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Cosmos

The Centre on Social Movement Studies

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Inequalities: Social sustainability and gender inequalities: culture, politics and economy

START YEAR 2022

END YEAR 2024

RESEARCH TEAM
Manuela Caiani (PI, SNS Coordinator)

PARTNERS
Simona Forti (SNS); Anna Loretoni, Maria Rosa De Giacomo, Marco Frey, Calogero Oddo (Scuola Superiore Sant’Anna)

PROJECT TITLE
Inequalities: Social sustainability and gender inequalities: culture, politics and economy

DESCRIPTION

This project explores with a mixed method approach gender inequalities (their perception and definition by the participants) in three different but interrelated fields (cultural, political and economic), rarely taken into consideration simultaneously by scientific research: in particular in academia, business companies and political participation & mobilization. The focus will be on some crucial (deviant or paradigmatic) Italian cases to be compared with other local case studies in Europe.

The issue of inequality or rather of ‘inequalities’ is a subject of investigation of scientific, socio-political, empirical and normative importance in contemporary democracies. As a multidimensional phenomenon, in its definitions, causes and consequences, this project will look at inequality through the ‘intersectional’ lens of gender inequalities – not only in relation to income, but also to access to services and opportunities – in a word to the broader theme of social sustainability. The economic and financial crisis of 2008 and the Covid-19 health emergency further increased the inequalities already on the rise in Western democracies and exacerbated the gender gap related to nursing and reproductive work. The crucial question becomes: how much inequality can democracy sustain? Gender inequalities in particular occupy a growing space of interest in academic research and policy debate due to the spiraling effects they can have on society at large.

In this project, through some Italian and European case studies, we will look at the state of the art, causes and consequences (perceptions and definition by the agents) of gender inequalities in three different but interrelated fields (cultural, political and economic): in particular Universities, Companies and (places of) Political Participation (conventional and unconventional, i.e. protest). Although existing studies have focused on how to measure inequalities in their multidimensionality, difficulties persist mainly linked to the availability of data, comparability of them, interconnections among different types of inequalities, as well as statistical problems (such as those, in surveys, related to the so called ‘endogeneity’, and causality). In this project, adopting a mixed methods approach that combines quantitative and qualitative data and analysis, we will investigate in details: i. University and gender inequality; ii. Companies and gender gap – new technologies; and iii. Gender inequality and political participation (including voting, women’s participation in political representation roles, but also in grassroots mobilization and social movements). Good practices and policy-oriented recommendations represent the main outcome of the project.

                                  

FUNDING

MIUR – Ministero dell’Università e della Ricerca (DM n. 289/2021).

 

News

01/07/2024

Le basi istituzionali di un panico morale

alt
Attraverso una lunga rassegna di casi concreti, Donatella Della Porta, direttrice di Cosmos, descrive il processo per cui la lotta istituzionale all'antisemitismo in Germania, inizialmente promossa dalla società civile progressista, si è trasformata nella costruzione di un apparato statale e di una struttura di potere ufficiale come strumento di razzializzazione e repressione.

Publications

Journal Article - 2023

Resisting right-wing populism in power: a comparative analysis of the Facebook activities of social movements in Italy and the UK

Niccolò Pennucci
This paper aims to present a comparative study of the civil society reaction to right-wing populism in power through social media, by looking at cases in Italy and the United Kingdom.

Journal Article - 2023

Emotions in Action: the Role of Emotions in Refugee Solidarity Activism

Chiara Milan
This article investigates the different types of emotions that result from participation in refugee solidarity activism, investigating how they change over time and to what extent they explain why individuals remain involved in action in spite of unfavorable circumstances.

Journal Article - 2023

‘Love is over, this is going to be Turkey!’: cathartic resonance between the June 2013 protests in Turkey and Brazil

Batuhan Eren
This study addresses the question of why and how a protest can inspire individuals in distant countries. Taking the June 2013 protests in Turkey and Brazil as cases, it investigates the reasons why the Turkish protests were framed as one of the inspirational benchmarks by some Brazilian protesters.

Journal Article - 2023

Mutual aid and solidarity politics in times of emergency: direct social action and temporality in Italy during the COVID-19 pandemic

Lorenzo Zamponi
From the spring of 2020, the COVID-19 pandemic and the social distancing measures introduced created a series of social problems and needs that were partially addressed in Italy as well as in other countries by grassroots mutual aid initiatives. While many of these initiatives were strongly rooted in the Italian social movement and civil society landscape and the choice to engage in mutual aid activities was the result of long years of reflection and planning, the article shows how strongly the temporality of emergency affected the nature of these initiatives, their development and their outcomes, in particular with regard to the extraordinary number of people who volunteered and their relationship with politicisation processes.

Monograph - 2023

Populism and (Pop) Music

Manuela Caiani, Enrico Padoan
The book provides a detailed account of the links between production of popular culture to the rise of populism and contributes to studies on populism and popular culture in Italy, using a comparative approach and a cultural sociology perspective

Monograph - 2022

Labour conflicts in the digital age

Donatella della Porta, Riccardo Emilio Chesta, Lorenzo Cini
From Deliveroo to Amazon, digital platforms have drastically transformed the way we work. But how are these transformations being received and challenged by workers? This book provides a radical interpretation of the changing nature of worker movements in the digital age, developing an invaluable approach that combines social movement studies and industrial relations. Using case studies taken from Europe and North America, it offers a comparative perspective on the mobilizing trajectories of different platform workers and their distinct organizational forms and action repertoires.

Monograph - 2022

Resisting the Backlash: Street Protest in Italy

Donatella della Porta, Niccolò Bertuzzi, Daniela Chironi, Chiara Milan, Martín Portos & Lorenzo Zamponi
Drawing interview material, together with extensive data from the authors’ original social movement database, this book examines the development of social movements in resistance to perceived political "regression" and a growing right-wing backlash.

Journal Article - 2021

Learning from Democratic Practices: New Perspectives in Institutional Design

Andrea Felicetti
Drawing from literature on democratic practices in social movements and democratic innovations, the article illustrates three ways to advance institutional design in the wake of the systemic turn.

Monograph - 2021

Migrant Protest. Interactive Dynamics in Precarious Mobilizations

Elias Steinhilper
This book explores the interactions and spaces shaping the emergence, trajectory, and fragmentation of migrant protest in unfavorable contexts of marginalization.

Journal Article - 2021

Populism between voting and non-electoral participation

Andrea Pirro & Martín Portos
The article focuses on a neglected aspect of populist mobilisation, i.e. non-electoral participation (NEP), and elaborates on the extent to which populist party voters engage politically outside the polling station. While challenging common understandings of populism as inherently distrustful and apathetic, and protest as an exclusive practice of the left, the study critically places NEP at the heart of populism in general, and populist right politics in particular.