STUDI DI SOCIOLOGIA - 2004 - 3

In a society invaded by images, visual texts carry a great significance and have a strong impact on collective and individual representations. In particular fashion images are considered very influential on young girls’ self image which seems to a big extent measured against the unreachable standard proposed by the models’ bodies. Although several studies show that the extreme thinness proposed as an ideal body figure may have negative effect on the diffusion of eating disorders, creators and producers of these images show very little or no awareness of this fact; on a more general basis their whole creative work does not take into account the life and experience of the women- consumers of fashion. On the contrary the goal of fashion images emerges as the attempt to create an association between brands and often unrealistic, although desirable lifestyles.

In the age of globalization, the vibrancy of cultural and social scene is the result of the new relationship between culture and market which is mostly expressed into commercialization of cultural “experiences”. The wide growth of cultural production is more and more related to the concept of experience, of entertainment, of game, of dream, so that the main model of social organization is nowadays the industry of entertainment based on the commodification of emotional experiences created especially in theatrical frames. From this point of view the essay analyzes, through the model of the cultural diamond, the process of production and consumption of the cultural industry of a live spectacularity. The hypothesis is that this represents one of the privileged spaces to produce, distribute and consume the new generalized demand of “experience”.

In high-modern society, the shift from production to consumption and from selling goods to selling services has given a greater importance to the experiencial dimension of commodities: what matters is not only the material nature of commodities, but also the way they are consumed. In the loisir sector, there is an increasing market of ‘experiential commodities’: extreme sports are an example of this kind of products. At the beginning, they were an ‘elitist’ practice because of the risk factor and of the specialised skills needed to cope with it. Then they have become a commodified activity in which the hard side (challenging nature, loneliness, direct bodily involvement, etc.) stays together with a soft and ‘domesticated’ one (managed risk, manifactured emotions, etc.). In the middle between their original and commodified versions, extreme sports keep something typical of ‘experiencial commodities’: the search for a high intensity bodily experience that allows people to feel a better self on their skin, even if just for a short time.

The instability suffered from individuals depends, in most cases, on the continuous changes of society and on the effects of new technologies used for any work areas. These factors involve thousands of citizens’ lives, modifying their habits and social relationships. Because of these reasons, the crisis is now no longer a transitory fact. Actually it is difficult to thing about a stabilisation from which the subject can draw out his own identity in a consolidated social function. Moreover, by considering the change as the probable constant in the future, the subject will have to find out a sense and his own feeling of belonging. So he will have to live with it, building in this change his own story. We can talk about the emancipation that puts the subject into a sort of an endless research of his own identity, that is a tension towards the rediscovery of values able to give a meaning to the actions, recognizing his identity among the others with which he has to live.

The article in object place the aim to explicate the new disciplinary contributions on intercultural communication coming from Italian studies of the sociologist Claudio Baraldi and from Anglo- Saxon ambit by the socio-language analysis of M.J. Bennet. In the first part is examined the theory of intercultural communication based on a different treatment of cultural diversities inside monoculture society in regard to intercultural one and in the second part are outlined the practical order coordinates necessary for the activation of a real intercultural communication. The act and the praxis of an intercultural communication turns out in fact very complex and involves the overcoming of many obstacles by the actors of the communication, or sentence the annulment of the act. The assumed similarity, the language’s differences, the non verbal misunderstandings, the whole of the preconceived and the stereotypes, the stress caused by cultural shock, in fact, are elements which contest with variable intensity to the success of the communicative act.

The article analyzes the theoretical reflection of religion throught Durkheim’s production from the initial perspectives to the elementary forms of religious life. In his masterpiece particularly, Durkheim presents the most important factors founding a “religious society”: the experience of the sacred, the emotional proprieties of rituals and the trascendental function of symbolism. The essay critically discusses, both in sociological and in philosophic terms, potentialities and limits of Durkheim’s project.