BOOKS BY MARIA GOLINELLI

Consumer Social Responsibility and Corporate Social Responsibility To what extent can consumers support a firm’s decision to make socially responsible choices? After presenting the main examples of ethical consumerism, this article proposes a definition of Consumer Social Responsibility and focuses on the experience of the Gruppi di Acquisto Solidale; this seems to be the case study most closely connected to the idea of Consumer Social Responsibility with a view to actively promoting Corporate Social Responsibility.

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.

The use of bank services by immigrant people represents a growing phenomenon in Italy, thus showing that a significant level of integration in the hosting cities has been reached. Even though the relation between banks and immigrants is not an easy one as confirmed by some investigations on the issue the attention of the business organizations towards the new potential target of clients is increasing. This essay offers a general framework of the issue and presents the results of an enquiry carried out in the city of Forlì.

The experience described in this essay, the Economy of Sharing, is an example of entrepreneurship driven by a rooted engagement for the common good, founded on the centrality and the dignity of the person and which draws strength from the capital of interpersonal relationships. The Economy of Sharing, inspired by the culture of giving, reminds on the one hand the relational perspective of Social Capital and on the other hand three types of links produced by Social Capital: bonding, bridging, linking. After having introduced the project and some categories useful to understand it, I will try to highlight how the experience of the Economy of Sharing places itself with respect to some approaches to Social Capital.

From the beginning of the nineties non-profit actors, public agencies and private actors have filled the gap existing in the national real estate market between public and private building and economically weak people with the own activity in a more and more institutionalised way. Trying to exceed the category of emergency, these best practices experience repeatable models of effective inhabited and social integration. They try to place the foundations of a new relational inhabited model.

Giving a sure and utilizable definition of development as an analytic category is practically impossible because of the difficulty in avoiding to affirm implicitly personal judgements of value. In the attempt to overcome the obstacle, in the last decades various particularistic approaches to development have been elaborated. I will underline especially two approaches that during the 90s achieved - and it seems they are still achieving - a widespread support in the context of two specific disciplines: the theory of social capital in the context of the sociology of development and the approach of sharing development in the context of the anthropology of development. An issue is still open at the end of the century: to find an efficient and effective unit of measure of development that will be able to achieve a substantial international support.