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In this paper we point out the topic and the rational of the symposium aiming on the one hand to connect preparedness to the uncertainty that characterizes society-environment relation, on the other hand to emphasise the need for sociology not only to denounce the governmental implications of preparedness but also to engage constructively with this category. We begin by recalling the framework changes that have characterized the social sciences’ understanding of disasters by showing how progressively the idea of disaster as a one-time event that disrupts a society from the outside has been complemented by an idea of disaster as a critical moment embedded in historically determined social structures. We will then discuss how the emergence of the preparedness paradigm fits within these developments and how sociological research can help to better understand what is at stake in the governing of (and by) preparedness. In this perspective we advance a reading of preparedness from the vantage point of knowledge. As a conclusion, we discuss how the understanding of preparedness as dependent on socio-ecological transformation raises specific challenges for territorial governance.

This is an introduction to the Symposium on “Preparedness in an Uncertain and Risky World”.

This article focuses on financial education with the aim to explore the relationship between finance, welfare policies and the governance of uncertainties and risks also in the light of the Covid-19 pandemic. The article discusses the normative substratum that lies at the intersection of daily life and changes in the institutional and regulatory structures of welfare policies. In doing so, it shows how financial education turns protection from critical events, including pandemics, into a financial skills issue that vulnerable individuals and families must address through individual and financialised coping strategies, without broader social factors and contexts of vulnerability being taken into account and addressed. Finally, it points out that the pandemic situation does not seem to be a factor of discontinuity in this respect. Rather, the pandemic emergency appears to be used to support the further development of long-term trends, particularly processes of depoliticization and individualisation.

The current debate on philanthropy, while following the established research path on the nature and social determinants of giving, considers the close interweaving of charity and business as the distinctive, innovative core of the phenomenon.The article aims at moving this debate forward by outlining a research agenda on the most recent developments of philanthropy at the global level and identifying four main directions of investigation: philanthrocapitalism; financialization; knowledge; élites. We argue that the connections among them, highlighted through the identification of what is actually new in philanthropy today, can contribute to the sociological understanding of the phenomenon, enlightening the enduring tension between embedding and dis-embedding of economy in society and the changing relationship among economy, expertise and political power.

This paper focuses on Social Investment and Social Innovation, two crucial policy strategies within the current reorganization of European Welfare States. The aim is to illuminate the ambivalent dynamics of change, adaptation, and resistance that they unleash in the everyday governance of social services, especially regarding social citizenship and rights. The analysis is based on the empirical investigation of two cases in Italy: the implementation of an anti-poverty measure in Lombardy, a northern region of the country; and a project underway in Milan since 2015 aimed at reconfiguring the balance between supply and demand in care services within the context of a more comprehensive reorganization of local welfare systems. The two cases show different aspects of social services’ governance, in particular concerning the coexistence of increasingly strict control mechanisms with the emphasis placed on principles of sharing and cooperation.

Social policies in Italy are today concerned at the same time by a drastic reduction in spending and the experimentation of new public action strategies, within a context shaped by re-centralization of budget constraints and effects of financialization and economic crisis, especially as for growing vulnerability and inequality. In this context, urban/local welfare is the main laboratory for social innovation, but it has to cope with increasing social problems through decreasing resources and powers, due to austerity measures and the strengthening of supranational control. Actually the theme of innovation has gained considerable space in public agendas, starting with the European one. Yet the picture that emerges from the research on its inclusive effects is far from univocal. Moreover, the discourses and the strategies centered on innovation have a very ambiguous relationship with dynamics of privatization and retrenchment of public welfare. Ambiguities, problems and opportunities involved in this scenario will be deepened mainly referring to interventions in disadvantaged neighborhoods.

The aim of the following nine case-studies is to enhance understandings of successful ways in which to support young people who encounter difficulties, or who fail, in the ‘standard’ routes of education and the transition towards employment, by empowering their capabilities for voice, work and education. By applying the capability approach, we have elaborated a perspective which highlights...

The aim of this paper is to analyze a project for young NEET in southern Italy in terms of capabilities. Our objective is to examine to what extent it is possible to promote capabilities for work, for voice and for education in a context of lack of resources and rights as the one the project is rooted in. The paper focuses on the institutional, social and individual factors that hamper or promote the conversion of formal resources and rights into capabilities, and tries to understand what the outcomes are for beneficiaries. It highlights on the one hand the critical elements, and on the other the creation of innovative itineraries designed to promote such capabilities, trying to sum up lessons and indications in terms of policies, as well as theoretical and analytical implications for the capability approach.