STUDI DI SOCIOLOGIA - 2011 - 3

The author presents a concise and peculiar view on the studies and researches which have been developed in the last 30 years or so about the social dimension of time. The article underlies the persisting validity of the idea of time as a socio-cultural institution (Durkheim and his school) and as a social construction (Berger and Luckmann); it also hints at the concept of «temporal culture», which has been rarely employed in studies concerning social times. According to the author, the main transformation concerning social times today is represented by the consequences of globalization and related aspects, such as «agglutination» of experiences concerning communication through space-time. In the last paragraph the question of rhythm in general and particularly of social rhythms is discussed: the author argues that this concept, distinct from time, deserves much more attention than it has received until now by social scientists interested in the subject. Key words: time, rhythm, globalization, network society, values.

Time, as it’s well known, is a central key question in philosophy. This contribution sketches an original perspective to resume and classify the different ways in which subject can do experience of time. The first is perception of time (how I feel time?); then we have measure, that is the social, collective and objective dimension of time. Third, we have that dimension which the author calls «figure of time», that shows a different kind of time objectivity, that is different from measure because qualified by affection. The author tries also to answer another question: does the peculiar way of thinking of philosophers reveal a temporality of its own? Key words: time, rhythm, history, philosophy, meditation.

This paper analyses two different generations of young people: Stuck Generation – those who are thirty years old – and Active generation – younger brothers, or twenty years old youngs. These two generations show both elements of continuity and (interesting) discontinuity. While Stuck Generation is characterized by low social and spatial mobility, by limited planning and privatism, Active Generation is proving a major social and political committment, a more critical attitude and a desire to invest in the future. Active Generation is also optimistic and pragmatic, it wants to live at full rhythm its time and it is no longer willing to accept to live an empty time, without any chance of real life. Key words: time, rhythm, mobility, youth, generations.

The rise of the network society and the digitalization of communication processes changed modern experience of time and rhythm; notwithstanding a lot of theories account timeless time, real time and network time as a consistent and typical kind of temporality of internet and mobile communication devices, forcing our everyday experience of time and rhythm in a very deterministic way, technical affordances, cultural forms and users’ practices describe a more complex, pluralistic and flexible kind of temporality. Users’ everyday practices of CMC and ICT look like a jazz performance, that includes qualities such as «swinging», improvising, group interaction, developing an «individual voice» on the basis of their social position, habitus and moral economy. Key words: time, rhythm, communication, internet, mobility.

The sociological analysis of the commemorative practices represents nowadays a well defined branch of research into the wide and many sided fragmented area of memory studies. Much of the work conducted in this field has followed the path traced by Emile Durkheim theory. Nevertheless, in the course of the last two decades, scholars have tried to move away from the Durkheimian orthodoxy in order to find more appropriate ways to account for the complex variety of the commemorative universes. The most valuable efforts conducted in this direction are represented by the concept of multivocal commemoration elaborated by R. Wagner-Pacifici and B. Schwartz, and by the concept of fragmented commemoration, developed by V. Vinitzky-Seroussi. Drawing on some empirical stimuli provided by an on-going research on the commemoration of the partisan victims of a massacre perpetrated in the village of Cornalba (northern Italy) by a fascist militia, our paper tries to show that multivocal and fragmented types of commemoration don’t fulfill the typology. In our opinion there is still room for another kind of commemorative rite that we would define conflicting commemoration. That is a specific kind of ritual that witness the emergence, during its own execution, of two or more conflicting representations of the same past that it tries to commemorate. In describing this kind of commemoration, we argue that it is more likely to show up in societies marked by pasts of deep social divisions, where a full reconciliation is still not accomplished. Key-words: memory, difficult pasts, commemoration practices, italian resistance, reconciliation.

The words «rhythm» and «time» define two important characteristics of psychomotion, but they are, at the same time, two significant aspects of theatrical communication languages. They give sense and significance to the body and image, to movement and sound, and they allow theatre, where actors use all these means of expression, to be heard and understood. The theatre SUMMARIES 341 makes sense just through a rhythmic score, a gesture, a short series of words or a music, and it can show that hidden whole composed by motivation and emotion, that the performers has turned into an understandable form of expression that can be seen or heard; for example, the feeling of happiness will have a fast and intense rhythm, which will produce a series of quick and light movements and will characterize in the same way the verbal language too. To assert that a feeling has its own rhythm we have to analyse our heartbeat and our breath, that are our so-called «natural rhythms», when that particular emotional state occurs. Every human being has his own «natural rhythms», that characterize the way he thinks and moves, for example the way he raises his arm, he walks, he works or he organizes his own time. Key-words: time, rhythm, theatre, communication, emotion.