LIBRI DI GIUSEPPE SCIDÀ

La mobilità spaziale di entità tangibili nella società globale - The spatial mobility of tangible entities in a global society, The paper handles some tangible consequences of the mobiletic revolution, as a necessary but not exhaustive catalyst of the evolutionary process of globalization whose effects have deep repercussions on the social, economic and territorial organization of the social system both at a national and an international level. For the social scientists coining the formula "mobiletic revolution" by the middle of the Sixties, the overall results seem to be expressed by a new global society benefiting a sharp drop of space friction. Today, the related consequences of it find their evidence in the people, goods and information mobility, respectively through public and private networks, through the transport system and finally through the communication structure development. In turn, such changes produce a number of interactions and synergies caused by the growth of each of the three mobility carriers, which gradually brought the human beings to an ambiguous cultural adjustment as regards the new shaped space-time dimensions. Key words: mobiletic revolution, social change, social relations, mobility carriers.

Ethics and corporations: an introductory comment This introductory work aims to give a concise outline of the worrying consequences of some corporations’ activities in the capitalistic world economy of today. We’ll start sketching the different shapes of capitalism and the corporations’ role, as well as we’ll briefly mention the scandals and the deep crisis that have recently marked them. Afterwards, we’ll debate the most relevant changes occurred in management in the light of the growing demand of ethic responsibility by the world public opinion, also showing the harmful effects of the wide de-localizing politics both on a social and environmental level. Finally, we’ll consider the corporations development in front of consumer citizens’ demand along with the hard changes the tycoons of modern economy have to carry out in order to deal with global competition and social responsibility as well.

Gli interventi presentati in due seminari dedicati a Etica e impresa. L’attenzione degli studiosi intervenuti s’incentra per lo più su un aspetto centrale sebbene specifico rispetto al panorama generale: le conseguenze dell’estensione, realizzata attraverso le imprese, dell’economia industriale capitalista all’intero pianeta e le reazioni poste in essere da soggetti della società civile che in un modo o nell’altro ne sono stati coinvolti.

In the European societies, the problems of immigrant teenagers often representing a significant share of local population haven’t been studied in a sufficient way. All the problems associated with teenagers integration in the host societies are fatally remitted to school in addition to its peculiar aims: education and the students’ identity growth. In this paper, we are presenting the first hypothesis of a survey starting from a quantitative analysis of the fast growing presence of foreign teenagers in the Province of Forlì-Cesena. Afterwards, we are showing the most significant perspectives and aims whom we gave our attention to: itineraries, needs, difficulties and projects of immigrant teenagers.

In its first part (§ 2-4), the essay presents an outline of market economy in a globalization era, highlighting its marked changes and the wide fields of its questionable nature. In the second part, some discontinuity features came out in the last decades are shown (§ 5). They are particularly referred to critical analysis and alternative experiences springing up from below, (i.e. associations, groups, movements of the civil society) and meeting in a common attempt of getting economy and people’s life with all their social link close again. Afterwards (§ 6-7), it’s stressed as similar concerns can also be found in the very theories by the founder of economic discipline, Adam Smith, and somehow in the works expressing some of the most alternative positions as Karl Polanyi’s. Finally (§ 8) it’s presented the notion of social capital that is the subject of the present issue of Sociologia del Lavoro. Though arising a lively critical debate, potentially the notion seems to open some new scenarios in the social science in pursuit of a new equilibrium between market economy and social link.

Is the demographic growth a mere consequence of the changing come from the first steps of the economic growth or is the population growth which makes development possible? Experts realize that the relation between development and population hasn’t yet become emancipated from the well-known querelle risen in the XVIIIth century in the days of Malthus and Condorcet and gone on in the debate after the industrial revolution in England. Some more, in a far-off 1974, the United Nations, on the occasion of the First World Conference on Population, didn’t go any farther a tactful and neutral comment: Demographic variables have an influence on development factors and vice versa. In more recent years, the same question has come up again. From one side, in the years 60s-80s, the strong economic growth in four small Asian countries (South Korea, Taiwan, Singapore, Hong Kong) knew a decrease of the demographic growth. On the other side, in the same period, both variables rose simultaneously in countries as Mexico or Ivory Coast. Anyway, it is a fact that a 60% of over 6 billion people in the world is now concentrated in Asia, particularly in China and India. From the analysis of the demographic policies of these countries with a strong economic growth, some new certainties rise as regards the ways of best discouraging the demographic growth. The most relevant ones are some policies promoting the human capital, particularly the feminine one, generally neglected in the past.