La forza della vulnerabilità. Il mediatore come performer al confine tra culture diverse

The paper considers the concepts of uncertainty and risk and their new configuration in the globalized society. Drawing on an analysis of ethnographic situations rooted in the history of anthropology as well as on the interpretation of a criminal event committed in Italy, the work aims at working the concepts of risk and vulnerability as social categories, which is possible to face through a set of cultural practices. In this perspective, the paper emphasizes the figure of the mediator as a cultural “performer”: a social actor who organizes cultural complexity and builds patterns of inclusion through social participation. The capacity to mediate cultural diversity may turn risk and vulnerability themselves into driving forces for social change in the contemporary society.