Quaderni di Teoria Sociale

Hans-Peter Müller, Sulle tracce di Max Weber (edizione italiana a cura di Alessandro Cavalli, Ilenya Camozzi, Massimo Palma), EGEA, Milano, 2022, pp. 559 (ed. or. 2020)

2023-06-22T16:50:57+02:00

Alessandro Cavalli, discutendo del testo qui in esame all’interno del Convegno AIS del 18-21 gennaio 2023 a Napoli, ha esordito dicendo che si tratta di un bel libro. Subito dopo, ha precisato che l’Autore non ci offre una nuova e originale lettura weberiana, quanto piuttosto un percorso lungo le tracce che l’opera di questo straordinario pensatore ha lasciato, orme che molti hanno seguito e sviluppato. Sono totalmente d’accordo con entrambe le affermazioni. Müller ha fatto un enorme lavoro, offrendoci un testo completo e chiaro, in grado di dare al lettore un quadro esauriente e critico di un’opera che ancora oggi ci illumina e ci sfida.

Emiliano Rubens Urciuoli, La religione urbana. Come la città ha prodotto il cristianesimo, EDB, Bologna, 2021, pp. 156

2023-06-22T16:54:49+02:00

Silvia Cataldi and Gennaro Iorio (Eds.) Social Love and the Critical Potential of People, New York, Routledge, 2023, pp. 347

2023-06-22T16:58:23+02:00

The book revolves around five major themes structured in five sections: an overview of social love, social love as abundance, social love as care for others and the world, social love as universalism and social love as recognition of others. Each section provides an insight or overview of the theme and attempts to sketch evidence and present current issues. The book is divided into 21 chapters and contributed by more than 30 authors. Social love as a sociological concept needs clarity for the readers since it seems to reflect an old understanding of love. Cataldi and Iorio have attempted to bring out the nuances of social love, especially against the backdrop of the COVID-19 and Ukraine war. The book bases conceptual derivations from everyday life experience and quotes terms like solidarity refrigeration, street lawyers. The authors’ reference to the philosophical understanding of social love sketched back to Kierkegaard’s “ability to recognise the Other and their needs at centre generating trust, hope and social innovation”. The challenge before the authors is to explain how love can be a space for criticism of par excellence and love coincide with agape – over abundance – social action relationships and interactions. Cataldi also brings six axiological thinking from philosophical, sociological, contemporary, feminist, critical sociologist and interdisciplinary traverse. The book argumentatively captures the readers’ minds in reflecting on daily living experiences to validate the arguments from a theoretical perspective. The research perspectives of social love are critical as they try to distinguish researcher and subject that becomes a ‘place of cognitive process, the space of the soul’.

Massimo Airoldi, Machine Habitus. Toward a Sociology of Algorithms, Cambridge, Polity Press, 2022, pp. 200

2023-06-22T17:02:21+02:00

It all begins with a birth. On 31^st March 2019 the Roman neighbourhood of Torpignattara warmly welcomed a new member of the community. Shortly after, the little being took the first steps towards the local culture learning from passers-by chats. Its future seemed somehow natural, even though the baby is not like the others. Its name is IAQOS: a software able to interact with human beings by recognising and learning from their gestures and voices. The newcomer is therefore a social actor participating in the local society. This is part of the ‘open-source artificial intelligence of the neighbourhood’ project carried out by two artists: the robotic engineer Salvatore Iaconesi and the communication scientist Oriana Persico.

Fabio Dei e Luigigiovanni Quarta (a c. di), Sulla svolta ontologica. Prospettive e rappresentazioni tra antropologia e filosofia, Milano, Meltemi, 2021, pp. 374

2023-06-22T17:05:59+02:00

Il volume raccoglie nove saggi concepiti in occasione del convegno del 2019 a Pisa, dedicato proprio alla svolta ontologica e alla sua ricezione in Italia. Vale la pena distinguere questi due aspetti: se alcuni capitoli scendono in profondità nel dibattito dell’ontological turn e dei suoi principali rappresentanti – Viveiros de Castro su tutti – altri propongono panoramiche specifiche sul posizionamento degli studiosi italiani. La prefazione dei due curatori, Fabio Dei e Luigigiovanni Quarta, fornisce al lettore un sistema di coordinate con cui orientarsi nel mare cangevole di ontologie, metamorfosi e concetti nativi. La longitudine e la latitudine della svolta ontologica assumono rispettivamente una dimensione teoretica e politica: la prima rimanda alla fondamentale rottura con il dualismo filosofico del pensiero occidentale, e alla separazione tra un mondo dell’oggetto e del soggetto; la seconda è la particolare sensibilità ecologica e l’attenzione alle catastrofi della modernità, nella misura in cui, oggi, ogni ecologia è necessariamente politica (e viceversa). Giova leggere questa prefazione insieme all’intervento di Antonino Colajanni all’interno di RAC, il cui primo numero è stato dedicato proprio all’ontological turn.

Tra esperienza e pensiero. Una conversazione con Paolo Jedlowski

2023-06-22T16:26:41+02:00

The interview traces the main stages of the (academic) biography of the sociologist Paolo Jedlowski from his choice to study philosophy in the 1970s, the switch to sociology at the end of the same decade to his further career in this discipline at the University of Calabria. The focus is on the interplay between his sociological thought, how it has been developed over time, and his intellectual trajectory within the sociological field, in order to highlight how the main concepts of his theories and works emerged from his experiences and network of interlocutions within and outside the Academia. Departing from this premise, the conversation took the form of a generational confrontation between Paolo Jedlowski and the interviewer. Thus, looking especially at the structural and institutional transformations which affected the Italian University system in the last two decades, the interview had a double objective: first, to understand how the engagement of Paolo Jedlowski with (Ph.D.) students and younger sociologists, not least about their future, affected his intellectual experiences as both ‘teacher’ and social thinker; and second, to create a narrative space where even the younger generations of sociologists might find themselves.

Sociology of Structures, Structures of Sociology. An Interview with Charles Crothers

2023-06-22T16:32:53+02:00

Charles Crothers is Emeritus Professor of Sociology at Auckland University of Technology (AUT), New Zealand. He was born in Christchurch, NZ, but grew up in small seaside town Tauranga, attending a multi-disciplinary social science degree at the brand-new University of Waikato. He then switched Sociology as a discipline, completed his Ph.D. at Victoria University of Wellington and followed up with several years as a junior lecturer at VUW. A further 5 years with the research section of the “Town and Country Planning Division” at the Ministry of Works and Development followed, providing a very useful platform for policy work and data analysis. He then spent a decade teaching sociology at the University of Auckland and half a decade at the University of Natal, Durban (South Africa), with the final two decades back in Auckland, lecturing at AUT. He now continues as a Senior Research Associate of the Department of Sociology, University of Johannesburg, South Africa. Throughout his career, Crothers has experienced many sabbatical periods around the world: at the University of Oregon, Waterloo Canada, Kent at Canterbury and Sussex, with the most recent at Sapienza-University of Rome in 2022. From this vantage point, mixing NZ’s peculiar perspective and a variety of stays abroad, Crothers’ position in the field of sociology is fairly unique, at least socio-geographically.

La «storia vivente» dei gruppi. Forme di vita, istituzioni e memorie collettive in Maurice Halbwachs

2023-06-22T14:52:57+02:00

Starting from some insights provided by Georges Canguilhem’s review of Maurice Halbwachs’ book Les causes du suicide (1930), this article aims to develop the analysis of the relations between genres de vie, groups, and institutions in Halbwachs’ works, especially with regard to the institution of collective memory, in both its spatial and temporal dimensions. An in-depth examination of these questions will allow to focus on some of the issues at stake in Canguilhem’s reading, which valorizes Halbwachs’ sociological work in an anti-Durkheimian key: the necessary combination of the material nature of the plural forms of life that characterize groups, and the reflexivity that they produce; the complication of the reference to the notion of ‘social facts’ through the issue of social normativity, which regulates their configurations and the production of their meaning.

Bourdieu e Foucault: un confronto critico a proposito dei fondamenti della spazializzazione del potere

2023-06-22T14:57:02+02:00

Our aim in this paper is to carry out a comparative analysis of Pierre Bourdieu and Michel Foucault – two figures traditionally opposed in the French academic field – in order to highlight the areas in which their respective aims and methods partially overlapped. Tacking stock of Bourdieu’s analyses in Homo academicus, we wish to argue that the opposition between the two concerns more the empirical individuals – resulting from the respective disciplinary and academic positionings – than the epistemic individuals. Bourdieu, in conceiving of the notion of social space and consequently of field, focuses on the dimension of power and describes the space of the positionings according to principles which are relative to force relations. It is in these latter that he finds the source of sense relations. Foucault, following a different but complementary trajectory, begins with the analysis of the order of discourse and then articulates its implications on the level of power relations and of subjection and subjectivation practices.

Emozioni e coinvolgimento

2023-06-22T16:09:32+02:00

The essay aims to outline the theoretical framework through which analyze the relationship between emotions and involvement. This allows us to understand the social dimension of emotional life as linked to what it involves, which requires attention and practical responsiveness. The involvement highlights two fundamental aspects of emotions: 1) they are declined in affective co-respondences through relational sequences; 2) they show up themselves in episodes of rupture. The first characteristic refers to the way in which the affective practices of each individual are constitutively intertwined with those of all the others. The second one refers to the implicit transformations present in any kind of involvement. Rebuilding the relationship between emotions and involvement offers indeed the possibility of approaching emotions as transformative and intercorporeal phenomena emerging from complex tangles of involvement. In fact, there is no involvement without rupture, interruption, redefinition that, at various levels and intensities, are present in every daily interaction. This also leads to problematizing the ethical and political aspects of being involved, redefining the ways in which we feel called to participate in the lives of the others through emotions, with new responsibilities and attentions.

Un’agenda di ricerca per la sociologia del gioco d’azzardo

2023-06-22T16:14:59+02:00

The paper advances a research agenda for the Sociology of Gambling. Firstly, it reviews the different approaches on the phenomenon within Gambling Studies. The medicalised model of gambling, centred on the concept of problematic gambling, is still predominant, while a fragmented body of sociological literature has addressed the topic since the end of the XIX century. Our argument is that the analysis of the social processes at the root of both gambling practice and industry is crucial to put forward a sociological comprehension of gambling. Finally, we propose the main topics to be developed within the sociological research on gambling: the role of social stratification in modelling gambling practices; the transformation of gambling in a cultural industry; the relationship between gambling industry, the State and policy makers; gambling as a form of recreational consumption; the relationship between gambling and risk.

Critica sociale organica. Come superare i deficit di critica interna e immanente in chiave di teoria politica

2023-06-22T16:22:47+02:00

Beginning with the current discussion on the forms of social critique, the essay aims to outline a novel, Gramscian-inspired model of organic social critique, far from any form of paternalism but capable of preserving a strong emancipatory charge. The model aims to overcome certain theoretical deficits found in the model of internal critique as it was thematized by Michael Walzer and later by Luc Boltanski, and by the model of immanent critique proposed within the framework of the neo-Hegelian turn in German critical theory, particularly by Axel Honneth and Rahel Jaeggi. This operation is carried out through the reinterpretation of some of the notions developed by Gramsci, beginning with those of "organic adherence" and "subaltern groups," later revived in postcolonial studies, circumscribing their validity to the figure of the social critic as it is understood in our day.

Le molte crisi dello Stato nazionale: il contributo di Reinhart Koselleck

2023-06-22T14:30:33+02:00

In the contribution we intend to develop a historical-genealogical reflection on the topic of the nation state and its crisis. In the first part, after discussing how the concept of the state constitutes one of the main themes of historical sociology, the question of its current crisis will be problematized, starting from a literature that, moving from an empirical perspective, highlights what are the critical factors that grip this historical formation nowadays. In the second part, we intend to put forward some objections to the reconstruction of the crisis of the state as it is presented today, resorting to the contribution of Reinhart Koselleck, a German intellectual and historian, whose notion of crisis itself, which he develops in a broader reflection on the history of ideas, will be briefly explored, and whose reconstruction of the crisis of the absolute state, presented in his celebrated volume Critique and Crisis: Enlightenment and the Pathogenesis of Modern Society, will be discussed. According with Koselleck, it will emerge how giving historical depth to the notion of crisis, showing its origin coeval with the formation of the state itself, and assuming its polysemanticity as a heuristic value, is particularly useful in order to distinguish between historical-structural and contingent factors of crisis, and to reveal how the state is indeed a reality capable of readjusting to current contexts. The conclusions will reflect on this pliant notion of the state that is perfectly in line with the interpretations proper to historical sociology, which demonstrates, including through this specific case study, the relevance of its approach to illuminating issues of our time.

I Sociologi e la Guerra. Lo scambio epistolare Simmel-Small fra propaganda e definizione di campo

2023-06-22T14:43:33+02:00

From a sociological point of view, the First World War is significant for two reasons: on the one hand, because of the massive involvement of intellectuals in the propaganda and public debate of all the countries involved [Mommsen 2000]; on the other hand, because it engaged the classics of sociology: Durkheim, Weber, Simmel, Töennies, Sombart, George Herbert Mead, among others. In this article, we will focus in particular on the correspondence Georg Simmel had with Albion Small between the summer and autumn of 1914, i.e. at the dawn of the First World War. The episode has not so far aroused substantial interest among historians of sociology, but it is nevertheless useful to understand how global events as such bring out major tensions to the representatives of the discipline, engaged in a complex relationship of interdependence [DeFleur Ball e Rokeach 1970, tr. it. 1995] between three fields: the political, the journalistic, and the broader academic field [Bourdieu 2010]. Reflecting on this episode thus allows a more extensive understanding of the kind of disciplinary reconfigurations [Elias 1978] that such events produce in the relationship between social problems and sociological problems [Kitsuse and Spector 1973] and the reconfigurations that affect intellectuals within and outside the academic field. The point of view adopted is the ecological one [Abbott 2005]. The positions of Simmel and Small will therefore be contextualised within the broader intellectual and political communities in which the two intellectuals participated.

Ritrovare la società. Oltre la dicotomia individuo società

2023-06-22T14:48:40+02:00

This article traces the reasons for the current marginality of sociology in the lack of discussion on the theoretical foundations and boundaries of the discipline. One of the main gaps is the lack of clarity about what sociology is concerned with. I try to show in what sense it can still be said today, as happened in the sociological tradition, that society is the object of sociology. Society must be found in the frames in which the subjects of the action enter into a reciprocal relationship of recognition, without neglecting how it has historically developed. I believe that in order to theoretically reconstruct society as the object of sociology we must address the central theoretical node of the individual-society relationship. The two terms, generally understood as dichotomous, are not in themselves opposites. What makes them conflicting is the use made of them in the different versions of the doctrine of individualism.