Quale sociale nelle politiche sociali

The social domain tends to broaden, at the same time becoming vague and indeterminate. Thus, a change comes about in the confi nes and meanings of that specifi c way of conceiving and dealing with the social that had its roots in the historical experience of the welfare state and was fuelled by it. The analysis carried out in the essay identifi es certain processes of desocialization, or levelling down and neutralization of the social, in which we observe the refl ection on the one hand of a devaluation of the institutionally mediated dimension of social life; on the other hand the advance of processes of commodification. The article concentrates in particular on four areas: social Europe; individualization; the public-private mix; social innovation. The aim is the highlight the fi elds of tension in which dynamics of desocialization coexist with the emergence of innovative forms of aggregation and social organization.