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The indication of the food origin is one of the most important tools to ensure the protection of consumers and farmers. It is also very important to maintain and enhance rural landscape, especially in Italy and within agri-food productions with geographical indications. The strong link in terms of identity and culture between the territory and these products, a heritage preserved by farmers from generation to generation, is apparently intangible, but actually, it emerges in the fields configuration and in the traditional landscape features. Supporting agri-food production with deep territorial and cultural origins, means promoting a model anchored in local economies and rural communities. However, the risk of losing this heritage is still real, especially in our country and despite the several tools of protection and promotion in the agri-food sector. In this paper, the author shows the authenticity of the link between landscape and agri-food products through the analysis of a Piedmont case and the spatial analysis of the geographical context and territorial relationship (protection, naturalness, visual integrity and accessibility). In addition, the paper suggests some technical and political issues that can contribute to the debate on the heritage integrated vision, considered also as a potential lever of development. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The paper describes a research performed by the Department of Anthropological Sciences for the Regione Liguria, finalized to the definition of a set of indicators for the distribution of the Regional Social Fund, feeding a consistent part of Liguria's social policies, governed by the Regional Social Plan and by Local Plans. The research is inserted in a setting of quite rigid normative and programming indications, even if, as it will be described, have taken places interesting retroactions between scientific results and the re-thinking of adopted criteria (or of their practical translation) by the decision maker, considering the results obtained though the operationalization of pre-defined criteria. These aspects have been recently observed by the Italian theoretical framework (Parra Saiani, 2009; Bezzi, Cannavò e Palumbo, a cura di, 2010), being always characterized by a proficient mix between descriptive-interpretative use and practical function. In these cases it is mainly used the Lazarsfeld sociological approach (Lazarsfeld, 1965), such as the selection of principal dimensions of the concept and the successive realization of variable (indicators) permitting to observe such dimensions. The research has maintained a certain degree of continuity with the Lazarsfeld's paradigm, even if opening to some critical reflections about it. More specifically, it emerges a continuous retroaction between indicators, dimensions and indicated concepts, that in their evaluative use produces also a wider consciousness of practical implications of adopted choices, both on the methodological plan, both on the political one. In this way, it is obtained a result that produces innovations and empowerment both on classic working models in social research, both on interested decisional processes. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]