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ABSTRACT
Drawing on the results of research on 20 Area Social Plans, the article analyses the competences for participation and the role that they perform as a linkage between models/theories and practices of participation. We investigate in particular the conceptual models and representations of officials and politicians in regard to the competences deemed important for promoting social participation. Besides giving voice to those who actually design and implement the Plans, often working on the front line, these representations enlighten the strengths and weaknesses of social participation. The underlying trend that emerges from the research is the centrality of a relational framework of participation. This entails some problems. There is a risk of a reductive vision which gives overwhelming weight to personal skills of communicative type. This would devalue both institutional contexts (in terms of resources and facilitating factors or, conversely, disincentives) and the intersubjective dimension at the basis of communicative skills. The risk, in short, is the trivialisation of relational skills. The most important point is that conceiving skills as equivalent to personal abilities leads to evasion of questions concerning how to elicit, transmit, and reorganise knowledge for participation.
ASTRATTO
Basandosi sui risultati di una ricerca su venti Piani Sociali di Zona, l’articolo analizza le competenze per la partecipazione e il ruolo che esse svolgono in qualità di anelli di congiunzione tra modelli/ teorie e pratiche di partecipazione. Vengono indagati in particolare i modelli concettuali e le rappresentazioni che funzionari e politici mettono in campo relativamente alle competenze ritenute importanti per promuovere la partecipazione sociale. Oltre a dare voce a chi realmente progetta e implementa i Piani, spesso lavorando in prima linea, queste rappresentazioni illuminano punti di forza e debolezze della partecipazione sociale. La tendenza di fondo che emerge dalla ricerca è la centralità di un approccio relazionale alla partecipazione. Ciò comporta alcuni problemi e in particolare il rischio che si affermi una visione riduttiva incentrata in modo schiacciante sulle capacità personali di tipo comunicativo. Ciò significherebbe svalutare sia i contesti istituzionali (in termini di risorse e di fattori che facilitano o, al contrario, sfavoriscono la partecipazione) sia la dimensione intersoggettiva alla base delle abilità comunicative. Il rischio, insomma, è la banalizzazione delle capacità relazionali. Il punto più importante è che concepire le competenze come capacità esclusivamente personali induce a eludere le questioni relative a come suscitare, trasmettere e riorganizzare le conoscenze per la partecipazione.
Disclosure statement
No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.
Notes on contributors
Lavinia Bifulco is Associate Professor of Sociology at the Department of Sociology and Social Research, University of Milano-Bicocca. Her research focuses mainly on social policies and local welfare; urban governance, participation, and democracy; public administrations and institutional innovations; public sphere and public action; socio-spatial organisation of the city. Among her publications: 2013, Citizen participation, agency and voice, European Journal of Social Theory; 2014, Citizenship and governance at a time of territorialisation, European, Urban and Regional Studies; (forthcoming) Social policy and public action (Ashgate, London).
Carla Facchini is Full Professor of Sociology of the Family at the Department of Sociology and Social Research, University of Milano-Bicocca and she is President of the National Observatory of the Social Professions. From 2001 to 2013 she was Coordinator of the Social Work Course and from 2005 to 2013 she was co-president of the National Assembly of the Presidents of the Courses of Social Work.
Notes
1 The research was carried out as part of the National Programme ‘Participatory Social Policies and Active Citizenship’ funded by Italian Ministry for University and Research, coordinated by Prof. Alberto Merler.
2 On the methodological front, the research is based on analysis of official documents related to regional and territorial planning and on 99 in-depth interviews. Besides politicians and officials, interviews were conducted with social workers and representatives of third-sector organisations.
3 A distance that constitutes, in the opinion of Pavolini (Citation2011), an outright dualisation of social rights.