Research projects
OPEN SCHOOLS PARTICIPATED IN THE NETWORK
GENERATIVE ITALY REPORT
To read the development of economies and verify their sustainability over time, a new compass is needed: the ability to successfully deal with the generational transition. This can be understood by observing the global shocks that have followed one another in recent decades: there can be no real growth if it remains crushed only in the short term. Sustainability teaches us this. Growth does not mean activating an infinite expansion fueled by the extraction of value from the environment and people, without any care for the impacts of our actions on tomorrow. In the perspective of social generativity, growing up is finding a dynamic balance between current opportunities and those of future generations. Thinking about generational transition also allows us to enhance that great heritage that is the past. Without constraining the free and creative development of individuals and societies, dialogue with the foregoing allows access to an endowment made up of knowledge, skills, relationships, resources, institutions and meanings. Choosing the perspective of generational transition means, therefore, projecting oneself into a different time, with a longer breath, less prisoner of the short term. But this is not enough. A second transition is needed, from a linear and sectoral way of thinking to an integrated approach. Only in this way can we interpret and govern the growing complexity of our societies. Demography, education, environment, investment, research, innovation, poverty, infrastructure, public debt, entrepreneurship, civic participation are to be considered together. Finally, a third step appears indispensable, that of concrete, transformative and contributory action. A beginning that, in integrating multidimensionality and restoring depth to time, draws new paths and opens up new opportunities. An undertaking that, in restoring meaning to the individual-society bond, connects and activates, empowers and empowers the various stakeholders, enhancing their specific contribution and generating a composite value for many, in the present and in the future. It is along these relational lines – intergenerationality, complexity and contribution – that the first Generative Italy Report develops.
Genius Vitae is a global interdisciplinary research project born from a partnership between the Catholic University of the Sacred Heart in Milan and the Pontifical Vatican Academy for Life launched on January 1, 2018. The aim of the project is to identify, empirically investigate and share significant and sustainable experiences of organizations, associations or communities that develop along two margins of social life: human fragility in its many expressions (poverty, loneliness, social exclusion, illness, etc.) and openness to transcendence, also in its many expressions (prayer, contemplation, art, etc.). This project is based on the hypothesis that organizations that expose themselves along these two margins can initiate innovative and sustainable processes, which promote life and allow it to become a criterion of knowledge and evaluation. To achieve this goal, an operational team of researchers, supported by an international Board of Trustees and an international Advisory Board (composed of Vincenzo Paglia, Anne-Marie Pelletier, Philippe Bordeyne, José Tolentino Mendonça, Carlos Gustavo Castillo Mattasoglio, Miriam Diez Bosch, Isabella Guanzini, Nathalie Becquart, Brandon Vaidyanathan, Ilaria Schnyder von Wartensee, Stanislaw Obirek, Claudio Monge), worked on the identification and implementation of research studies in the case of organizations that meet these requirements, according to the methodology of qualitative social research (ethnographic observation, in-depth interviews, making use of the tools of visual sociology). The stories are also published on a website dedicated to the Genius Vitae project, which acts as an archive of materials designed for seminar activities and for the design of training proposals. Another objective achieved by Genius Vitae consists in the creation of new alliances between subjects who recognize themselves in this approach to fragility and transcendence and in this vision of human and social life. Case studies already carried out concern the NGO Gandhi Charity, the Fraternity of Romena, the Monastic Fraternities of Jerusalem in Paris, the Koinonia community in Nairobi, the Papa Giovanni XXIII Hospital in Bergamo, the parish community of Nembro, the Catholic Workers of South Bend, Indiana and the Archdiocese of Lima (the last four case studies were focused in particular on the social responses to the emergency caused by the Covid-19 pandemic).
The project aims to promote the model of Participatory Open Schools, so that from a punctual practice it can become a widespread policy as an effective, sustainable and generative tool to prevent and combat child educational poverty, break the isolation of families, promote inclusion and social cohesion, generate trust and security. The Open Schools model already collected by the Social Generativity Archive will be modeled and disseminated among the schools belonging to the project network. Accompanying the start of new experiences in Italy from a methodological and reflective point of view, the processes in progress and their developments will be monitored in order to bring out a model for building the educating community. The project is funded by the Con i Bambini Call and is led by the MO.VI with which the ARC will promote a national network of schools, municipalities, parents' and students' associations as a policy to be promoted at national level.
A project conceived and launched in May 2020 at the height of the pandemic, THE NEXT GENERATION has its purpose in its name: to become a container and vehicle for the ideas and proposals of the "next generation" so that a new phase of regeneration can be started. Born as an invitation to the under-40s to imagine "new possible worlds" in the field of welfare, training, management of the common good, work and enterprise, social innovation, the research aims to intercept and observe those signs of new vitality and energy of the new generations oriented in a contributory key that the country already contains in order to listen to them, to make them known and support them in a possible development through free mentorship courses by qualified seniors. This is accompanied by the development of a series of webinars to raise awareness and promote issues related to the world of young people. The project, which is proposed as an original research-action on the world of youth, is supported by Fond. Unipolis.
Promoted in collaboration with iFEL, the Institute for Finance and Local Economy, a foundation desired and promoted by ANCI, the Association of Italian Municipalities, the project is experimenting with large and medium-large companies the possibility of adopting the paradigm of social generativity as a compass and yardstick of the organizational capacity to trigger potentially generative processes in their territories of reference, so as to be more effective in producing shared value for themselves and for their context. The research-intervention path in organizations involves the creation of an unprecedented contributory sustainability report that returns a new generative materiality matrix to the organization/company; an index of social generativity; a Congruence Map capable of reading the potential for the development of new generative alliances with the PA, businesses, civil society on a specific territory.
Developed in partnership with ANCI and iFE, the Institute for Finance and Local Economy, the project is experimenting with 12 large and medium-sized Italian municipalities the possibility of placing social generativity and in particular the ability to trigger potentially generative processes on the territory, at the basis of the policies through which the PA act and impact on their territories of reference. The research-intervention aims to define a set of indicators of territorial generativity on an urban scale which therefore becomes a grid for the reinterpretation of the territory; the identification of enabling actions ("tools") to move and coordinate local policies, where policies are to be understood as actions initiated by different subjects, not only institutional; the identification of new organizational models of municipalities with a view to territorial generativity and in a logic of co-creation of public value.
Supported by the Capellino Foundation with the aim of promoting knowledge and dissemination of new sustainable and contributory forms of business, the research path aims to deepen knowledge and achieve the modeling of the peculiar organizational form Almo Nature and its original relationship with the Capellino Foundation. The research is part of a specific scenario of innovation of socio-economic and business models, of which an international survey is proposed.
Project of interest for the University, Call D32 - 2018
As part of the collaboration with the Luigi Sturzo Institute in Rome and the magazine "Vita", the research project "Geniusloci. The Archive of Italian Generativity". The purpose of the same is to contribute to the identification, analysis, narration and networking of organized realities characterized by the character of "generativity" through a methodological approach derived from the Sturzian model which, starting from the entry into the situation of the researcher and listening to the social actors, revisits and recombines in an unprecedented way some of the most fruitful tools of the sociological tradition.
The establishment of an interdisciplinary working group and an editorial staff has made it possible to identify and collect – starting from 2010 and until now – about a hundred stories of social generativity scattered throughout the country, with the aim of bringing out and networking subjects, places and practices present in Italian society that, By creating new forms of mediation between the individual and the community, change and permanence, local and global, support economic and social development, generating value and combining genius and generosity.
The stories are collected according to a multimedia narrative format, told and deepened within the Archive, on the website: www.generativita.it.
They are related to heterogeneous areas: from the corporate world to the self-organization of civil society, from school to health, from the media to culture.
On 21 March 2016, the new website was launched in collaboration with Università Cattolica di Milano, revisited and enriched both in its graphics and in its contents and methodologies. It represents an educational and information platform available to the academic and scientific, cultural and social worlds.
At the beginning of 2015, research began in collaboration with the Italian Bishops' Conference on the theme of the sacraments, a precious tool that the Church has at her disposal to accompany the existence of every single person and the community of the faithful throughout the course of life. The research, which is still ongoing, involves several parish communities scattered throughout the country. It has two objectives: the first objective is of a cognitive nature. The research aims to analyze and deepen, on a more qualitative level, what are the references, meanings and experiences linked to the sacramental dimension; what are the links – explicit or implicit – between the sacramental dimension, faith and belonging; what are the ways in which participation in sacramental life is achieved by individuals and communities; such as the difficulties and/or misunderstandings connected with sacramental practice. A second objective is propositional. It intends to elaborate some initial reflections on what could become the lines of attention and intervention for the future, in the light of the challenges that challenge the constant process of dialogical inculturation of the faith.
Research project, approved in the academic year 2012-13, relating to research of interest to the University within the line of D32 Projects, entitled "The virtualization of the economy and its crisis. Practices and paths of recomposition between economy and society", whose contact person is Prof. M. Magatti. The perspective of the project is interdisciplinary: therefore, economic, sociological and philosophical analysis continue to proceed jointly, under the guidance of prof. M. Magatti, L. Campiglio and F. Botturi. The research project, lasting three years, is oriented towards analyzing the crisis around some crucial issues, such as the following: the nature of the financialization process and the transformation of money; the question of risk and limit (unlimited risk management); the redefinition of value (and the binding of the concept of value beyond the exclusively economic sphere). It also provides for forms of collaboration with other universities (e.g. the University of Cork and Yale University).
The research took place in the two-year period 2013-2015. It has set itself the objective of photographing the positioning of Italian companies a few years after the outbreak of the crisis in 2008 and verifying the direction of development towards which the country's productive energies are tending. The path has tried to identify, on the one hand, successful business models, and on the other, to intercept some form of self-aware social proto-agglomeration, and therefore, potentially, able to assume cultural, social and even political leadership.
The research process was structured in two phases. The first, of a quantitative nature, was conducted in close collaboration with the Unioncamere Study Center. A telephone questionnaire (CATI methodology) was administered to a sample of 1,500 units representative of a universe of over 22,000 Italian SMEs (from 20 to 499 employees). The reprocessing of the data through a cluster analysis led to a classification of the companies involved into five profiles, based on as many additive indices that measure the value of work; attention to quality; the degree of internationalization; collaboration with other organisations and bodies; the contribution relationship with the territory in which the company is based.
The second phase, on the other hand, involved an in-depth analysis of a qualitative nature with the aim of touching on some dimensions that cannot be investigated through a questionnaire and deepening some thematic areas that emerged in the first part of the research. About thirty interviews were carried out distributed throughout the country. In addition, six focus groups were organized at some provincial chambers of commerce which involved another thirty entrepreneurs with the aim of probing some strategic territories for the country's manufacturing economy.
The results of the research have been collected in the volume "The new productive bourgeoisie. A model for Italian capitalism" edited by Mauro Magatti, published by Guerini e Associati (2015).
The focus is on the emergence of new business models that translate certain social demands into the company's goal, such as greater enhancement of the social, environmental and human context. The study identified some companies in the Italian and foreign context to subject them to a case study that included both quantitative data collection and semi-structured interviews focused on the generation of value that is not immediately economic and on the conversion of this into money. The case studies were accompanied by an analysis of Italian and foreign managerial and editorial literature (magazines and texts 2009-2010) and interviews with witnesses considered privileged outside the selected companies.
The research addresses the issue in a threefold innovative way. Firstly, it is a matter of starting from the unity of personal life in its various phases - birth, development, maturity, decline - and consequently rethinking needs and services. This involves considering the issues of school, health and assistance in a unitary and not fragmented way. Secondly, personal care is seen from a promotional perspective. Thirdly, the relational nature of the person makes possible an innovative solution to the classic public-private opposition, also through the shift of resources from the state to the self-organized forms of society and the introduction of new forms of demand aggregation.
A research commissioned by the National Office for Social Communications of the Italian Episcopal Conference was carried out and presented during the CEI Conference "Digital Witnesses" (Rome, April 2010). The research involved the involvement and collaboration of various Research Centres of Università Cattolica (Almed, Crta, OssCom and ARC). It focused on the online relational modalities of young people between 18 and 24 years old, based on a national sample. In addition to the public presentation of the Research Report, a text, edited by Prof. Chiara Giaccardi, was published, which reports and contextualizes the results of the fieldwork.
The research was carried out in collaboration with Mediaset and Iprase (scientific direction Prof. Chiara Giaccardi). It carried out an exploration of the intertwining between institutions (school), imaginaries and media (traditional and new), consisting of a desk part (analysis of television and film production on school from the 50s to today) and a field part (interviews and focus groups with teachers, administrative staff and students from 20 schools in Milan - elementary, middle and high school - and 20 schools in Trento).
This project is part of the in-depth study that has been underway for some years on urban transformations, whose challenges call into question both the rethinking of proximity actions with respect to issues of social fragility and cultural actions of study and debate on the anthropological issues underlying contemporary urban life.
Within the framework of the agreement with the CISL (YEAR 2008-2010) the research has identified the main transformations taking place in the so-called "high human" professions: these are those professions, such as teaching or care, which mobilize, as essential work skills, also all those skills - considered "gifts" difficult to train - that characterize the subject in his most intimate and profound aspects, such as emotional, empathic and relational skills. The analysis concerned three professions considered exemplary: the professional nurse, the teacher and the social worker. Methodologically, the research was based on a triangulation between qualitative and quantitative tools: while a picture of the underlying trends was reconstructed through questionnaires, a series of in-depth semi-structured interviews (20 per professional figure) allowed a close reading of the current trends.
Within the framework of the agreement between Università Cattolica, the Faculty of Sociology and Caritas Italiana/Europea, in 2009 the ARC participated, within the innovative research activities envisaged by the Caritas Europe activity plan in the context of the European Year against Poverty and Social Exclusion 2010 and in the European campaign "Zero Poverty", in the search for new dimensions of poverty in Europe aimed at compiling a short publication included in the Poverty Paper 2010 of Caritas Europe. The publication, with European circulation, has been translated into 15 languages, presented to the European Parliament (January 2010), is based on qualitative methodologies and has involved interviews with social workers, the collection and selection of documentary material, life stories, local reports. Place of work: Caritas Europe, Brussels.
Following the research on metropolitan areas, carried out in collaboration with Caritas Italiana in the two-year period 2005-2007 (see the text M. Magatti, ed., La città abbandonata. Dove sono e come cambiano le periferie italiane, Il Mulino, Bologna 2007), in the years 2007-2009 the in-depth study of urban transformations continued, considering that the city is today the place where the contemporary human condition shows its critical aspects with particular visibility, both from a socio-cultural point of view and, more broadly, with reference to its anthropological dimension. Attention has been paid, in particular, to peripheral or sensitive areas, understood first of all as points of condensation of the problems relating to the processes of reorganization of social life. The analysis carried out in the second phase of the research project (2007-2009) – designed as action-research including the implementation and monitoring of ten intervention projects – aimed to highlight the practices implemented by social actors, both at individual and collective level (with particular reference to civil society subjects and their cultural and religious references), able to counteract the spiral of abandonment that marks many territories. (See the text by Cappelletti P., Martinelli M., Animare la città, Erickson, Trento, 2010).