2023-08-15 14:41:00
by IDA BOZZI
The sociologist who died on Monday 14 August in Milan had interpreted the individual and collective movements of society in transformation with his writings
While the communication society was still in its «analogue» phase, in the Sixties and Seventies, the sociologist Francesco Alberoni, born in Borgonovo Val Tidone (Piacenza) on 31 December 1929 and died on Monday 14 August in Milan, was already tracing the lines of the transformations of mass culture and their repercussions on individuals. And vice versa, the reflection of individual movements in the collective. Alberoni began his analysis of modern societies and their changes from the very beginning of his career. His initial research was dedicated in the 1960s to the study of migratory phenomena with essays such as Contribution to the study of the social integration of the immigrant (Life and thought, 1960), and to the analysis of the consumer society at the dawn of the boom, in the book Consumi and society (il Mulino, 1964).
Alberoni observes the changing society by studying two fundamental aspects: on the one hand the new industrialization, with the weight of the factory, the union, the political awareness of workers and young university students; on the other hand (but in a very close, ambivalent relationship) the development of the means of communication – one above all, television – and the advance of mass consumption. The sociologist follows the evolution of these elements in transformation, with particular regard for the younger generations who are at the center of an even more impressive transformation, between 1968 and the student movement: essays like Advertising and Television (with others, Eri , 1968), Classes and generations (il Mulino, 1970), The democratic state and young people (with others, , Edizioni di Comunità, 1968) and Statu nascenti. Studies on collective processes (il Mulino, 1968).
Precisely starting from the analysis of the student movements, the protests and the “revolt” of 1968, the fundamental essay Movement and institution (il Mulino, 1977) was born. The analysis of collective movements, which until then had been lacking in a society even though it was crossed by the uprisings of ’68 and then ’77, identifies with Alberoni the nascent condition, or “nascent state”, within the mass movements , that magical turning point in which falling in love with ideas, the focus of the group on one or more leaders, the communication of ideas and their diffusion merge, and the “movement” is born – then destined to institutionalize itself time, until the next nascent condition promoted by the new generations.
The ideas of Movimento e stituzione are broadened and deepened in the immediately following work, Falling in love and love (released in 1979 by Garzanti): if in collective movements the «nascent state» was at the origin of the formation of the movement, in the individual the the role assumed by the nascent condition can be embodied in the phase of “falling in love”, while love is the subsequent institutionalization of falling in love. It was a turning point: the essay and analysis content of society came out of the academy and embraced the daily life and experience of individuals, divulging sociological principles but also offering a reading, understandable to all, of relational and love ties. In the following years, titles such as Friendship (Garzanti, 1984), Eroticism (Garzanti, 1986), Public & Private (Garzanti, 1987) followed in the same vein, up to the most recent The Bridal Flight (Garzanti, 1992). , on adolescent infatuation with stars and idealized characters, Il primo amore (Rizzoli, 1997) and Sex and love (Rizzoli, 2006), in which Alberoni specifies and points out his analysis of the experience of feelings and couple relationships .
An important overall systematization of his thought around collective movements then arrives in Genesis (Garzanti, 1990), a volume which, in addition to summarizing all the previous sociological work, adds to it the theory of the formation of «cultural civilizations», analyzing the large systems institutions born of Christianity, Islam and Marxism.
August 15, 2023 (change August 15, 2023 | 11:34 am)
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