Marco Santoro

Mafia, cultura e politica

While the past years have witnessed an explosion of cultural studies in sociology, the sociological literature on the Sicilian mafia has shifted towards non-cultural kinds of explanation and conceptualizations. This shift was justified because of the many difficulties of the once mainstream normative, value-based conception of culture, but is no longer justifiable with the new conceptions of culture, agency and structure which have developed in the last years in the fields of the sociology of culture, historical sociology and sociology of organization. Contrary to most sociological interpretations, which sees in the mafia a kind of economic activity or institution, this paper argues also for a reconceptualization of Sicilian mafia as a kind of political culture, different from that of the liberal-democratic state which implicitly constitues the axiological reference of sociological and economic theories on the mafia.

The Italian Way(s). A special issue on Italian popular music

Popular music studies have experienced a strange fate in Italy. After a promising beginning in the 1970s and the early 1980s (with the direct contribution by musicians and scholars like Franco Fabbri and Umberto Fiori to the new intellectual formation), a situation of stasis followed. The latter was characterised by the presence of individual important voices but without the support of a constituency strong enough to guarantee in Italy the institutionalisation of this new field of research.

Eventi e strutture. Il positivismo narrativo di Andrew Abbott e l'eredità della Scuola di Chicago

In sociology we have recently witnessed a move towards a stronger emphasis on temporality and narrative analysis. The paper discusses the so-called narrative positivism proposed by the American sociologist Andrew Abbott as one of the first, most original and wide-ranging attempt to construct a narrative sociology. In particular, through a focus on both his interpretation of the Chicago legacy and his research on temporality, the paper addresses Abbots criticism of mainstream sociological methodology and his developing social theory of spatial and temporal contexts. In the final section, four motives are given to closely consider Abbotts theoretical pursuits although still in progress and far from systematic