Italian Sociology Research Articles

To the Journal, the American Sociologist

AbstractSociology is a field that examines the social construction of various aspects of human life, including gender and sexuality, and explores how these are produced and perceived by individuals, groups, and institutions. In Italy, despite resistance to institutionalization, Gender Studies have significantly enriched sociology by identifying new research areas and generating innovative analytical categories. Initially linked to second-wave feminism, Gender Studies gained momentum in the Western world from the mid-1970s, exploring the nature-culture-society relationship and its impact on bodies, sexuality, and identity within specific cultural contexts. The Gender Studies section within the Italian Sociology Association was established in 2012 after a prolonged accreditation process. While gender issues entered Italian social sciences in the late 1970s, their integration varied across research areas. Sociology, with its broad analytical frameworks, has played a crucial role in understanding and addressing gender disparities in a country marked by a discriminatory welfare system. The integration of gender perspectives into sociological research has fostered a deeper understanding of Italian social reality and reshaped scientific paradigms. Moreover, sociology’s comprehensive approach to studying social inequalities has been instrumental in highlighting the importance of gender studies within academia. Recent years have witnessed increased attention to Gender Studies in Italian universities, reflecting legislative mandates and evolving cultural attitudes. More scholars, including men, are engaging with gender issues, expanding research beyond women’s status to encompass diverse sexual and gender identities. Approaches like intersectionality promise to broaden the scope of Gender Studies within Italian sociology, offering new avenues for exploration and analysis. The collaboration between sociology and gender studies continues to enhance the academic environment and contributes significantly to the evolution of Italian society.

Funzioni e responsabilità delle scienze sociali: note su alcune vicende nello sviluppo della società italiana

This article examines some important moments of the social research and the debate on its public function in Italy. The illustration starts from the last phase of the nineteenth century and ends with the current situation of Italian sociology, which presents many problems and limitations. These limits severely reduce the public function of this subject. Sociology could be a foundamental and essential tool for our society. But it would be necessary – among other things – to recover the capacity for general, but not generic, analyses; and to resume the original vocation of sociology to criticize society.

The Public Role of Italian Sociology: Among Institutions, Universities and Social Engagement

AbstractSociology has played an important role in Italy, although its centrality in public debate has fluctuated, and it has been supported or opposed by political power at different historical moments. Contemporary Italian sociology has developed since the 1950s and has been influenced in various ways by European and American sociological theories. Sociology has played an important role in Italian public debate and has offered a critical and scientific perspective on the country’s social reality. However, this role should be understood in the context of the different stages of development that have accompanied the academic growth of the discipline and the presence of sociologists in ‘policy making’ processes. In the latter sense, Italian sociology has played an important role in the formation of public policies, as it offers a scientific analysis of social problems and proposes solutions based on empirical research. Within this framework, the training processes also need to be situated within what has been defined—albeit with conceptual ambiguity—as ‘professional sociology’, which involves important figures such as social workers, psychologists, and health workers. However, sociology has also played an important political role both in supporting the actions of policy makers and in analysing the contradictions of the capitalist system. This article also analyses the emergence of a ‘transformative’ positional sociology alongside the traditional public sociology. The goal of this transformative approach is to counteract the public role of Italian sociology, which seems to have lost its critical-explanatory vocation without ever having truly acquired a propositional function in the social context.

The Phases of Qualitative and Quantitative Methods in Italian Sociology: Institutionalisation, Social Engagement, and Emerging Problems

AbstractThis article reflects on the qualitative and quantitative methods developed and adopted by Italian sociology and the historical circumstances that have led researchers to focus on some fields rather than others. It will highlight how different research groups have articulated, over time, their reflection on the methods and techniques of social research, which can be said to be characterized by four phases. The first phase is formation, in which the methodological debate takes place against the epistemological contrast between positivist positions and anti-positivist traditions. The second phase is commitment, marked by the consolidation of both quantitative and qualitative research approaches and the dissemination of medium-range research focused on specific issues in certain areas of the country. The third is the stabilization phase, in which the choice of one field over the other is linked to a process of institutionalization of the discipline within academia, now mature. Finally, the contemporary phase highlights the need to combine approaches with the characteristics of a society in constant evolution, particularly after the advent of the digital age.

Discovered, made visible, constructed, and left out: LGBT+ parenting in the Italian sociological debate

ABSTRACT When, how, and which disciplines started to deal with which forms and aspects of LGBT+ parenthood is not a coincidence but is linked to occasions of discussion as well as to visibility, acceptance, and recognition in the wider social and political contexts. This particularly applies to sociological contributions which look at families and parenting involving relations to social institutions and their impact and shaping of forms, challenges, and meanings of parenting and family life. In Italy, issues about LGBT+ parenting began to appear in the sociological literature some thirty years ago. Since then, the debate has seen different waves and shifts, which show both how external movements, occasions, and discussions influenced the sociological debate and how the latter has, in turn, contributed to the construction and recognition of the phenomenon. Against this background, using a data mining approach, the article presents an analysis of the most recent sociological literature on LGBT+ parenting, highlighting the main dimensions of the debate and outlining expressions, concepts, and words most used on this topic. Using Italian sociology as an example, the critical analysis of these findings shows how issues of topicality and (in)visibility are both reflected and reiterated by contextual sociological discourses and debates.

Obituary: Giovanni Battista Sgritta, sociologist of inclusion

With the death of Giovanni Battista Sgritta, Italian Sociology has lost one of its most representative scholars. He was a refined intellectual, whose curiosity encompassed a multiplicity of cultura...

Nicola Abbagnano, un padre fondatore della sociologia italiana nel secondo dopoguerra

Nicola Abbagnano (1901-1990) was the greatest Italian historian of philosophy in twentieth century and one of the greatest in Europe and the West. In his memory Rosanna Panelli Marvulli dedicated an extensive biography. With Franco Ferrarotti, Abbagnano founded “Quaderni di Sociologia”, this journal, in 1951. Both had intense contacts with American philosophical and sociological culture. The aim was to claim the legitimacy of sociology as a social science; reject the criticisms of Benedetto Croce and the Marxists; outline a “rigorously individualistic conception of social life”; reject any determinism, therefore positivist and Marxist theories. It was not by chance that the initiative was heavily criticized by philosophers with a spiritualistic background. Although not a sociologist, Abbagnano was not only, more than others, a great supporter of Italian sociology after the Second World War. It has also guided its development. For this reason he should be recognized, more than others, as a founding father of this discipline in Italy.

Review of Andrea Cossu and Matteo Bortolini’s Italian Sociology, 1945 – 2010: An Intellectual and Institutional Profile

Review of Andrea Cossu and Matteo Bortolini’s Italian Sociology, 1945 – 2010: An Intellectual and Institutional Profile

Pictures of lesbian and gay parenthood in Italian sociology. A critical analysis of 30 years of research

The article analyses sociological research on lesbian and gay parenthood conducted in Italy over the past 30 years. By focusing on the typologies of the homosexual households of the participants in research projects, this work discusses how empirical academic and non-academic research has depicted same-sex families with children in the Italian context. An initial mainstream inattention towards lesbian and gay parents by sociological research at the beginning of the Nineties gave way to a particular interest in that experience, focusing on the newest form of homosexual parenthood defined as same-sex couples who are able to access assisted fertilisation technology and surrogacy. The new pattern can be said to have overshadowed the experience of homosexual parents whose children were conceived within heterosexual relationships. This simplification concerns to the relationship between sociological research, LGBT activism and the political debate.

"Vulnerable italy": between academic debate and a moltitude of social and political actors

The article is an introduction to a special issue of Sociologia Urbana e Rurale whose aim is to present a significant overview of Italian sociology of disaster. In order to better frame the contents of the issue, the article starts with a short reconstruction of the sociological reflection on the topic, putting it in relation to the changes that took place in Italian intervention strategies in the event of a calamity. Eventually the article highlights how a territorial approach could stress both the specific character of each context affected by catastrophes and the peculiar composition of the different forms of capital on it. In doing so, the latest seismic events that it central Italy in 2016 are considered in the analysis.

Una sociologia per la società mondo

A world society is emerging. This process ask for the development of a world sociology; that is, a global sociology, whose interests should not, however, be confined only to the issue of globalization. This should be the main reference point of higher education in the whole area of sociological teachings and research. Would italian sociology be willing to move forward on this road, it should undertake a deep revision (in the sense of re-vision, a renewed way of looking at things) both of its theoretical foundations and its operating method as well.

Testing the strength of the normative approach in citation theory through relational bibliometrics: The case of italian sociology

In scientometrics, citer behavior is traditionally investigated using one of two main approaches. According to the normative point of view, the behavior of scientists is regulated by norms that make the detection of citation patterns useful for the interpretation of bibliometric measures. According to the constructivist perspective, citer behavior is influenced by other factors linked to the social and/or psychological sphere that do not allow any statistical inferences that are useful for the purposes of interpretation. An intermediate position supports normative theories in describing citer behavior with respect to high citation frequencies and constructivist theories with respect to low citation counts. In this paper, this idea was tested in a case study of the Italian sociology community. Italian sociology is characterized by an unusual organization into three “political” or “ideological” camps, and belonging to one camp can be considered a potentially strong constructivist reason to cite. An all‐author co‐citation analysis was performed to map the structure of the Italian sociology community and look for evidence of three camps. We did not expect to find evidence of this configuration in the co‐citation map. The map, in fact, included authors who obtained high citation counts that are supposedly produced by a normative‐oriented behavior. The results confirmed this hypothesis and showed that the clusters seemed to be divided according to topic and not by camp. Relevant scientific works were cited by the members of the entire community regardless of their membership in any particular camp.

Valutare l'università: una sfida non solo per l'Anvur

National system to evaluate universities started in Europe at the very beginning of 80’s. In that period the growing number of students and the consequent changes in their composition moved the universities from «quality as a fact» to «quality as a problem». In the same time, the need for accountability was a challenge both for the governance and for the Governments, that adopted two different model of evaluating: a direct control or a control through a national independent agency. This paper, starting from Italian experience of Anvur, defines the aims of evaluating universities and research, related to the social role of higher education. It presents the actors, contents and methods (the «who, what, how») of the evaluation process, based on quality assurance and internal assessment, enhancing both technical and cultural problems and perspectives of an issue quite new for Italian universities. The recent introduction by law of research assessment in the Italian academic system has triggered a wide debate especially focused on its weakness and paradoxes as well as its potential negative effects on disciplinary autonomy and freedom of research. Contrary to this vision, in this paper I argue that evaluation mechanisms should be welcomed in those disciplinary fields - as sociology in Italy - which for historical, cultural and political causes have not been able to organize themselves as scientific communities, i.e. as communities of practice grounded on peer control and evaluation. The paper offers a brief sociological analysis of the social organization of Italian academic sociology, highlighting the deleterious effects on scientific communication and value recognition fostered by its segmentation in mutually exclusive, sometimes conflicting sometimes colluding, corporate groups (so called «component»). Far from being an assault on its freedom and autonomy, a state-backed system of evaluation may be instrumental to the creation and legitimation of a disciplinary culture of self evaluation and value assessment according to transparent, institutionalized and not provincial quality standards.

Per (ri)valutare la sociologia, in Italia

The recent introduction by law of research assessment in the Italian academic system has triggered a wide debate especially focused on its weakness and paradoxes as well as its potential negative effects on disciplinary autonomy and freedom of research. Contrary to this vision, in this paper I argue that eva- luation mechanisms should be welcomed in those disciplinary fields - as sociology in Italy - which for historical, cultural and political causes have not been able to organize themselves as scientific communities, i.e. as communities of practice grounded on peer control and evaluation. The paper offers a brief sociological analysis of the social organization of Italian academic sociology, highlighting the deleterious effects on scientific communication and value recognition fostered by its segmentation in mutually exclusive, sometimes conflicting sometimes colluding, corporate groups (so called «component»). Far from being an assault on its freedom and autonomy, a state-backed system of evaluation may be instrumental to the creation and legitimation of a disciplinary culture of self evaluation and value assessment according to transparent, institutionalized and not provincial quality standards.

Social aspects of the Earth sciences. Interview with Prof. Franco Ferrarotti

Franco Ferrarotti, Professor emeritus at ‘La Sapienza’ University of Rome; since winning the first Chair in this discipline in Italy in 1961, he has been considered the Father of Italian Sociology. An independent Member of Italian Parliament in the third government (1958-1963), a member of the New York Academy of Sciences, and a ‘visiting Professor’ at many universities in Europe, North America, Russia, Japan and Latin America. Franco Ferrarotti has taught and still teaches in Europe and America, and he has received many awards throughout his career. In this interview, he talks about the social aspects and consequences of Earth sciences studies.

Critical Realism and Relational Sociology

This article examines the convergence between Italian relational sociology, developed by Pierpaolo Donati and introduced here by Emmanuele Morandi, and critical realism. Whilst the latter is preoccupied with relations between people and structures, Donati sees the whole social order as a relational entity sui generis. Consequently, relational sociology can provide a fuller account of ‘social integration’ than critical realism, which concentrates upon ‘malintegration’ because of its transformative potential. This difference is viewed as a potential source of synergy between these two versions of realism.

Trasformazioni del lavoro ed esperienza della "razza" negli Stati Uniti del sud

- The paper analyzes the race issue within the labor transformations in the South of the United State, focusing on the Research Triangle Park case in North Carolina. Developing analytical categories partially original in the Italian sociology of labor debate (whiteness, blackness, racial management, etc.), the author explores the Latino workers experiences, highlighting the articulation between the color line and the shape and organization of the labor market.

La valutazione della produzione sociologica

The paper is a contribution to the debate on the evaluation of the scientific production in the Italian sociology. Starting from an analytical section devoted to the problematic application of the concept of paradigm in sociology as a scientific discipline, the author discusses some negative consequences of its constant pre-paradigmatic status, together with a lack of selection criteria based on quality at national level: no shared consent on evaluation criteria, parochialism, scanty application of standard peer review procedures, no application at all of ISI. These negative consequences have weakened the relative position of sociology against other competing social sciences, especially economics and political science, and have worsened its average scientific level because of a too quick increase of domestic academic positions in recent years. Some proposals are put forward in order to foster international publications and to increase the quality of sociological production.

Indicatori bibliometrici e sociologia italiana

Over the years, Italian sociology has shown considerable resistance to the use of bibliometric indicators for the purpose of performance evaluation and career progression. And yet, empirical evidence suggests that such indicators somehow capture differences between academic ranks even in a professional community like the Italian one, that has often been charged for indifference to scientific performance in its evaluation procedures. The analysis of different types of data sources such as Social Science Citation Index, Sociological Abstrcts and Scholar Google for faculty members in Sociology at Trento University shows strong correlations between all indicators. An analysis of professors at allranks in the disciplinary subsector General Sociology, and of full professors in all sociolog cal subsectors, based on the h-index derived from Scholar Google data only, also shows remarkable consistency in its outcomes. It is concluded that, while one should by no means refer only or even primarily to bibliometric criteria, they would still provide a useful reference point for decisions on appointments and promotions.

Una sociologia per la società mondo

A world society is emerging. This process ask for the development of a world sociology; that is, a global sociology, whose interests should not, however, be confined only to the issue of globalization. This should be the main reference point of higher education in the whole area of sociological teachings and research. Would italian sociology be willing to move forward on this road, it should undertake a deep revision (in the sense of re-vision, a renewed way of looking at things) both of its theoretical foundations and its operating method as well.