of the notions of «self» and «identity» the paper takes up the postmodern challenge of these notions by clarifying and partially revising them. It discusses the three aspects of a possibly over-socialized conception of the person (we should not misunderstand intersubjectivity as continual intersubjectivity), the irreducibility of difference between socialized individuals, and the role of power and exclusion in processes of identity formation that can only succeed under dialogical conditions. Violence and exclusion may serve to stabilize identities and to this extent are functional equivalents of dialogical stabilization, but are not on their own able to serve as the basis for identity formation. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Copyright of Journal of International Civilization Studies is the property of Kyrgyz-Turkish Manas University and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites or posted to a listserv without the copyright holder's express written permission. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use. This abstract may be abridged. No warranty is given about the accuracy of the copy. Users should refer to the original published version of the material for the full abstract. (Copyright applies to all Abstracts.)

The paper explores the risks and opportunities of classroom peer interactions on the basis of previous literature and of data from video-ethnographic research in two primary Italian schools. As regards the former, the article reviews previous academic literature, arguing that several studies on peer group work neglected the process of children’s mutual engagement. Conversely, other studies managed to offer a thorough description of the practices that might develop in the peer group, highlighting how peer interactions (a) entail significant opportunities for children’s learning and development, but (b) are also a locus where children might exclude other classmates. This recognition is further demonstrated through an empirical illustration based on data collected during the ethnographic research. Setting out from this appraisal of previous literature and empirical data, the article outlines the pedagogical relevance of peer interactions in the classroom and delineates its implications for teachers’ professional practice.

Copyright of Sociologia del Lavoro is the property of FrancoAngeli srl and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites or posted to a listserv without the copyright holder's express written permission. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use. This abstract may be abridged. No warranty is given about the accuracy of the copy. Users should refer to the original published version of the material for the full abstract. (Copyright applies to all Abstracts.)

Many historical city centers are changing their demographic composition and their urban planning at the same time. This paper analyzes Brescia's case study as an example of temporary urban transformation and investigates cohabitation between immigrant people, university students and other city users, focusing on specific strategies of public and private players who on the same «ground» are developing different processes and programmes, looking for a new prospective for the city. According to the authors the challenge of middle Italian cities is rethinking its urban policies in a more comprehensive perspective, able to take account of social, cultural, economical complexity as a critical success factor for city development. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The paper examines the elements on which the success of the cognitive-cultural economy in the Milan metropolitan area is based, focusing in particular on the importance of interactions and social networks. We present the relationship between social capital and local development with respect to the social transformations characteristic of the post-Fordist economy; the objective is to determine to what extent traditional research concepts and hypotheses are still capable of serving as effective instruments for the analysis of contemporary society. We thus investigate the most innovative and representative segment of the contemporary urban economy, in particular its relational elements, in order to understand how the city sustains (or hinders) the emergence or development of the local economy. The analysis of social relations within communities proves to be a key element in the effort to construct an image of the complexity of urban development in the post-Fordist economy. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The Phenomenology says that every knowledge is a perspective knowledge, because every knowledge is situated in a time and in a space. The human's embodiment discloses a perspective overview on the world. The paper claims the aim to analyze how the sexual and gender dimensions, which are incarnated in a determinate body, are present in the qualitative research, specifically into the ethnographic observation. First for all, we hypothesize that the gender is a border for the access into a field and not in other, so to be man or woman is not neutral for the knowledge of a specific social context. Moreover, the performative dimension of the gender, which shows the norms that pre-exist and that conduct the role's interaction (i.e. the role's gendered content and the role's gendered language) is another tie in the participant observation. The awareness that all the knowledge is gendered, requires to the fieldworker to play a double competence (ability). The researcher must use the self reflexivity to point out his gender identity and his background on this theme: he must point out his background frame relatively to the gender, his gender behaviour's expectations in the interaction, and his correlated opinions. The researcher, moreover, must know that exist a cultural mainstream about the gender, but that the concrete gender playing is based on the interaction in a concrete frame. So, we have a lot of concrete ways in which the gender is embodied. The researcher on the field, so, must enter in a knowledge's circulation in which must point attention to: the epistemic interdependence, iie. the knowledge borns in the symbolic interaction between the researcher and the subject; the gendered nature of the communicative interaction between the researcher and the subject; the negotiable nature of the concrete managing of the gendered role in the interaction. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The object of this paper is training sociologists in «person-centered» ethnographic research, i.e. centered upon the social actor, protagonist of the cultural contexts to study. A training model is proposed, based on two cultural approaches: one being spiritual and the other psycho- logical. More precisely, we refer to the spirituality of St. Ignatius of Loyola (founder of the Society of Jesus) and the psychological approach of Carl Rogers (psychologist of the humanistic approach). The goal is to provide useful operational tools in various stages of ethnographic research, enabling researchers to: a) choose the identities through which to have the best access to the field of study, b) establish face to face interactions that are based on the respect of the social actors involved in the study, c) transform those who are called «subjects» of research, in the classic approach of participant observation, into «collaborators of the ethnographer», d) adapt quickly to sudden changes of the field that often characterize studies of «other» cultures. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The issue of social order, how and why it is that social orders exists at all, is historically central to sociology. In this paper the focus is on the comparison between Parsons' and Garfinkel's point of view. Parsons regards social order as the outcome of value consensus in society, which ensures that behavior conforms to generally accepted norms. Garfinkel starts out with the assumption that social order is illusory. They believe that social life merely appears to be orderly; in reality it is potentially chaotic. Social order is constructed in the minds of social actors as society confronts the individual as a series of sense impressions and experiences which she or he must somehow organize into a coherent pattern. The differences seem to be less looking at the concept of social order and trust together as a common theoretical outcome. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The title of this paper explains the reading key needed to analyse the Italian third sector, namely to verify its internal inclination to the realisation of social partnership. The study of the forms that the social partnership tends to assume is, as a matter of fact, object of a diffused interest, witnessing the growing pluralization of the social subjects involved in personal and intersubjective welfare actions. The route followed starts from the awareness of the internal differentiation characterising the Italian third sector, analyses it under the sociological profile, puts the theme of social differentiation in relation with the theme of social partnership, whose sociological character is highlighted, and finally it proposes to offer some empirical indications concerning the inclination to partnership of the subjects of the third sector with a particular insight on the organised voluntary service connoting itself as a strategic component of the Italian third sector. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Driving inspiration from classic sociology, this paper try to sketch a new way to think to social distance in contemporary society. A key role in defining and understanding social distance is played by Simmel's thought ad exposed in Sociology where he considers social distance as a process deeply embedded in the social production of knowledge. It is in facts by means of social knowledge that we give sense and organize the physical space, so that it is always a social space as well. At the same time, social space shapes the way in which actors interact and relate to each other, leading the social construction of the cathegories by which they perceive other people as distant or near. So, through Simmel's cathegories, we can describe urban space as the dynamic overalpping of two maps — physical and social — and we can understand transition from traditional, modern, european town to contemporary metropolis as a change in this overlapping that in the town was full and that, in contemporary metropolis is more problematic and complex. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Over the last decade or so, foreign victims of human trafficking have been on the receiving end of a variety of complex and contradictory rules and regulations at both supranational and national levels, a process that has peaked here in Italy with the reinterpretation of the crime as a case of enslavement. The figure of the foreign victim, the passive object of heinous crimes who is often forced to submit to humiliating practices, including forced prostitution and its exploitation, is nevertheless still difficult to locate in the sociological taxonomy of the images of foreigners, just as the legal status attributed to him or her in the legal framework of the Italian state is uncertain and ambiguous. This paper therefore aims to clarify the reasons why it is so difficult to achieve a focus on the victims of human trafficking in the context of the socio-legal reconstruction of the law of migration, through a "critique of the violence" that these victims suffer. Lastly, it aims to offer a potential interpretation for reconstructing the social relations of those foreigners (also victims) who manage to break free of the power of organised crime and of the manipulations of states, in terms of a "living law" whose salient characteristics are non-violent. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The paper aims at investigating the relationships between information technologies and society throughout a complex set of theories, mainly concerning the most important social phases of introduction of ICT in domestic contexts. Relevant results come from observing how process of ICT's introduction in families produce interesting forms of social innovation and interaction. Further, they also represent an important step to reflect on links both between social actors and the most general social system and on types of communication among subjects within a same familiar situation. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Emotions today seem to play a fundamental role. In fact, emotions make social interaction between individuals possible and it is thanks to them that communication processes develop and make dynamics of social integration possible. In this paper, emotions are analysed as transformative resources, whose strength appears almost revolutionary for the subject’s ability to act. Despite the widespread processes of individualization in contemporary society, the individual appears to be looking for new ties and new relationships not only in the emotional sphere but also in other contexts which, although elusive and difficult to identify, are crucial for social life. What are the new scenarios in which emotions manifest themselves? What kind of bonds are generated in the practices of social interaction nowadays? It is in this perspective we intend to investigate emotions such as altruism, solidarity, gratitude, empathy induced thanks to the commitment of the Tuscan Voluntary Association Auser Abitare Solidale.

This article aims to show how the ideas of pragmatists can dialogue with some approaches in the domain of sociology of emotions, integrating some possible shortcomings on the theoretical level. Differently from Arlie Hochschild's dramaturgical approach and Randal Collins' ritual approach to emotions, the pragmatists' nonreductionist naturalism, which advocates the thesis of the continuity between organic and social, nature and culture, offers a solid conceptual framework to support a theory of emotions alternative to constructivism. The thesis of the pragmatists is that there is no pure, pre-social level of emotions, precisely because emotions are themselves the tools of social interaction, through which conducts regulate each other in a cooperative and/or conflictual sense. John Dewey's and George Herbert Mead's approach to emotions therefore allows us to address the question of the ways in which the social dimension of the human environment affects the configuration of emotions. Moreover, their approach helps us to abandon the dichotomy between feeling and expressing that seems to plague much of the sociology of emotions. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Due to the recent pandemic, the sociology of emotions gained renewed relevance. The state of exception through which we have passed has uncovered some fundamental structures of our societies and allows to ask what is the 'normality' of the relationship between emotionality and social rationality in our time. The article shows how the pandemic (unlike the similar events of 1918-20 and 1969) became a social object, generating a 'social field of health' at a global level. In this field a dual emotionalisation of the pandemic experience (entry and exit) took place as well as attempts to rationalise and circumscribe its consequences. The analysis thus turns to the question of the decline of face-to-face social relationships (and thus of emotional character), the delimitation of which has not, however, prevented societies from continuing to function in the phase of exception. This finding indicates how even under 'normal' conditions post-emotional social relationships with anonymous third parties take over social interaction and confronts the sociology of emotions with the question of their (residual) role in complex societies. The article devotes itself to this analysis by mobilising the resources of sociological theory, in particular Simmel and Weber. The result is a reconstruction of the role of emotions for the persistence of modern social reality, beyond any preconceived thesis on its alleged 'de-emotionalization' (Entemotionalisierung) with an ascetic-protestant matrix. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Copyright of Ricerche di Psicologia is the property of FrancoAngeli srl and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites or posted to a listserv without the copyright holder's express written permission. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use. This abstract may be abridged. No warranty is given about the accuracy of the copy. Users should refer to the original published version of the material for the full abstract. (Copyright applies to all Abstracts.)

Copyright of Il Capitale Culturale: Studies on the Value of Cultural Heritage is the property of Il Capitale Culturale Studies on the Value of Cultural Heritage and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites or posted to a listserv without the copyright holder's express written permission. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use. This abstract may be abridged. No warranty is given about the accuracy of the copy. Users should refer to the original published version of the material for the full abstract. (Copyright applies to all Abstracts.)

Anthropological knowledge relies on a particular methodology, participant observation. The practice of being in the field for a long time, busy in daily contact with the one's interlocutors, has become anthropology's distinctive mark. Nowadays, the challenge of Covid-19 and the obligatory restrictions on sociality dynamics require a rethinking of these theoretical and methodological assumptions: what does doing ethnography at the time of social distancing mean? This contribution aims to rethink the concept of the field made inaccessible by the current contingencies, overcoming the idea of a geographical location. Hence, online sociality as becomes a relational location built on people's communicative practices. Furthermore, researchers are creatively adopting new ways of relating to their interlocutors at a time when social contacts are necessarily limited. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Laughter is an omnipresent social phenomenon in the life of individuals and, in its various forms, it accompanies their interacting, or even better, it contributes to its orderly realization. Although it is so common, it is polyvalent, ambiguous and difficult to grasp. Therefore, in the article we will try to take some steps in the direction of delineating a socio-logic of laughter, regarded both as a phenomenon of order and as a mode of social action. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Information and Communication Technologies (ICT), particularly robotics and domotics, are progressively spreading in the contemporary society and their use is increasing in the field of geriatrics too. Even if the implementation of new technologies dedicated to older people is mainly aimed at caring for them and monitor their health, ICT can also sustain continuing learning and develop new practices of socialization. This paper reports the results of an explorative questionnaire survey conducted with a sample of older people who had some familiarity with technologies. Our aim was to investigate their perception about usability and their enjoyment of some online digital games/activities, analyzing the perceived potentialities of those devices for elders’ socialization. Valutazione di giochi/attività online da parte di un gruppo di anziani, in un progetto di robotica a supporto del loro vivere indipendente Le Tecnologie dell’Informazione e della Comunicazione (TIC), in particolare robotica e domotica, si stanno progressivamente diffondendo nella società contemporanea e il loro utilizzo sta aumentando anche in ambito geriatrico. Anche se lo sviluppo di tecnologie dedicate agli anziani è principalmente finalizzato all’assistenza e al monitoraggio della loro salute, le TIC possono anche favorire l’apprendimento continuo e nuove forme di socializzazione. Il presente contributo espone i risultati di un’indagine esplorativa basata su questionari, condotta con un campione persone di anziane, con familiarità con le tecnologie, per raccogliere la percezione di usabilità e il gradimento di alcuni giochi/attività online, analizzando il potenziale percepito di questi dispositivi per la socializzazione.

This paper aims to present and discuss a range of theoretical perspectives towards discursive phenomena, in particular the different research techniques broadly known as ‘discourse analysis’, as well as the ethnomethodological approach to discourse. After presenting the core assumptions of these approaches, we discuss their potential to analyze phenomena of discursive interaction, face-to-face or technologically mediated. We believe that, by focusing on the pragmatic aspects of discourse, an ethnomethodological approach to discourse may represent an important contribution for media interaction studies

It is possible to find many points in common between social interaction and the interaction of each user with media texts when referring to theories of social action, according to the emphasis put on the processes the actors involved use to attribute meaning. These points in common may support the theory by which the media public plays an active role, substantiated in different dimensions: the selective exposure to media and the cognitive processes involved in their use, the semantic autonomy in the processes of comprehension and interpretation and of revision and collective re-interpretation in relations with others. The reference to the theories of social action may also represent an opportunity to contribute a more visible theoretical base to research on media, which in turn might lead to a more widespread acknowledgment of their scientific relevance and of their pertinence and identification for sociological study. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Numerous forms of vagueness and indeterminateness characterize linguistic interaction of daily life, as well as conceptualization and language of the social sciences. This is a problem that logicians and philosophers of science and language have faced repeatedly, in the attempt to eliminate this undesirable trait or limit the damage caused to the achievement of truth. Endeavoring to overturn this perspective, the essay aims to show the fertility and productiveness of this insurmountable margin of vagueness, both from a point of view of scientific creation and from that of safeguarding the fundamental critical state of thought and knowledge. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The author studies the process involved in the emergence of the reflexive self through the use of significant symbols (pre-linguistic-gestural and linguistic-verbal) by means of a critical comparison with Mead and the legacy he left to contemporary sociologists (in particular Jürgen Jabermas, Randall Collins, Margaret Archer and Nobert Wiley). The reflexive-semiotic self is analysed by combining Mead's I-Me and Peirce's I-You models into an I-You-Me triadic model. Particular attention is paid to an issue that has been neglected in social theory until now: the language of interior conversation, that does not qualify as a public language, though it has a distinct structural profile. This inner speech is presented as a sort of personalised «dialect» in which syntax is abbreviated and signs, only partially verbal, are often tied to a sensory imagery. Its semantic privacy does not prevent one from making it public, at least to some extent, and to use it for research purpose. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Transition to adulthood has become a specific of sociological research towards the end of the '80 when sociologist and psychologist underline a new life course phase. This new stage is distinct by adolescence and adulthood. The social research been concentrated specifically on like markers: to finish the studies, to enter into labour market, to get married, to have the first child, these are the thresholds that exceeded, indicate the achievement of the passage from youth to adulthood. In the last 20 years the sociologist observed a postponed transition: life markers are crossed later, there is no a clear biography trajectory, and choice are reversible. In this framework Italian sociology has observed these processes from different point of view: as a transformation of the young universe as a whole, as central issue to under- stand social inequalities, as specific life course stage that can identify new form of identity re-composition, as an intergenerational event concerning young, families and society. The article analyse main sociological research carried out in Italy on transition to adulthood. By this way, the author pinpoint four main fields of the sociological research. The first, the Survey by lard on the Italian youth condition that since 1983 it has been studying the transformation that take place year by year. The second, the survey by Schizzerotto who inquires into the social inequalities that characterize the young adults. The third, by one the most recent research by Introini and Pasqualini who focalize in particularly the process of the identity formation and the recomposition of the personal and social life one that take place during the transition to the adulthood. The fourth, is by a relational-generational approach. From this point of view, the focal point is on the relational net between the current generations. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The object of the study is the compatibility between symbolic interactionism and the network theory. The interpretive approach to symbolic interaction is focused on the meanings of interaction within small groups, and the processes through which collective identity is formed. The structural point of view of network theory instead emphasizes the characteristics of the network and its components (density, strength, and number of connections), as a condition of cohesion between the members of a group. The actors have the opportunity to make connections through their position within a given network, which is derived from their innate or acquired own qualities and can be only partially grasped, if at all, by the other members of a group. Consequently there are various possibilities of connecting with different groups. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]