RISULTATI RICERCA

Food and its relationship with transgression of the consolidate rules regarding the system food: transgression as disharmony, taste chaos. In front of the rules that fill up manuals about food and all that has fed the common sense in this field, transgression can mean both tasting prohibited food and trying unusual couplings that show the overturning of roles in gastronomy. Transgression is ever and ever taking the place of the rule, and when it will get usage of most people, the geometry of taste will repeat the role of breaking off the schemas and re-find new forms of disobedience of taste.

Beyond the complicated etymology of the word transgression, some clues allow to analyse the meaning of transgressions in the media. The historical clue, to understand the unconventional role of the communication media on the social structures; the sociological clue, which puts in evidence the processes of materialization of the contemporary media born in the nineteenth-century metropolis; the social-anthropological clue, which catches forms of transgression from the daily life in addition to the role of the historical avant-gardes; the social-semiotic and social-linguistic clues, where structuralism and narratology put in evidence the generative ability of transgression. Up to the political clue. These are the bases to bring to mind the structural aspect of transgression, and to ponder over the meaning of those unconventional procedures that fed from the bottom, by subjects, instincts and languages that the official cultures tend to restrain are able to change the world.

From the fall of the Wall in Berlin to the collapse of the Towers in New York, in the field of law the notion of globalization has substantially been synonymous of new worldwide order. By giving value to the emergency of powerful agencies and new extra- , trans- and over-national law devices, this version has been above all characterised by the emphasis put on the necessity of de-construction up to the decay of the ordinamental structures rooted on the State-form, according to criteria unilaterally defined and/or inspired by western political-financial circles. After the terroristic action of September 11th, and the war action of the USA against Iraq, the questionable and controversial representation of a global or globalized worldwide order is not proposable any longer, and has become a real non-sense, given the evident violation of the whole international law system and the following absolute constitutional instability. How globalization has been implemented in the field of law has been analysed, putting in evidence limits and contradictions, and the reasons of the consequent unsuccess because of the organic link with the subsequent application of the preventive war concept. Recalling the ancient jus communicationis, theorised at the age of the American colonization, is useful to strongly criticise the existent relationship between the strategies of globalization and the imperial aims hidden behind the ideology of the universality of the western law model.

In the last ten years the developments in the research about communication are definitely signed by the fierce acceleration of two phenomena: globalization and digitalization. Only the latter can be correctly said new, as some recent studies have put in evidence. But from the whole point of view, the original mix between the two phenomena is the scenario of our investigation. Facing this theme I am going to put into account this scenario and two factors essentially. a) first theme: the relationship between virtual space and real place, which is often brought to mind in the debate. The complicated matter asks for investigation because global/local and virtual/real are linked in a range of way. If the Thompson’s distinction among immediate, mediate and almost mediate communication is been into consideration, we can easily realize how the matter has become fruitfully complicated. b) second theme: which geography are we talking about? About the subjective geography, imagined by the subjects which make a representation of the space, and about the geography of the scholars. Here the interesting aspect is given by the forms of representation of the streams of communication, persons, goods, and by the new emergences that these geographies are building. The former is specifically object of a qualitative sociology, both in the micro form and in the visual sociology form. The latter is the object of forms of representation of the quantitative data, according to processes useful to build the sociologic imagination, processes that must be found out. By this way, considering the impact of the increasing internationalisation of studies that (also) sociologists deal with is a matter of great interest as well.

Are we in front of a process of re-enchantment? By adopting a point of view of social construction, the author proposes a pattern of relationship science-communication, shows in which way the contemporary medicine puts firmer together the couple health-salvation, puts in evidence the ‘post-modern’ perspectives in the religious field, goes back to the analysis of TV communication, and at last propose some paradigmatic cases of enchantment where symbols, material reality, communication, interpretation, indissolubly penetrate each other.

The article investigates the relationships between the concept of common sense (one of the tools and specific matters of sociology in the daily life) and the current communication media, with particular reference to the media that - for convenience we continue to call mass media. In the author’s opinion, the presence of these media is of common sense by now, and in addition the contents and forms of the common sense itself are objects of mediatic competitions. Common sense is important because it represents some assumptions of thought and action that are taken for granted. So the competition for the construction of the common sense is a competition for the definition of what is suggested being obvious- in a society or in a part of it -, and in this way is taken away from the discussion. The construction of the common sense is made by relatively explicit strategies (like for instance the agenda-setting mechanisms), and above all by conversational strategies that can be discovered by suitable social-semiotic analysis. The complexity of the current societies is the reason of the existence of several local common senses, which the differentiation of the medial texts corresponds to. But there is a core of common sense that tends to characterize the current planetary society: around this core the competition among media and for the control on media is today harder.

New technologies and the general global mobility have opened an endless range in communication. This range seems to be attractive and disquieting at the same time. The debate on the effects, positive or negative, of the new scenarios on the individual and social life conditions (Popper 1994, Levy 1999, Finkielkraut 2001, Castells 1998) puts in evidence the inseparable couple communication globalization with the emergent problems that have to do with the generational transmission. The structural communicative competence of the human relationship can increase or disperse in such a contest. Understanding how the challenge of such deep transformations just on the ground of communication can be accepted is an uneasy but basic aim for the nature itself of education. The strong crisis of the traditional forms of identity and belonging involves this challenge in the origin of processes and in the behavioural effects on the new generations. The forms of knowledge and the socializative styles are subjected to very fast changes because of the innovations regarding technologies and communication (Turkle1997, Sauvegeot 2000, Charlot 1997): the diffusion of webs and mobile phones are a clear example of this. In this sense the matter is to reformulate the institutional patterns by school reforms or new formative paths, and to individuate firstly the persistent anthropological and cultural benchmarks that allow to fully deal again with education in the global society. This is possible insofar as the wide-range communicative challenge is accepted without making it a mere matter of technologies or information. Education is the methodical socialization of the young generation as Durkheim said (1971, 99); but it is first of all a relational dynamics among generations that allows the introduction of the newborn people in the reality, and communication takes place in this dynamics.

Globalization is at the same time label, metaphor, ideology, utopia and distopia, paradigm, empirically controllable ordering concept, and general and generic descriptive notion, by which we want, or profess, or need to give a meaning (the weberian subjektiv gemeinte Sinn), positive or negative, to the situation and contemporaneous human condition; the first and sometime only way to confirm such an intention or pretension or need of meaning is communication, especially in the form of NICT, the new information and communication technologies, in economy, culture, politics, war, entertainment. If we want to avoid philosophies of history, ideologies, utopias and distopias, which inevitably bring to meta-social and anti-sociological categories (Good against Evil, the unification of the human race, the end of the history and similar), trying to really explore the conditions where the intention, pretension or need of giving a meaning to the global society take a form, seems to be appropriate. To such a hard exploration, a help can come from some concepts let known by Cornelius Castoriadis thirty years ago: legein (from which logos, logic, though, telling) and teuchein (from which techné, technique, construction, making) and above all the relationship between instituting society and instituted society, where the social imagery, individual and collective, makes possible the representation of the meanings of the social-historical, that is creates the passage, never completely ended and exhaustible (a sort of simmelian endless fecundity of the life), between what is instituting and what is instituted. The (always) central position of the imagery in the formation and representation of the social-historical, that is of the instituted society, is simply crucial for the so said global society, really because it has been forming under our eyes (and from our hands_): we are living, and can observe, the instituting society; living, observing and analysing the social-historical while it is forming, is not the last challenge and most irrelevant opportunity that globalization and communication propose and, at the same time, offer to sociology, not to get an orthopaedic technique.

Globalization is a phenomenon well known by economists from centuries; the acceleration transmitted in the last decades comes from technological and political impulses, with reference to the creation of free exchange areas. Consequently, globalization and regionalization of trade. Even if well known, it is a fearing phenomenon because makes foreseeable a re-distribution of the command under the worldwide resources against the more developed countries. In spite of this, they can’t retreat: their demography enforces it.

The term globalization has to be referred to a new trend of social transformation which enables trans-national flows of products, capital, technology, information, and above all, people. So this paper deals with a study of labour migration in Southeast Asia, in terms of its social and political impacts. For example internal labour migration is protruding in China and India, while in the Philippines, Thailand, Malaysia, Korea and Japan, due to the differences in the size of the countries and population, the trend for internal migration is not evident. Generally speaking, poverty, either caused by natural disasters or by unbalanced policies, is the firstly notable reason that causes migration. Reasons that some certain country or region accepts the immigrants are different. Some countries such as Japan, Korea and Malaysia accept immigrants mainly for worker personnel. Illegal or undocumented migration is a common problem. Concerning the issue of undocumented migration, the Philippines, India, China, Thailand and Malaysia have traditional migration routes that are still active. On the other hand, it is more difficult to enter into Japan and Korea illegally. Undocumented migrants are unwilling to access public services unless it is absolutely necessary for fear of being identified, detained and deported. What’s more, they are discriminated by the locales and the mass media. Overall, both cross-border and internal migration provides benefits to the migrants, the sending countries and the receiving countries thus the general consensus is that all forms of migration will remain circular, temporary or permanent depending on the situation. Thus, the best way to address the issue is to determine innovative measures and policies for the integration of migrants and reintegration of returnees into the local society and to encourage local societies to be more receptive to the presence of migrants.

The article proposes some remarks on the relationship between the contemporary practices of identity and the more and more worldwide media landscape. The remarks begin from a research lead on the exemplar case of Al Jazeera, by starting from the typically glocal logics that it embodies and supports. Actually Al Jazeera represents a media experience that is an Arabian answer to the western-style globalization because of its history and structure. In Arabian people’s opinion, as the interviews show, it is a central lens through which they can have an idea of the world in its globality and out of stuffy cultural schemes. At the same time it offers an occasion to satisfy needs of identity and rootedness that globalization continuously challenges. The result is the construction of a new totally medial communitarian form. An imagined community that fits to the routes of globalization without getting out of the ever pressing needs of identification.

There are many examples of globalization. Fundamentalism, for instance, is a way of communication and globalization of religions. But local phenomena are very different. Therefore the periphery is where the management of communication and globalization takes place. Another specific issue concerns the de-ideologization of politics, with no distinction between left and right side of belonging and behaviour. But the most relevant effect is the globalization of poverty, not coming from money deregulation but from market rules and consumerism.

The matters linked to the relationship between globalization and communication involve several questions related to its configuration and declension in the different social contexts. On this basis the analysis on the role that communication plays in the globalization age in a broader context of cultural processes, in the delivery between globalization and localization, in the redefinition of space-time categories is getting more and more important. The coordinates of the human experience seem not longer to converge in the coincidence among place, time, culture and identity. What is to investigate is how communication has an effect on this transformation.