Mutualismo e democrazia: il ruolo del "capitale sociale", tra fiducia e conflitto

Can mutualism help nurture democracy and supply the integrative and solidarity resources necessary for institutions to function well? One possible answer to this question comes from recovering research on the role of political cultures and 'social capital', particularly Robert Putnam’s contribution in his 1993 work, "Making Democracy Work". The author counted, among the aspects and forms of social life that foster high institutional performance, 'practices of mutual aid', because of their ability to generate intersubjective trust through generalized norms of reciprocity. This article aims to employ the notion of social capital to shed light on the democratic function of practices of mutual aid, mutual support or mutualism, which have been the subject of rediscovery and growing interest in the political and social sciences for a number of years – especially since the experience of the Covid-19 pandemic. Moreover, by analyzing the results of the first research on contemporary forms of mutual support in Italy, it aims to bring out a double link between mutualism and social capital, in the form of cooperation and conflict. This will mean subjecting Putnam’s thesis on the relationship between generation of social capital and quality of democracy to critical scrutiny.