Italy Report 1989

In the 1989 Italy Report, six social categories were defined, to be used as tools of work and orientation, which, for different reasons, proved to be representative of the current situation in Italy. However, in no way does the use of the word representative mean that these categories are the only ones possible. In the challenge of representing the complexity of society, the work of the Italy Report has been carried out by analysing extreme examples of the processes, in the belief that the social logics settle down at the edges and show more clearly their strength or weakness.

The dialectic of opposite parts has this undeniable advantage: by abandoning the statistical dream of the average, it shows the polarities and interconnections between the extreme terms. Each pole (wealth, growth, centrality, protection, institutions, ethics) has been countered by its opposite (poverty, ageing, marginality, dissipation, subjectivity, vulgarity). By this method, the aim is to try to understand how the different and contrasting aspects of our social reality are coherently or contradictorily intertwined. The basic reasoning is simple: whenever an element is placed at the centre, one has to ask what is rejected at the periphery.

The various essays provide an internal reading approach, tracing a path of reflection and consideration. The structure of the Report is enriched by the various files that can be traced back to the basic essays, of which they constitute the phenomenological extension.

The thematic dichotomies identified for the 1989 Italy Report are:

WEALTH/POVERTY • GROWTH/AGEING • CENTRALITY/MARGINALITY • INSTITUTIONS/SUBJECTIVITY • PROTECTION/DISSIPATION • ETHICS/VULGARITY