This paper argues, against the dominant position in social sciences – especially economics – and in biology that cooperation and conflict are not polar opposite, but to the contrary that cooperation and conflict constitute forms of social coordination that partake in the social bonds and are related in such a way that they grow in parallel. Therefore, in highly social species, like humans, we should expect greater cooperation to lead to more rather than less conflicts. I show why this is the case and the limits of S. Bowles’s concept of «parochial altruism» which continues to treat cooperation and conflict as opposite which excludes each other. Following an old sociological tradition, I argue that in the absence of coordination between opponents, violence is not conflict, in fact that cooperation cannot be separated from conflict and show how agents often cooperate to conflict.
While migration patterns have generally stabilized, there exists an increasing concern about managing immigration flow, that has influenced both the public debate and academic discourses towards a new trend that proposes interculturalism as a replacement for a «tired, discredited naive multiculturalism » (Kymlicka 2016: 158). This same trend has oriented governments toward a reformulation of migration policies pointed towards «civic integration» (Joppke 2007; Ambrosini 2014). This article focuses on the salient debate between interculturalists and multiculturalists and aims to go beyond the simple «political rhetoric» between these theoretical frameworks. It aims to highlight the complexities and multi-layered, nuanced, and sometimes conflicting aspects within and between the paradigms. It promotes an understading of «how to live together in diversity» as Antonsich (2015: 1) suggests.
The paper shows the main results of a research about Chinese consumers in the area of Prato through the particular point of view of the Italian retailers. Despite a widespread representation which depicts the Chinese people settled as a homogeneous «community», this group of consumers is increasingly internal differentiated and characterized by a rather complex socio-economic stratification. The emergence of local Chinese «middle classes» is associated with and can be analysed through the lens of specific consumption patterns. The research reveals the opportunities that the Chinese group, thanks to its local consumption and involvement in social transnational networks, may bring to the overall host society. Therefore, the study of consumption becomes a new and original way to understand the complexity of Chinese migrants’ social stratification in Prato.
The paper proposes a reading, with the interpretation of research’s evidences, of neighbourhood’s reality of Naples’ Hinterland. In specific, it presents the case of Acerra’s City that has, in its different peripheries, forms of social integration and disintegration to leads toward a new concept of community. A community that recognizes, in different way of society, dignity to the person because it guarantees the freedom (warranty of rights and respect of duties).
This contribution is the result of five years of ethnographic research that has touched several Italian cities. Argumentation will considers the Islamic concept of death and funerary practices connected with it. Janazah is the Islamic term which means «funeral», but it also indicates all the funeral activities since the death until the closing of the tomb. There are several steps of this peculiar funeral ritual that mark the right way to treat a Muslim and to prepare his or her mortal remains while his or her soul tackles the journey in the afterlife. In migratory settings, transnational funerary rituals highlight differences between first and second generation of migrants, and the importance of the inclusive dimension of the burial location far from homelands.
Le giovanni donne sempre più lontane, i giovani in solitaria ricerca, il dovere degli adulti di mettersi in ascolto: Paola Bignardi racconta il libro-inchiesta "Dio, dove sei?".