LIBRI DI LORENZA GATTAMORTA

La sociologia relazionale offre un originale contributo per comprendere i problemi che la società, la teoria e la ricerca sociale sono chiamate ad affrontare. Il volume rilegge in chiave relazionale alcuni temi fondamentali della sociologia: il concetto di relazione sociale; il ruolo della persona nell’emergenza delle soggettività sociali e quello della cultura nelle trasformazioni sociali; la morfogenesi della famiglia; l’analisi delle reti sociali.

Avendo sullo sfondo la tradizione che affonda le sue radici nel pragmatismo americano e nell’interazionismo simbolico di Mead, il volume propone un’analisi della relazione tra riflessività personale e dimensione dialogica del sé. Tenendosi lontani dagli scogli del sociologismo e del postmodernismo, i saggi presentati intendono ritrovare una giusta collocazione a un sé che è incastonato nelle relazioni sociali e linguistiche, ma che sempre le eccede attraverso la riflessività.

Reflexivity and Language: from Mead to Wiley - The author studies the process involved in the emergence of the reflexive self through the use of significant symbols (pre-linguistic-gestural and linguistic-verbal) by means of a critical comparison with Mead and the legacy he left to contemporary sociologists (in particular Jürgen Jabermas, Randall Collins, Margaret Archer and Nobert Wiley). The reflexive-semiotic self is analysed by combining Mead’s I-Me and Peirce’s I-You models into an I-You-Me triadic model. Particular attention is paid to an issue that has been neglected in social theory until now: the language of interior conversation, that does not qualify as a public language, though it has a distinct structural profile. This inner speech is presented as a sort of personalised «dialect» in which syntax is abbreviated and signs, only partially verbal, are often tied to a sensory imagery. Its semantic privacy does not prevent one from making it public, at least to some extent, and to use it for research purpose.

The critical analysis of Norbert Elias’ theory on death in modern societies is developed on two levels by Lorenza Gattamorta. In the first instance, Gattamorta places Elias’ essay within its historical and cultural context: she sheds light on the influences that other studies on death have had on it (with particular reference to Ariès’ work) and she proposes a comparison with other studies on death that appeared some years before Elias’ book even though not quoted in it (with particular reference to Gorer, Foucault and Parsons). In the second instance, she identifies the peculiar role that The Loneliness of the Dying plays in Elias’ more general theory of civilization and individualization.