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The paper focuses on one of the most discussed issues in Elias' work, namely the representation of the medieval affective world in The Civilisation Process. Drawing on its ties with Freudian theory, the paper attempts to highlight the ambiguity existing between the accounts of the dynamics of the psyche in Elias and their treatment in the case of the medieval warrior. Then an attempt is made to elucidate some implicit consequences for those who intend, following Elias' path, to question the relations between sociogenesis and psychogenesis. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The paper relates Elias's thought to Mead's, starting from the embodied dimension of emotions. The approach of the two authors to emotions is affected by a conception of society as deeply intertwined with biological and somatic aspects. Rediscovering and enhancing these aspects is configured as a radical challenge to the disciplinary barriers with which such topics are traditionally addressed. This allows to relate the thought of the two authors within a theoretical framework that can shed light on the embodied aspects of emotional action. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The paper aims to relate the observations of some historians who have dealt with epidemic events in early modern Italy to some central features of Norbert Elias' approach, and to observe some social phenomena related to such events in the perspective of Eliasian sociology. In this way, we will try to suggest that the social implications of great epidemic events that occurred "in the past" can be included among the various fields of investigation in which the Eliasian approach can be tested, and we will attempt to highlight the usefulness of some key concepts of the figurational sociology for the interpretation of what can be observed in that field. With particular reference to seventeenth-century Tuscany, attention will be focused on some dynamics of change that involved - at the same time - both certain institutions engaged in the fight against the plague and certain dimensions of people's attitudes and "sensibilities". Following Norbert Elias, we will also try to suggest that the role played by the plague in defining the direction of those dynamics of change was part of a broader (civilizing) process. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Considered a crucial resource, to be exploited for profit or to be protected as a common good, attention has attracted the interest of many disciplines. Despite this, sociology has not yet proposed a systematic analysis of it. The goal of this paper is to show the sociological relevance and heuristic utility of the concept of attention. In the first part, an initial definition of 'attention', in relation especially to the concepts of selection and limitation of attentional resources, is provided. Then, the most recent and relevant perspectives that have elected attention as an object of sociological investigation are discussed: the school of cognitive sociology that refers to the figure of Eviatar Zerubavel, the perspectives that look at attention as a resource and Dominique Boullier's idea of 'regimes of attention'. Overall, it is shown how adopting a particular metaphor for the study of attention tends to implicitly guide the choice of the elements considered relevant to the observed phenomenon. Therefore, the limitations and potentialities of the different perspectives are analyzed, the points of convergence are explored, and, in conclusion, possible future lines of research are mentioned. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper reports on the subcultural movements of Vaporwave and Aesthetic by examining digital practices and products such as the creative and sound projects specific to the culture of the web, which are immediately welcomed by member of Generation Z through social media. Generation Z gives life to its own subcultural movements that cannot be analyzed according to the canons of the past, even if they look and are inspired by the past. In the context of the remediation under discussion, fluidity is seen as a starting paradigm, the technoexpressive boundaries mix until they are unrecognizable and perfectly integrated, and digital is an increasingly concrete dynamic. As a result, creative processes become increasingly fragmented and prismatic. The aesthetic recognizability of subcultures today is radically broken down by the logic of digital: the aesthetic canons on the web are less structured, less recognizable, more fragmented. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper comments on Mariuccia Salvati’s analysis of the life and work of Camillo Pellizzi. The commented book comprehensively and convincingly reconstructs Pellizzi’s personality in the context of fascist and post-fascist Italy, focusing on issues such as corporatism, the theory of elites, the teaching of sociology. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper aims at showing the consequences of Bruno Latour's endorsement of the anti-holist, "flat" ontology (an ontology that denies that difference in scale is an ontological difference) shared by many speculative realists. While this assumption presents notorious problems on the political side, it will be shown to have explicative and pragmatic potential when it comes to political ecology. After exploring his treatment of the concept of scale, which draws on Gabriel Tarde's monadological sociology, Latour's radical democraticism, for which scale depends only on the number of connections and "alliances" an actor is able to put into existence, will be compared to Timothy Morton's hyperobjects hypotheses, another ecology based on a peculiar treatment of the notion of scale, in order to show the advantages and the potential of Latour's ecology of fragility. The aim of Latour's politics is the composition of a common world, but this composition has no superior guarantor, and even Gaia, the holistic entity par excellence, cannot be brought into existence without an assembly of allies that Latour compares to a war declaration. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The issue of the energy transition, that can be defined as the transition from the use of fossil fuels (in particular coal) to low-carbon energy resources (such as wind, solar and natural gas), is assuming an increasingly central importance in the public debateand has increasingly become the focus of public concern. Scientifically speaking, the challenge and goal of achieving pursuing a more sustainable and fairer low-carbon energy sector globally has encouraged the proliferation of a series of scientific contributions, in various fields of knowledge. The paper shows the results of a literature review on the topic of energy transition. The review takes into consideration a selection of papers taken from international scientific journals with the aim of mapping at a broader level the research on the topic and the issues that were mainly addressed in the years between 2015 and 2020. With the more specific aim of understanding the role of sociology in the international scientific debate on the energy transition, the paper aims to provide an overview of 1) research fields and disciplines; 2) places of publication; 3) research topics and questions.

Is fashion history a branch of art history? Is the nature of the two ontologically different? Moreover, can the concept of fashion be extended to include other practices, such as more traditional forms of clothing? In our contemporary academic panorama where “including” has superseded the concept of “defining”, these questions are often only tangentially considered by fashion scholars but hardly faced directly. This essay aims to bring attention to the very definition of fashion and its differences with art. Drawing from the study of aesthetics and the theory of fashion, the paper will try to go beyond the material qualities that art and fashion sometimes share and look at the social, historical, and symbolic processes underpinning each of the two fields. The essay attempts to create an overarching theory that explains the intrinsic qualities of fashion and art from an ontological standpoint. To achieve this goal, the essay will analyse some specific cases and show how fashion and art look similar only when observed from a distance. Ultimately, it will be suggested that the difference between the two is not found in their material qualities but in how they are consumed and how they signify.

Naples has a rich and suggestive artistic, historical and cultural heritage. This characterization makes it one of the most attractive Italian tourist cities. Starting from 2018, the IT.A.CÀ Festival has also been included for two years in the already dense calendar of tourist events of the regional capital of Campania. It is one of the major Italian Festivals aimed at promoting responsible tourism and enhancing local realities. The purpose of this paper is to present the results of an action-research conducted by OUT (University of Naples' Research Center on Tourism) aimed at analyzing the impacts that the Festival has had on Naples. The study involved the main representatives of associations, institutions and local bodies that organized the past Neapolitan editions of IT.A.CÀ. More specifically, using the SWOT analysis tool, the research identified the strengths and opportunities associated with the event, but also the weaknesses and threats, to individuate a number of recommendations for its realization in Naples.

The article presents the research performed by an Italian multi-disciplinary team jointly with a group of citizen scientists. The research was part of the project CitieS-Health (Citizen Science for Urban Environment and Health) funded by the EU under the Horizon2020 Programme. Aria di Ricerca in Valle del Serchio, one of the project five pilot studies, was performed in eight municipalities of Valle del Serchio (Lucca, Tuscany) and addressed the prevalence of chronic kidney diseases in the context of potential industrial pollution on health and, in particular, the presence of heavy metals in the environment. Since long, health and environmental issues have been of concern for the local residents who over the years promoted many initiatives to ensure adequate monitoring and appropriate policy interventions. Inspired by the PNS (Post-Normal Science) approach, and in particular the idea of Extended Peer Community, the study addressed local concerns and expectations integrating a multiplicity of competences, knowledges and perspectives. Researchers from Social Sciences and Humanities -- namely history, sociology and ethics -- collaborated with others from the health sector -- epidemiology in particular -- and with citizens in all the phases of the work: from the definition of the research objective to the collection, analysis and dissemination of the research results, and the suggestion of policy recommendations. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article aims to highlight how the sociology of memory actually corresponds to a sociology of remembering and forgetting. Indeed, if a component of forgetting is always present in memory processes, in order to fully understand the past it is not enough to focus on its visible traces, but it is also necessary to investigate those contents that have been lost, that have not been deposited or that have been prevented from having visibility. In other words, if we normally think of the sociology of memory by assuming memory as remembrance and focusing on its visible traces, we actually have to consider that it simultaneously involves remembering and forgetting; two complementary activities that are not always assumed with adequate balance in sociological analyses of memory phenomena. With this in mind, the article reflects on the different meanings of forgetting and reinterprets the traditions of memory studies in the light of a renewed focus on forgetting issues. Thus, the paths of forgetting in the main paradigms of memory will be traced and discussed: that of the social frameworks of memory, that of the critical-emancipatory paradigm, that of the places of memory, and that of memory work. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper focuses on the discourse about the Other in a group of Catholic missionaries by starting from the analysis of the magazine Le Missioni Cattoliche. Published by the Lombard Seminary for Foreign Missions, later Pontifical Institute for Foreign Missions (PIME), the magazine has been collecting the chronicles and accounts of mission life for decades, presenting it in a completely new way to the general public. The analysis focuses, in particular, on the discursive transformations that affect those more radical ‘Others’ that are represented by ethnic and linguistic minorities in non-European contexts. Through the analysis of the missionary reports over a period ranging from 1872 to 1962, the transformation that the categorization of these others undergoes between the end of the nineteenth century and the Second Vatican Council is highlighted. This, to demonstrate that this shift is indispensable for the formulation of the many innovations introduced by the Second Vatican Council, as well as for the general spirit that characterizes this Council. For a very long time, the understanding of these specific human communities passes through the category of ‘the savage’, which is rich in specific traits and a precise function and is not only characterized by a series of constantly repeated traits but defines, by antithesis, the identity of the same European, rational, civilized, and Christian man. By its own nature the savage is, and remains, irreducible to the civilized European. The passage to the new global Catholic community announced by Council II requires a new categorization and understanding of those same groups. At level of missionary narrative, a progressive reclassification of the otherness takes shape, the category of savage slowly disappears in favor of the already widely used category of ‘the poor’. The once savage, can, in his capacity as a poor man, be included in that unprecedented global and multifaceted ‘us’, which usually starts right from Vatican II.

Specific positioning strategies in William Golding’s Lord of the flies are applied in relation to the anthropocentric epistemological paradigm, typical of Western culture. The plot aims at exploring the answer to the following question: what could happen to a group of British educated boys, if they landed on a desert island and had to survive far away from civilization? The outcome turns out to be negative: after an initial situation of balance, the boys perform a series of violent actions which culminate with murder; this is the starting point for a reflection on human nature which seems inherently evil and free to emerge in the absence of social rules. This paper aims at problematizing the position of the text to human nature. At first, the opposing categories of ‘white Western man’ and ‘black savage man’ will be outlined; thanks to the analysis of the meanings of the concept of ‘human’, we will show the conservative vision underlying the text that does not undermine the anthropocentrism or the trust in human nature. The opposition between white Western man and black savage man is connected to two opposing social models, one stemmed from the other after a crisis: a group of rebels, in fact, violently split up from the society based on the Western model. In conclusion, we can affirm that the struggle between civilization and barbarism shifted in the text from an external to an inner dimension, where evil is inborn the cultural subject (Westerners turn into savages). Lastly, such transformation is a defence strategy, to protect the concept of ‘human’ and, specifically, of ‘white Western man’, who is not simply criticized because of his nature but because of his degeneration towards other identities, which are discriminated due to stereotypes.

This essay represents the first attempt to build the logical and epistemological foundations of Positional Sociology, i.e. a type of sociology that, by placing itself in the tradition of critical and public sociology, seeks to go beyond them by elaborating a new sociological practice that is both transformative and generative. To this end, the authors explain what is meant by positional sociology and then anchor it in the tradition of historical materialism and a Marxism freed from old ideological encrustations. The authors then attempt to combine the macro dimension, which is based on the analysis of historical and structural macro-processes, with the micro dimension and thus on the effects that certain major structural transformations have on the lives of subjects. The fundamental objective is thus to integrate the acquisitions of structuralist literature with post-structuralist sociological literature. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Twenty years after the death of Pierre Bourdieu, his vast corpus continues to fuel lively debates on an international level. Over the last few years, several scholars have been interested in the link between Bourdieu and the sociology of work and the legacy of his conceptual apparatus for the sociological study of Labor. In 2021, in France, one of his lesser-known books, Travail et travailleurs en Algérie, was republished in an updated version. This critical reading pursues a triple objective: to highlight how, firstly, already in this early phase of his career, Bourdieu began to define some of the methodological and epistemological assumptions of his sociology: the relevance of reflexivity; a methodological approach that combines ethnography and statistics, overcoming the sterile contrast between objectivism and subjectivism; an idea of sociology that crosses the frontiers between the social sciences and disciplinary specializations. Secondly, the analysis of this book allows us to retrace the genesis of the concept of habitus, starting from the influence exercised on Bourdieu by Weber's study on the link between Protestant ethics and the spirit of capitalism. Finally, the re(reading) of Travail et travailleurs en Algérie consent to describe the substantially positive meaning that Bourdieu attributes to work, as an activity, and even more to employment in contemporary capitalist societies. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]