Edizioni FrancoAngeli - Last issue of SOCIOLOGIA URBANA E RURALE (97/2012)

Introduzione

Wed, 15 May 2012 8:00:00 GMT

Calvosa Fiammetta Mignella, Giovanni Pieretti

Networks of companies and local collective competition goods: the Monferr.aLto brand

Wed, 15 May 2012 8:00:00 GMT

Sara Mela
The article analyzes a project carried out by the spin-off of the University of Eastern Piedmont, aimed at creating a network of companies in the agricultural sector, employing some conceptual tools: networks of enterprises and local collective competition goods. The author highlights the characteristics of collective goods produced by the network, the role played by the spin-off and the impact of the project on the overall competitiveness of the territorial system.

City and country side: community housing

Wed, 15 May 2012 8:00:00 GMT

Sarah Chiodi
To live in a city or in a country side could identify different architectural types and specific morphological blocs, but, on a sociological point of view, housing complexity, in the urban era, takes up common values and necessities, even in the city that in the country side; from those emerges a sort of "community necessity". The question isn’t to live in the city or in the country side, but to live in-common in a sustainable context, that means a new form of housing referring to a type of society, that respect and preserve the resources (natural, human, cultural, ecc.) for the next generations.

Solidarity economy networks and social changes

Wed, 15 May 2012 8:00:00 GMT

Mario Coscarello
The author provides a brief overview of the literature on the topic of solidarity economy and of degrowth, highlighting the different approaches and activities carried out in Italy. The illustration of the Calabrian case as the starting point of the constitution of a district of solidarity economy is considered as a strategic niche, where novelties can be created and developed, able to make a significant change, regarding ideals of social, economic and environmental justice, of the territories.

Competitive city and sustainable city: some reflections on the relationship between the two concepts

Wed, 15 May 2012 8:00:00 GMT

Silvia Crivello
The paper focus on the debate concerning the increasing economic competition between cities on one side, and the spread of the principle of sustainable development on the other one. The article outlines the theoretical relationships between the two concepts and makes a quantitative comparison, using data relating to the Italian metropolitan provinces.

Environmental conflicts as experimentation of territorialized risk communities

Wed, 15 May 2012 8:00:00 GMT

Vittorio Martone
In this essay the Author reflects on environmental conflicts as collective experience of social construction of the waste and the territory. The focus is on two dimensions: on the one hand, the models of collective action and political citizenship experienced in environmental conflicts, with particular attention to the instrument of the "sit-in"; on the other hand, the social construction of territoriality and the emergence of identitarian expressions connected with it.

Defaral Sa Bopp: the initiative of Senegalese migrants for an endogenous and sustainable rural development

Wed, 15 May 2012 8:00:00 GMT

Maria Luisa Bevivino
Among the actors promoting a rural development alternative to the dominant agro-food system, migrants can play a prominent role as "citizens among several spaces" capable of producing some change processes both in the homeland and in the destination country. It will be presented the survey about a co-development project in Senegal that aims to improve the lifestyle of local population and to limit the drift from the land through virtuous practices of sustainable endogenous development.

Observing the urban space: symbolic value and functional uses

Wed, 15 May 2012 8:00:00 GMT

The paper refers to an observation study carried out when the authors were PhD students in Methodology of Social Sciences. La Loggia Square in Brescia was the field, the public realm and the behaviour in public places were the objects of the observation. During the field work, first assumptions were abandoned and new ones came out from the observation of the physical space and the social interactions. The past that took place in La Loggia Square was the mean to understand its current shape and symbolic values.

The Mental Image at a Large Scale. Lynchian Categories Applied to Landscape Perception

Wed, 15 May 2012 8:00:00 GMT

Leonardo Chiesi, Paolo Costa
The essay shows how some categories proposed by Kevin Lynch can be applied to areas much larger than the city. In a research project related to the Tuscan country and while studying the nature of local identity and landscape perception by its inhabitants, the authors show how some of the lynchian categories maintain their theoretical validity when applied to a different scale than the one originally conceived by Kevin Lynch.

Culture and Individual Well Being: a tool for the improvement of Social Capital

Wed, 15 May 2012 8:00:00 GMT

Blessi Giorgio Tavano
In this paper we focus on the role of cultural participation as a source of individual subjective well being given the ‘sociability grade’ of different cultural activities and social outcomes, such as relational goods, derived from cultural participation. We testify our hypothesis that cultural participation is favorable associated to the level of subjective well being, and this will be relevant in people consuming cultural activities in which participants, thanks to the cultural trait, are expected to have non-instrumental personal interaction, but the opportunity to establish genuine forms of relations. This theoretical hypothesis is tested through the results of a survey undertook on Italian population, focused on the relation between culture and well being, and thanks to a online survey, employed in order to rank the ‘relationability grade’ of 15 cultural related activities. Our findings shows that culture should act toward a the establishment of relational goods and in this perspective can be seen as a tool to enhance at best subjective wellbeing and increase social capital level.

Recensioni

Wed, 15 May 2012 8:00:00 GMT

Sintesi / Abstracts

Wed, 15 May 2012 8:00:00 GMT