Rationalité, relativisme, évolution sociale. Une analyse critique du modèle cognitiviste de Boudon-Weber

Cet article traite, en premier lieu, du problème de la définition d'une méthode d'enquête, appropriée à l'analyse et à la compréhension de la réalité sociale. Il le fait en partant de la critique du modèle cognitiviste-comportementaliste que l'on peut relier aux noms de Boudon et Weber. Les intérêts, mais aussi et surtout les carences de ce modèle sont mis en évidence. Etant donné qu'il occupe, parmi les schémas méthodologiques apprêtés à la recherche sociologique, une place d'honneur pour sa rigueur et sa fécondité analytique, ses carences soulignent avec une clarté particulière non seulement les difficultés que la pensée sociale rencontre dans le domaine de la méthode, mais aussi les conséquences négatives de celles-ci sur la scientificité de l’élaboration théorique, entendue comme la capacité à interpréter et à expliquer la réalité de référence.

La critique de l’élaboration de R. Boudon sur la méthode aide aussi à mettre en évidence, par contraste, les motifs, les caractéristiques et les potentialités de notre proposition méthodologique, qui est présentée tout de suite après. Sur la base de cette proposition, que nous appelons objectivisme social, nous avons formulé non seulement des objections au relativisme culturel de Weber et à l'anti-relativisme culturel et cognitif de R. Boudon, mais aussi à la notion de rationalité et à la théorie sur l’évolution sociale de ce dernier auteur.

Parallèlement, sont proposées une notion de rationalité différente et une explication alternative des processus sociaux, laquelle embrasse des aspects concernant tant l’évolution que l'organisation des sociétés humaines et qui peut être facilement étendue aussi à l'interprétation des processus historiques.     

Sensitivity to bodily nonverbal communication as a factor in practitioner-patient rapport

The relationship between physicians' nonverbal sensitivity and the satisfaction of their patients was tested in two field studies. In the first study, 40 physicians were given a film test of nonverbal sensitivity (the PONS test) and were evaluated by their patients. The second study was a replication using 31 additional physicians. Most noteworthy for research in therapeutic interaction, the present studies contained three methodological advances: (1) the use of actual patients' ratings of satisfaction with treatment, (2) the extension of research from psychological to medical settings, and (3) the use of a standardized test of nonverbal decoding skill. Physicians' skill at reading the emotion conveyed through the nonverbal channel of body movement was found to be significantly correlated with their interpersonal success with patients in the clinical setting.The authors would like to thank Donald Dickson, M.D., Mary Ann Spadaro, M.D., Louise M. Prince, John L. Helmuth, Jr., Helene M. Murphy, and the physicians and patients who participated in the research. Study I was supported by a Peter B. Livingston Fellowship from the Massachusetts Mental Health Center and Study II by a W. K. Kellogg Fellowship from the Hospital Research and Educational Trust, both to the senior author.     

Working precarious careers trajectories: tracing neoliberal discourses in younger workers’ narratives

ABSTRACT

The aim of this article is to explore how, in the context of the post Global Financial Crisis (GFC), some Italian younger workers in a specific geographical region in Italy recount their work trajectories. Drawing on narrative interviews with ten participants (aged between 24 and 30) as part of a research project carried out in the Autonomous region of Aosta Valley in Italy, the article traces discourses closely associated with neoliberalism – the discourses of the entrepreneurial self, employability and self-responsibilisation – through which subjects’ work experiences take shape. Moreover, the analysis highlights how locality, one’s personal relation with the geographical territory, makes more complex the younger people’s negotiations in crafting themselves vis-à-vis precarious employment opportunities and wider socio-economic dynamics in respect of precarious employment opportunities.     

Gender-related Effect of Cultural Participation in Psychological Well-being: Indications from the Well-being Project in the Municipality of Milan

Gender differences have been observed in the way males and females process cognitive stimuli coming from exposure to works of art and participation in leisure activities. For this reason, we designed a project to assess this issue, with a cross-sectional study in Milan, on a sample of the population consisting in 1,000 inhabitants. Our objective was to assess how cultural participation affects subjective well-being, measured with the Psychological General Well-being Scale, which gives a global index of psychological well-being ranging from 0 (lowest level of well-being) to 110 (highest level of well-being). The survey was conducted with the assistance of Doxa, an Italian pollster company, through telephone interviews, according to the Computer Aided Telephone Interview system. A significant statistical difference in variable distribution between the two genders was found for civil status (more males resulted as being single and more women widowed), income (higher income in males), cultural participation (higher in males) and psychological well-being (higher in males). As expected, state of health has the maximum impact on the level of psychological well-being. The increase in the number of concomitant diseases is in fact linearly associated with a progressive increase in psychological distress with average scores of around 60 (very low level of well-being), in the presence of 5 or more concomitant diseases, in both males and females. The impact profile of nine major determinants on subjective well-being resulted to be clearly different in the two genders. Health status dominates in both, but its impact is higher in females than in males. The obtained results remained substantially unchanged also when the two gender groups were matched according to civil status and income level distribution. Leisure activities play an important role in females (second place after health status), while in males they result as being less important (fourth place after health status, civil status and occupation). Education is quite important for females (third place), while it is given the least importance in males. This different profile probably reflects different social and environmental influences on the two genders. The social and psychological implications of these findings are discussed.     

Italy: the ‘illegality factory’? Theory and practice of refugees’ reception in Sicily

ABSTRACT

The recent surge of migrants crossing the Mediterranean in search of protection has presented a major challenge for the whole European Union. What has been labelled as a ‘refugee crisis’ is first and foremost a crisis of international politics and the result of inadequate response mechanisms at local level. This paper focuses on the case of Sicily, the second main area of arrival, after Greece, when migration to the Mediterranean reached its peak. With a long history of immigration, since 2015 the Italian island has seen the implementation of a new approach based on ‘hotspots’: designated areas for the separation of those deemed as economic migrants from ‘genuine asylum seekers’. In the view of some, this has made Italy into a model of migration management, as opposed to the chaotic situation of the Greek islands. The hotspot approach, however, has been also criticised for being engrained on practices that many deem unlawful, actively producing discrimination and condemning many migrants to an illegal status on the Italian soil. Informed by findings from an international research project (EVI-MED), this paper examines this complex scenario, exploring the social, legal and human implications of the refugees’ reception system in Italy.     

CUSTOMER OWNERSHIP AND QUALITY PROVISION IN PUBLIC SERVICES UNDER ASYMMETRIC INFORMATION

The implementation of projects producing external effects is often a source of disagreement and conflict between hosting and nonhosting communities. The article focuses on the impact of participatory ownership on conflict resolution and social welfare in the presence of asymmetric information and imperfect quality monitoring. We show that in such situations the participatory solution may help solve deadlocks that money transfers to a for‐profit operator cannot solve. The analysis highlights three main factors behind this fact. First, a customer‐owned cooperative internalizes, at least partially, the external effects generated by the project. Second, the alignment of cooperative members' preferences with those of the social planner reduces (in some cases eliminates) the distortions caused by information asymmetries. Third, cooperatives require less costly monitoring than their for‐profit counterparts. We also show that cooperatives' productive inefficiency with respect to for‐profits may emerge endogenously as a consequence of a lower pressure to compete on costs for the market. (JEL H23, L33, P13)     

Proud to be poor? Untangling identity politics with the families portrayed in the photobook Courage (1998)

In the early 1990s, several European welfare states embraced the idea that the voice and life knowledge of people in poverty should be recognised in policymaking. In that regard, many authors proclaimed a paradigm shift from advocacy to self-advocacy, emphasising the agency of people in poverty to speak for themselves. Emblematic in these developments in Belgium was the photobook Courage, published in 1998 by an NGO called Movement for People with a Low Income and Children (BMLIK). Through documentary family photography and oral testimonies, Courage develops a visual rhetoric on the citizenship of people in poverty while reframing poverty as a violation of human rights. Historical research demonstrates, however, that Courage was produced by middle-class volunteer allies and is therefore a rhetorical tool for self-advocacy but certainly not a product of self-advocacy. Moreover, many authors have been highly critical of identity politics, since positive imagery can equally be disempowering in reinforcing neo-philanthropical principles of self-help and willpower which ultimately lead away from redistributive policies. This article therefore examines, through oral history with photo elicitation, how the people involved experienced being portrayed as the protagonists of self-advocacy on the poverty problem. The findings show how the portrayed people fluidly (dis)identified over the past 20 years through three intertwined subjective processes involving Courage as an artefact: for remembering (historical function), for assessing (evaluative function) and for advocacy (persuasive function). As such, they appear not as passive objects of others’ campaigning strategies, but as active co-constructors of self-advocacy rhetoric. Some of the pitfalls and potentials of identity politics in the struggle against poverty are discussed.     

Assessment of physical workload in boiler operations

The use of boiler wood-fired is fairly common equipment utilized in steam generation for energy production in small industries. The boiler activities are considered dangerous and heavy, mainly due to risks of explosions and the lack of mechanization of the process. This study assessed the burden of physical labor that operators of boilers are subjected during the workday. Assessment of these conditions was carried out through quantitative and qualitative measurements. A heart rate monitor, a wet-bulb globe thermometer (WBGT), a tape-measure and a digital infrared camera were the instruments used to collect the quantitative data. The Nordic Questionnaire and the Painful Areas Diagram were used to relate the health problems of the boiler operator with activity. With study, was concluded that the boiler activity may cause pains in the body of intensity different, muscle fatigue and diseases due to excessive weight and the exposure to heat. The research contributed to improve the boiler operator's workplace and working conditions.