Inclusive togetherness. A comparative ethnography of cultural associations making milan sociable

Associations generate social ties that differ among themselves in terms of publicity and inclusiveness and this is a topic that, despite its importance and notoriety, lacks adequate empirical evidences. My study aims at detailing and qualifying the outcomes produced by some cultural organizations - in terms of generation of social relationships - and at analyzing the conditions of possibility for such a production. The arguments proposed draws on a two-years comparative ethnography of ten associations pursuing the generation of inclusive forms of social relationships in Milan mainly through the setting up of cultural events. The observed groups produced especially two types of outcomes. Firstly, they used to set up public space of proximity whose nature varied according to the type of “regime of engagement” with the world that their participation required. Secondly, the observed organizations often used their events as “articulation of the public sphere”, but this went to the detriment of their capacity of producing inclusive relational spaces. I’ve described three types of conditions of possibility for the pursue of inclusive sociality and in each case the way the observed organizations pursued their goals were filtered by their groups’ styles, that is to say by the institutional patterns of interactions that shaped their associational everyday life.