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The essay presents the perceptions about risk and trust collected in Italy during the first year of Covid-19 using secondary analysis data. The aim is to show how the fallout of the pandemic goes beyond the sphere of health and extends to those of individual action and social relations. The hypothesis is that the prolonged interruption of the normality of everyday life has temporarily halted the individualisation process. Risk, mistrust, uncertainty of social cohesion and deterioration of public debate, as observed in the survey, have contributed to reducing the space for the achievement of personal autonomy by producing heteronomy.

Fashion favors and amplifies the social change, being itself a consistent part of the phenomenon. In this essay, fashion is analyzed over time, from its birth until today, in its different phases (high couture, prêt-à-porter, fast fashion). The focus is on fashion creators, researchers and consumers. This allows to show the differentiation between the roles of creator (maître couturier, stylist, fashion designer) and researcher (trend forecaster, fad hunter), as well as the expansion of consumers. The aim is to highlight the incremental complexity of the fashion phenomenon linked to the transformation of modern and contemporary society.

The concept of citizenship is central to European history and has great resonance. It does however bear the weight an ‘original sin’, its derivation from the idea of the nation: a relationship worth reviewing in the light of the dynamics of present-day society. Furthermore, the polysemic nature of citizenship can di use its meaning and reduce e ective analysis. With this in mind, the present paper, after having explored the origins of citizenship and reviewed its development, proposes a de nition in material terms. The question of status, pre-eminent in the juridical approach, is of lesser importance in the present sociological interpretation of citizenship, concentrating as it does on individual practices. Rights allow the individual access to certain social resources (which ones?) but capitals determines the quantity of social resources the person may draw on (how many?). Together, rights and capitals shape the capabilities that each person converts into functionings in daily life – that is into the practices of citizenship, but only in those cases when the individual’s behaviour is compatible with the norms of the community.

The use of the emblems spreads within the cities of Europe in the first centuries after the Year 1000: the paper shows how this social phenomenon is related to the beginning of the individualization process. The signaletic and the symbolic practices related to the use of the emblems develop in parallel with the construction of the personal identity and the structuring of the social interdependence. With the emergence of both Court society and scientific sensitivity, the rapid araldic transformation of the emblems gives to the European ruling class the definitive monopoly of this extralinguistic code, erasing his early democratic meaning of personal autonomy expression.

Supported by EU citizenship, Europeans seem to enjoy wide life chances and experiential horizons. Our hypothesis is that transnational practices (travels, social relations and lifestyles) lead to nurture a stronger identification with Europe. Empirical analysis (with Eurobarometer data of 2010) confirms the hypothesis but also indicates that “Europeanness” – in its two dimensions: practices and identifications – is stratified, being strongest in the upper social class. While the overall transnationalism-European identification association holds in all social strata as well, the middle class does not take the lead of Europeanization as it did historically when it contributed to the nation building of modern States.