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The present paper is intended to be a humble attempt to redeem sociology, a discipline unjustly perceived as a handmaiden among the human sciences, from the secondary role to which it is inappropriately relegated in deference to an evergrowing trend of technicalization and formalization, even algorithmic, of economics and law and even of certain specialized branches of sociology itself. On the contrary, an attempt is made to demonstrate, keeping in the background the great work of Mireilles Delmas-Marti, that it is precisely the most general, historically-anthropologically compromised and culturologically oriented part of this discipline that is the one most capable of accounting for the complexity underlying the local/global dynamics in progress, deciphering the asynchronic and destabilizing forces that corrode the effectiveness of the rules redesigning scenarios and destinies of social actors, and partially motivating the reasons involved. It seems all the more significant and urgent to us to push academic reflection towards a revival of the "great sociology" traditionally understood, in a season of disturbing juridical nihilism and worrying déshistoricisation. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper summarizes the contribution of Vincenzo Cesareo to the theme of war in Ukraine, laid out in his book "The War in the Heart of Europe". Fruit of a multidisciplinary approach, Cesareo's contribution is notable not only for its stylistic clarity, but also for the spirit and passion with which he illustrates the rights of Ukraine and the wrongs of Putin: a genuine "lesson" in times of analyses that are too often partisan and/or ideologically distorted. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper will attempt to reconstruct and understand the relationship between crisis, social development, legal order, and political decision-making as they have come to be intertwined in modern industrial society. Particular attention will be paid to the theme of "permanent crisis" and the problems of the "motorization of law," legal constructions, technical and scientific power in relation to processes of political legitimation. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The paper is an attempt to assess the potentiality of literary sources for the social sciences. It proposes a connection between the ontological conception of social reality and the methodological possibility to recur to literary narratives for social analysis. The concept of multiple reality (Alfred Schutz) is exemplified by referring chiefly to Schutz' treatment of Miguel Cervantes' novel, Don Quijote. In the concluding remarks, a complex conception of social reality is advocated, able to conceive society both in terms of social facts and social representations. Such ontological attitude may give due relevance to literature as a source of sociological data. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In order to identify the concrete processes by which the complex machinery of the legal system operates, a focus on the narratives of law in popular culture can be useful. However, studying narrative poses a number of theoretical and methodological pitfalls. The aim of this paper is a return to Vincenzo Tomeo's half-century-old work The Judge on the Screen. The book is an excellent example of a sociologically careful and methodologically insightful use of fictional narrative sources such as films. It can be considered a classic of 'law and culture' studies and a forerunner of the 'law and cinema' movement. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The aim of the paper is to analyze the different forms that nontextual narrative takes related to the fundamental dimensions that characterize the video game medium, namely interactivity and game design. After providing a general definition of narrative and clarifying how its role is discussed within the scientific debate it will be proposed a semiotic model of analysis for each component and how narrative organizes each of them. Finally, two works will be analyzed where it is evident how the relationship between narrative and game design/interaction, taking into consideration the proposed models for analyzing the medium, defines not only the work itself but also the relationship with the user. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The field of study on narratives and social theory is broad and constantly evolving, as well as the relation between narratives and law. From the 70s on, partticularly in the Anglo-Saxon context the movement Law and Literature emerged, both as the analysis of law as literature and literature as law. Jurists, writers and literary critics began to explore the ways in which literature can help understand law and vice versa. The interactions between law and literature continue to challenge the traditional view of law as a technical and formal discipline, thus offering a socio-cultural approach to its understanding. Like any narratives, legal narratives are not transparent and neutral views of reality, as meanings do not pre-exist the process of emplotment. Stories, including legal stories, construct facts. In this paper, after a brief review of the main features of judicial narratives, I aim to investigate the peculiar narrative dimension of narratives produced within trials for human rights violations. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Male violence against women is often framed in an episodic way, as an ‘individual’ deviance, thus, as a problem pertaining to the sphere of private relationships. Attention is thus diverted from its structural causes - rooted in the inequality of material and symbolic power between men and women - thus depriving the phenomenon of its public relevance and its political significance. Men’s violence against women, on the other hand, is rooted in the inequalities of power operating in societies and is to be considered the instrument through which men try to preserve, within society, their position of material and symbolic dominance over women. With this paper we propose an analysis of the reflections on gender-based violence, with an emphasis on the discourses that help to frame the issue from a socio-political perspective and that focus on gender-based violence as a tool through which patriarchal society reproduces itself. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez’s political leadership is a new phenomenon. The objective of the paper is to understand the genesis of AOC’s political leadership by holding together the different aspects of its success, namely digital nativism, female and intersectional leadership, the functioning of its political machine. At the same time, it aims to connect the AOC case to the specific aspects of the American political system, namely its specific populist/progressive tradition and the functioning of large party-network. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The paper, starting from a broad analysis of the weberian sociological conception, investigates the problem of "meaning" by comparing it with other similar concepts (use, customs, etc.) and arriving at the more general one of the "images of the world" (weltbild) which is less themed but undoubtedly central in his thought. The second part of the paper examines the visions of the world that generated capitalism, modern political imaginaries and contemporary metamorphoses. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this paper we will try to understand the "conceptual" perspective of sociology as one of the possible lines drawn within the cultural horizon of the social sciences. And this can be easily understood if we understand by "sociological culture" a knowledge that is not reducible to a scientific disciplinary sector or to an analytical technicality (an instrumental apparatus) aimed at data collection, but as a conceptual process capable of developing a cognitive orientation aimed at grasping the existential situation of man starting from his historical, concrete and social condition. The aim of this work is therefore, more than anything else, to grasp the process of conceptualisation of social experience starting from the cultural formations within which the relationship between thought and society, or rather, between mental structures and historical-social conditions, develops concretely and reflectively. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The paper begins with a philosophical, literary and historiographical framework to address issues of epistemological interest. After the comparison between the schools of thought that have discussed the theme of memory and identity, the second part of this work deepens the operational and methodological expendability of the concepts analysed, starting from the sociological reading of Paul Ricoeur, considered within the personalist current to which he belongs. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The paper analyzes youth work approaches from the perspective of youth policies with the aim of deepening the links with social and educational policies. At an empirical level, the analysis is conducted through a focus group with national youth workers and two case studies of organizations active in vulnerable contexts. The results highlight the relevance of continuity on synchronic multi-actors network and diachronic relationships, increased by the Covid19 emergency. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Since 1988 with d.p.r. 448, a regulatory device has been introduced in our country which as inspired and regulates the strategies and policies of intervention in relation to juvenile deviance. For different reasons, criminal welfare is implemented in distinct ways between the regional divisions, producing different local emergencies and different approaches in the case of foreign or indigenous minors. Criticalities also emerge from the regulatory provision whose model of inspiration (juvenile probation) manifests limits and the need for revision. The paper presents the results of a research whose quantitavive-qualitative methodological structure reveals the presence of some perverse effects and the underestimated risk of juvenile recidivism rate with the consequent underestimation of the reproduction of serious deviant models that persist and they spread among young people, especially in many southern regions already characterized by mafia-type criminal embeddednes. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

After using Bourdieu to clarify why and with what consequence flexploitation has become a widespread work mode, we articulate a specific hypothesis: in critical times of instable and temporary work, a number of initiatives emerge, some of which configure themselves as active responses to the state of precariousness brought about by flexplotiation policies. Practices of physical culture such as argentine tango represent one example of such initiatives aiming at recreating those threatened or impoverished conditions of bodily, temporal and relational life we do not seem willing to give up. Our paper takes into account the outcome of a qualitative research on tango dancers. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Ten years after the signing of the Istanbul Convention (2011), the Italian legislative framework on violence against women has greatly evolved. The timing of the writing of laws and those of the rewriting of social norms, however, do not always coincide and the legal system, with its language and its practices, is still partly conditioned by socially widespread gender bias. The STEP research project - coordinated by Prof. Flaminia Saccà and the University of Tuscia-analyzed 283 sentences, issued by the Italian criminal courts, to identify stereotypes and prejudices that recur in the legal and social representation of genderbased violence. This paper analyzes how criticalities in the legal representation of violence against women are organized along two main categories of gender bias: role prejudices, that intervene in the representation of the victim and frame prejudices, that condition the modalities of violence representation. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The purpose of this paper is to compare the "sacralization of the individual" as explored by Émile Durkheim and Erving Goffman. The paper outlines theoretical links and differences between Durkheim's thesis on the cult of the individual in modern society on one hand and Goffman's analysis of the face-to-face interaction as a secularized form of religious ritual. The analysis is eventually related to the possible use of the process of "sacralization of the individual" for our understanding of morality and social bonds in contemporary society. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper seeks to interpret the current cultural representations of bodily practices by relating them to the dimension of the sacred, thus showing the ambiguity of the latter. The discussion draws on insights from Max Weber, who identifies three key stages of the body in relation to the sacred within Western culture: the orgiastic, the mystic or other-worldly asceticism, and the inner-worldly asceticism. These stages can be represented on a Cartesian plane based on two dichotomies: 'bodily over-stimulation vs. under-stimulation' on the one axe, and 'action within the world vs. escape from the world' on the other. After critically discussing Weber's perspective, the paper integrates it with other reflections and focuses on the 'missing quadrant' of such theoretical model to interpret the contemporary reality. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The paper analyses the question of what "form" takes on meaning in our culture through the religious and aesthetic issue of Byzantine Holy Icons. From this point of view we are going to investigate the problem of the "form beyond the form" as a shape beyond his sensitive image. In this regard as specific issue of our discussion we will consider the development of the Icon-form (as mental and conceptual shape) from the Byzantine ages to the religious painting of El Greco. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The paper details the critical analysis of the emerging English colonialism in Ireland in the 17th century as elaborated by Karl Marx in a series of minor writings, i.e. the ethnological notes written between 1881 and 1882. The purpose is to highlight how in these notes Marx continues the study of Irish society as set out in Book I of Capital (1867), enriching it with a new historical-legal dimension: the study of the Act of Uniformity of 4 July 1605, whereby the British expropriated Irish people from their lands. A measure that marked both the birth of intra-European colonialism and the alliance between social sciences (legal ethnography, political economy) and domination systems. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

A study of the work of Jean-Paul Sartre and of its relevance for contemporary sociology. Following the studies of existential sociology, this work wants to use the category of the practical-inert to analyze the construction of reality. Practicoinert is a notion coined by Sartre in the Critique of Dialectical Reason (1960), outlined the unit of practical activities and material structures. This paper uses this perspective to analyze institutional life, bureaucracies, theoretical construction and rationality in the human sciences. Focusing the analysis in a comparison with Max Weber's perspective. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The paper's focus is on how sociology could support current humanism's rethinking contemporarily considering the present high degree of religious as well as cultural pluralism. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Reconsidering the historical presence of poverty, illegality and informal work in the South added two new diseases caused by Covid 19 pandemic, and the related resumptions of the activity of criminal organizations. This paper shows the possibility to overcome the old stereotype of the South and it tries to reflect about a way that allows to pursue and promote new territorial developmental processes. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

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]

The intent of this paper is to rethink, through the mythological figure of Pan, the “Goat god”, a possible reading of some dynamics of the modern world, the same highlighted by the studies dedicated by Girard to mimetic conflict. In this sense, particular attention is devoted to the themes of “double”, “undifferentiated” and “monstrous”. Furthermore, an attempt is made to proceed in an interdisciplinary way, taking into consideration also the convergence between empirical research and René Girard’s theory, demonstrating the link between mirror neurons (neurosciences) and mimetic theory. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper analyses, with a “genealogical” perspective that from Pascal reaches up to Girard, the hidden bond that links violence and law. Behind the law lies the “usurpation” as well as behind the social institutions lies the “sacrificial violence”. It is the task of this work to reconstruct this ambivalent connection that always structures, in its paradoxical removal, the ground of the social ties. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article explores Girard’s ideas on the scapegoat. The aim of this paper is to identify some social and relational processes that transform a community into a place of violence and exclusion. Community studies highlight that community is ambivalent. Some scholars have proposed that the community is a social space of proximity, which responds to people’s need for identity, belonging and trust. Other scholars have observed that the community is a place of conflict, social control and violence. A sound research question is to understand what drives community towards violence. René Girard’s scapegoat theory identifies three fundamental mechanisms or strategies that leads community to violence: mimetic crisis, persecution and the spread of resentment. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article discusses the role of emotion and affect in the context of social media. Drawing on the works by Brian Massumi, Nigel Thrift, Zizi Papacharissi, Richard Grusin, Margaret Wetherell, the paper reflects on the need to engage more deeply with feelings and emotions as driving forces of digital affect culture and on how this digital affect culture can manifest itself within different kind of affectively charged collectivities, created via spontaneous interaction on various social media platforms. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The focus of this paper is to discuss, through a critical approach, improvements in democratic participation in European governance. The evolution of the rules of transparency of the European institutions towards interests groups representation and the increasing role of subnational local authorities are analysed in order to evaluate how the multi-level governance system cope with the problems of the international instabilities. The focus of this paper is to discuss, through a critical approach, improvements in democratic participation in European governance. The evolution of the rules of transparency of the European institutions towards interests groups representation and the increasing role of subnational local authorities are analysed in order to evaluate how the multi-level governance system cope with the problems of the international instabilities. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The paper show how the symbolic interactionism study the poverty phenomena. The Author explain the concepts and the interpretative model of poverty of interactionist approach. It is defined by two dimensions: stigma and social giving. This model permits to interpret poverty in the comparative approach by defines four different types of poverty: crystallized, disadvantaged, tolerate and not relevant. The paper discuss the contributing of different sociologist as Simmel, Goffman, Matza, Waxman e Paugam that are fundamental to define the tradition of study and specific interactionist approach to study of poverty. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The aim of this paper is to conduct an organic reflection of the methodological perspective of Goffman, considering his reluctance in defining it. The paper explores the relationship between the student and the method analyzing the context of the social studies of the Chicago School and the epistemological keys essential to understand some of the guidelines for qualitative research. The situational and "naturalist" characters of his approach are related with a perspective that highlights the interaction analysis as a special field. The final section examines the distinctive mix of technical and empirical basis that he adopted and the peculiarities of the researcher from the specific case of an observer like Goffman. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The paper analyses the problem of public corruption as a "white-collar crime". The term "white-collar crime" was coined in 1939 during a speech given by Edwin Sutherland to the American Sociological Society. Sutherland defined the term as "crime committed by a person of respectability and high social status in the course of his occupation". Although there has been some debate as to what qualifies as a white-collar crime, the term today generally encompasses a variety of crimes usually committed in commercial situations for financial gain, and it includes also public corruption. This paper indeed aims to focus and frame the problem of public corruption into the "white-collar crimes" category. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The paper reflects on Max Weber's analysis of the historical and institutional genesis of the "city" (Stadt), with a particular focus on the Chinese model. Given Weber's West-related perspective, weak and stark points of the Weberian reconstructive methodology are sketched. What is highlighted is the connection between the micro- and the macro-perspective: assumed that Weber's research on the city is a part of a broader inquiry on the modern civilization, that connection works both as a historical explanation thesis and as a long-lasting methodological paradigm. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article aims to promote a reflection in Sociology by exploring the temporal evolution of topic 'religion' in the articles published by the American Journal of Sociology (Ajs) in almost a century (1921-2016). As it is know, in the scientific knowledge production the collocation and the prestige of a journal is usually assessed by the quality of papers and the editors play a central role in this process. If we consider the 'selection of ideas' and the publications of certain topics by inhibiting other ideas in a scientific journal, then the we can analyse the topics which is permitted to circulate among a journal and those that have a different destiny. The case of topic 'religion' in a generalist journal presents an opportunity to explore how scientific production is constructed and sheds new light on how Ajs tends to support and reproduce the orthodox view of sociological study of religion by removing certain dimensions of religion from the contemporary scientific debate. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Starting from the 'rhetoric style' of the baroque painting, this paper will try to briefly revisit the concept of sacred especially as it was developed in the context of the Counter-reformation. Under the impetus of this religious vision it is in fact right to recognize the new bounds that tie the person who observe the scene of the mystery play with the idea of infinity. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The paper examines the actual presence of Weberian Kadi-Justiz in Italian criminal justice system, arguing that it is represented by correctional Tribunal legislation and jurisprudence regarding among others probation orders modifying prison sentence. This feature seems to be connected to and influence stagnation of recidivism risk assessment actuarial instruments evolution in Italian criminological science still nowadays stuck on traditional clinical judgment that has been called metaphorically Kadi-science. On the other hand, according to authors, comparing the situation with the common law area especially the USA it is possible to highlight a contrary rationalization and formalization process affecting sentencing guidelines, parole and bail decisions, probation orders and so on, due to incremental use of actuarial and evidence-based recidivism risk assessment tools up to introduction even statutory and compulsory provisions. The two totally reversed situations can be explained according to Damaska proposed activist and reactive State models. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The aim of this paper is to offer a few comments on the reconstruction of the institution of «Euergetism» as proposed by Paul Veyne. The phenomenon, known as «euergetism», is one of the most striking features of the ancient world. It can be seen as a form of altruism, civic pride or wealth redistribution, a means of buying honour, prestige or political power, yet one thing is clear: it was long regarded as a duty and privilege of the wealthy to benefit their fellow citizens. To understand why, suggests Paul Veyne, we need to forget about abstract theories and modern economics. Rather, we should examine what really happened before the Christian era in Hellenistic Greece and the Rome of the Republic and the Emperors. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Ten years after the death of Jean Baudrillard, this contribution intends to rethink the literary production and thought of this author, from beginnings to later works. The aim is to bring out the most important themes of his thought, highlighting how the concept of simulation can be an important lighthouse for sociological analysis, even today. As we can see in the last part of the paper presented here, the simulation is an explanatory and analytical key to the current transformation phases of Western society. The intent is to articulate the analysis of the concept on two levels: a phenomenological one, which investigates the manifestation of dimensions that characterize the various spheres of social action, and another one that is driven to a macrosocial analysis. In this case, the perspective introduced by the simulacrum would hinge between abstract culture and concrete society, with particular attention to the processes of recursive and reflective influence of society on its own, in integrative and socializing, based on aesthetic pleasure and taste. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The aim of this paper is to analyse the theme of political power as developed in the political anthropology of Pierre Clastres, especially in his influential book Society against the State. Can there be a society that is not divided into oppressors and oppressed, or that refuses coercive state apparatus? Clastres's thesis is that economic expropriation and political coercion are inconsistent with the character of tribal society. He offers examples of South American Indian groups that, although without hierarchical leadership, were both affluent and complex. In so doing he refutes the usual negative definition of tribal society and poses its order as a radical critique of our own Western state of power. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Populist parties have thrived in Southern Europe in recent years. This is often related to the demand-side influence of the financial crisis and its disastrous impact on the quality of life of ample sectors of the population throughout the region. This paper argues that, on the one hand, the success of populist formations needs also to be related to distinctive supply-side factors of the political market. On the other hand, contextual factors constitute political opportunities that play an important intervening role. With reference to the three test cases of Italy, Greece and Spain, a set of demand-side and supply-side factors are examined and their interaction with contextual factors is analyzed. The resulting structure of populist formations is described. The analysis frames populism as a discursive strategy that selectively benefits populist parties in their attempt to expand their relevance as political representatives of disaffected groups of the population. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The aim of this paper is to analyse the development of the concept of 'political society' from Gramsci to Subaltern Studies. We can get a sense of this development if we look at the recent work of Partha Chatterjee. His studies, in effect, retracing a path that goes from Gramsci to Focault, analyse the concept of 'political society' as well as of 'governmentality'. He suggests a critique of the traditional paradigm of 'civil society' intended as a form historically connected to representative democracy and rights. Putting it in other worlds, Partha Chatterjee looks at the political mobilization of the governed in former colonies and in postcolonial State, where they lack access to the modes of traditional citizenship. He argues that these people are not powerless but rather that they engage in a kind of democratic politics that differs from the democracy of national sovereignty. This political space is exactly the space of 'political society'. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The paper focuses the most serious problem of Democracy, the always difficult relationship between universalism and particularism: equality for everybody, and freedom for each one. If individualism in all its forms has always favored particularity at the expenses of the universal, now the attention turns more and more on the universal as demonstrated for instance by Jean-Luc Nancy's thought on being-with. Nancy underlines that a fundamental ontology based on being-with, coincides with the structure of democracy. On the contrary, in his thought, authoritarian regimes are described as fusional and unable to afford the free game of mutual articulations between 'absolutes singularities', produced in the status of being-with. Some critical analyses of Nancy's anthropological proposals and his fundamental ontology are finally presented. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The paper presents the interactionist model of Anselm Strauss applied to the chronic illness and diseases. Anselm Strauss shows the sufferers as able to negotiate their social status, so patients can participates to medical diagnosis. Emphasizing the role of patients and their families, Strauss played an important role in shaping the cognitive identity of medical sociology, favoring not a physician centric but a human-centric research patient oriented. This resulted also a new mode of looking at chronic illness increasingly connected to public interaction. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Symbolic Interaction (1977-), journal of the SSSi, following Blumer's antecedents, confirmed, strengthened and enlarged theoretical approaches and qualitative surveys of Symbolic Interactionism. The paper highlights as in the 39 years, and in the 126 numbers of its publishing, the journal faced American sociological tradition and developed an heterogeneous continuity of its work, which poses again the relationship between past and present, memory and future, premises for contemporary analyses and a further growth of Symbolic Interactionism. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This brief paper deals with the subject of corruption from the point of view of the sociology of emotions: with the decline of the 'shame (and guilt) society' and its role of social control-which has been dealt with the contemporary sociology of emotions- corruption unavoidably finds a fertile ground. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The aim of this paper is an attempt to focus on the problem of public corruption phenomena within the frame of their causal processes and the Italian juridical framework. According to this perspective, was addressed in the first place the issue of the over-regulation (legislative inflation), as a potential breeding ground for corruptive settlements; secondly, was performed an analytical review of the most recent national legislation to combat public corruption and the critical explanation of two emblematic court cases. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The paper deals with the structural aspects of corruption. This issue has been analyzed with respect of two types of social structures: the traditional social structure and the typical structure we can find in developed societies. In the conclusions, this work evaluates possible politics to contrast corruption [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The paper analyzes the stereotype of the employed man. The methodological approach combines visual and quantitative techniques, which makes integrated use of both photo-elicitation and a semantic differential scale. The research involved 808 individuals of the cities of Verona and Padua (Italy). Employment status and lifestyles of the figures are selected by the respondents accord ing to the clothes worn by the models and not to their physical attributes or aesthetic. The results showed that there is no single stereotype of the employed man, but there are two figures which are associated features and different lifestyles. Clothing communicates our personal and social identity and acts as a type of recognition of our social role. This confirms that the clothing, as the material culture, is the vehicle of transmission of tastes and social values, through representations that are recognized by all of us and that create stereotypes. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The paper discusses the role of material culture in shaping social representations of women and work. A study of the stereotype of the employed woman was conducted through an experiment whose design features the integration of visual techniques and quantitative techniques. Four photos depicting four different styles of clothing on a female model were shown to a sample of 739 young people aged 19-25 years who reside in the Veneto region of Italy. Statistical analysis of the findings clearly demonstrate the existence of the stereotype of the employed woman. This stereotype differs from the others represented by three of the pictures, in terms of both lifestyle and the characteristics of the semantic differential measured. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper aims at showing that the sociology began its modern development with the Scottish moralists of 18th century - Hume and Smith - and their forerunner Mandeville. They "discovered" that the social order should not be "given" by a superior being to subjects who operate in society but that order can be the unintentional result of the actions of individuals. This individualistic and evolutionary conception of society achieved full stature particularly in the work of Spencer, Simmel, Weber, Merton and Boudon. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]