RISULTATI RICERCA

The deficiencies of technocratic approaches to governing emergent risks and technologies in the face of radical uncertainty, political controversy and public distrust, has brought about increasing calls, and in some quarters concerted action, to democratise science across western democracies. This paper discusses some recent Uk examples of participation in contested science and technology decision-making, focusing on a number of high profile cases which are helping policy-political, business and civil society actors gain a better understanding of what precisely may be gained from bringing a much wider range of knowledges and values into the process. The Uk experience suggests that pressures are growing for more upstream (i.e. very early) engagement in opening up contentious issues to much wider societal framings than hitherto. The paper explores the contributions being made by an emerging epistemic community of academics and practitioners in the design, implementation and evaluation of participatory processes that are fit-for-purpose.

Biomedical research boasts a very solid tradition of open science. However in the last two decades this traditiona has been eroded by intellectual property claims. Such claims encompass fundamental discoveries from which knowledge for future products is drawn. Although patents have been regarded as means to promote the progress of science, recent examples in biomedicine show that this is not always the case. Reiterated granting of patents not only on commercial end products but even on so called research tools may hinder further research, either by creating too many concurrent fragments of intellectual property rights or by increasing the transaction costs of bundling up such rights. These effects are sometimes strengthened by a deliberate policy of allowing applications for patents on the results of publicly funded research. The shortcomings of intellectual property rights can be better understood and dealt with according to the theory of the public domain, which offers a strong case for a new approach to the governance of science and knowledge.

Recent debates on the environmental state have hardly included the information revolution we are witnessing today. What consequences for environmental governance are to be expected from the growing importance of informational processes in almost all aspects of modern life? This paper explores to what extent and how the Information Age enables the emergence of an informational mode of environmental governance, in which environmental information gains transformative powers. As illustrated by several examples the conventional powers of authority in environmental protection are supplemented by informational resources used by state and non-state actors to change practices of production and consumption. Against this background the increasing popularity and use of voluntary agreements in environmental governance can be interpreted as informational governance half-way. These new modes of environmental transition, based on information, bring forward a new research agenda for the environmental social sciences.

If the concept of governance has been criticised for its normative content, it is no doubt because the micro level of analysis has been neglected. This gap can be filled by examining in concrete how knowledge is produced in and for action. In this way one can understand how macro changes are incorporated into actual practices. In order to illustrate this point, the article examines urban policies. The field of urban planning has been one in which expert knowledge committed to modernisation has been particularly important. It is also a field in which such knowledge has been questioned and attacked by those provided with local knowledge. This area of action clearly reveals multiple and more complex ways of producing knowledge for action, yet such change is not necessarily synonymous of democratisation or withdrawal of politics. We are witnessing a major diversification of the forms of production of knowledge for action, tied to local political and social configurations.

The aims of this article are twofold. In the first part it elaborates on the different uses of the concept of governance to be found in public policy analysis and design. An effort is made to distinguish from an analytical perspective between descriptive, explicatory and prescriptive points of view. Governance has been understood as (a way to bring together and analyse) the core questions in the building of a description of society as complex and plural and the demands for its guidance (i.e. the expression of the need for social representations of contemporary society and for strategic devices to drive it). The second part is devoted to the multilevel governance perspective, discussed as a theoretical and operative figure to understand and represent the complex reality of the European Union’s political system, which is introduced to compete with and/or complement other understandings and representations (e.g. European integration).

Fragmented organization: disadvantages and risks of discrimination against independent sub-contractors Work is now boundariless because the parameters which defined it in the fordist period blur, dissolve, making new questions emerge. A new organizational space is redesigned where a general tendence towards flexibilization takes place. These are the main themes discussed in this essay starting from an empirical research carried out in the province of Trento on the professional condition of non-standard workers, with particular regard to independent sub-contractors.

Irregular and flexible work. Results of an empirical research on youth unemployment in Reggio Calabria In this essay authors analyse the social behaviors of youth unemployment in Reggio Calabria, with specific reference to their irregular work experiences and their dispositions to emigrate toward contexts where it is easier to find a regular job. The qualitative empirical data collected show clearly as the high level of flexibility spread into the Italian labour market tends to discourage the propensity to emigration toward northern labour market. That is mainly for fear of trying out situations of job insecurity in country where they cannot activate their informal supports of social protection. In this perspective data also show as the family plays a very important role regarding the different coping strategies activated by youth unemployment to mediate the subjective risk of social exclusion.

Between social capital, organisations and professional skills. A research on independent subcontractors in Emila Romagna The article deals with some reflections about a research conducted in February 2003 in Emilia-Romagna region about the professional path, the training needs and the professional and life projects of a sample of contingent workers. In particular the authors analyse only some themes like the social capital in relation with the professional carrier, the support and the social recognition of these workers; the relationship between the contingent workers and the employer’s organizations and the issue of professional training oriented towards the professional increase from the contingent workers’ point of view.

The potential of part-time work Part time work has been widely analysed in recent years, above all in its relation with European Employment Strategy and with the goals of employment growth as defined in Lisbon. Part time work is considered an important device in order to increase participation and employment of all marginal workers:women, young and elderly people. Part-time work rises an interest also in its relation with social organization and compatibility between work and everyday life. On the basis of a European comparison the essay tries to explain the socalled Italian anomaly.

New solutions for an old work. Italian Trade Unions and the representation of non-standard workers How does non-standard work represent itself? Can it be represented by existing workers’ organizations, or does it require new forms of representation, or a deep renewal of the existing ones? The paper adresses such timely questions empirically, building on the results for Lombardy of a comparative quantitative and qualitative survey of local-level concertation in five European countries. Thus, the evaluation of various forms and experiments of non-standard workers representation which recently took place in Lombardy concludes that, although frequently succesful and innovating, such experimentations have up to now involved only a small fraction of the potentially interestend workers.

Contingent work and gender: a research on local administrations Public administration represents a privileged context to investigate the gendered consequences of the diffusion of contract flexibility. A research on the use of lifetime and short-term contracts in local administrations in the province of Alessandria shows the presence of different gender profiles among flexible workers. For most men, short-term contracts are linked to leadership positions, or they represent a transition towards a stable job, as they do for part of the younger women. There is, instead, a great number of women who seem to be trapped in a row of badly qualified, very short and often part-time contracts, with long pauses in between: a highly precarious link with the workplace seems to be their longterm condition.

Who is out is out. Some reflections about temporary work in Italy This paper deals with temporary agency work in Italy, its distribution across areas and sectors, the costs and reasons for a demand of temporary agency work and labour supply characteristics. On this last point it addresses the problem of the differences in the socio demographic composition of those individuals who are registered in the temporary work agencies versus those who are more likely to be called for assignments. As far as the latter are concerned it tries to analyse the factors affecting the assignment duration. The question remains open on the difficulties and on the channels to enter the labour market followed by those who are registered in a temporary work agency but not matched through it.

The subjectivity of non standard worker and the consensus issue related to new forms of employment relations The debate on new forms of flexible employment relations is characterised by different points of view on the interpretation of this phenomenon, on its causes and effects. Are we facing a withdrawal of employment social conditions? Is it just a contingent situation that involves mainly the beginning of individual careers? Or is it the explicitation of a new way of living and conceiving work, leading to new opportunities of professional self-fulfilment? This essay tries to give an answer to these questions.

The atypical work between family and social vulnerability. Some reflections to explore new empirical approach During last decades in most of the European countries some relevant changes in the labour market happened, as the increase of unemployment and flexibility of job. These events put in crisis those welfare systems like the Italian one where permanent jobs represent the main protections for workers and their families. This article put the focus on the social vulnerability concept like a frame to understand some effect of the changes inside the labour market. In particular it put the focus on the necessity to use the family like unit of analysis in order to explore the relation between work condition and family condition.

A framework for the analysis of atypical labour market: some reflections and research experiences The paper looks at the development of new forms of employment (or atypical jobs) in Italy, in particular at the case of Collaborators. Since with this kind of form of employment the institutional regulation is nearly absent, Collaborators and employers move in a situation of uncertainty, in which there is the possibility of opportunism from both the sides of market. So, the hypothesis is that the problematic aspects of this form of atypical job are solved through social mechanisms as reputations, closure of networks. The paper explores these mechanisms.

The social construction of labour market: the embeddedness of mobile work In this essay the author firstly focuses on main characters of non-standard employment relations with particular regard to independent subcontractors; secondly, he considers the role of family in helping work insertion for its members, protecting them from job instability. The rising of informal professional communities composed by contingent workers is also analysed as it enhances the creation of social devices to deal with employers. Finally, it is highlighted how institutional interventions could reduce instability of nonstandard workers. The thesis proposed by the author is that the lack of universalistic interventions and the simple activation by non-standard workers of their social network, produce new discriminations caused by unequal access to these resources and different degree of protection guaranteed by the social and institutional context.

A plural labour market between old and new balances This essay contains some suggestions about work flexibility and the spreading of non-standard employment relations. The growing oxymorons of the world of work are highlighted, new balances are defined and current societal transformations are investigated. It is necessary to go beyond the myth of flexibility in order to emphasise different pillars: employability, certainty, quality of work and work and life balance.

Differences that matter between non-standard workers It is commonly widespread that what we call atypical employment relations includes a plurality of contracts and labour conditions that are difficulty comparable. This lack of homogeneity in part overlaps and in part modifies the differences given by the level of professionalization, and by the proximity/distance from standard contracts. This pluralization of atypical contracts constitute another form of work force segmentation, not only between atypical and standard contracts, but also inside non-standard work itself. Another form of unhomogeneity derives from the differences between local labour markets. Even European statistics confirm that employment vulnerability and risks of uncertain and fragmented careers depends on social classes, territorial localization and gender. This essay focuses on gender differences among nonstandard workers.