The Lab’s Quarterly

Luciana Taddei, Paolo Diana (2023, a cura di) Lo sport per la rigenerazione sociale

Martina Paterna — 2024-12-18

“Sport for social regeneration. The sociological perspective in the study of everyday practices” focuses on the theme of social regeneration through sport and physical activity with the aim of reflecting on the interconnection between micro and macro dimensions of the sporting phenomenon and on the importance of its dissemination in an inclusive way for the promotion of wellness and the renewal of social bonds.

L’Università dei meme: Tra strategie di resistenza digitale e costruzione di comunità affettive

Junio Aglioti Colombini — 2024-12-28

This article explores how digital culture, and particularly internet memes, has transformed the experience of university life. Through a case study of the Instagram page @Memesunipi, it analyzes how memes function as devices for emotional re-elaboration, enabling students to cope with anxiety, precarity, and academic pressure. Memes are interpreted both as tools of individual catharsis and as catalysts for the creation of affective publics and informal student communities. The study highlights how memetic practices offer alternative narratives to the dominant meritocratic and performative rhetoric of neoliberal academia. By tracing the intersection between platform logics, collective storytelling, and emotional solidarity, the article shows how memes contribute to reconfiguring the boundaries of contemporary student participation and critical agency within the university space.

Blockchain e fiducia

Vera Kopsaj — 2025-06-20

This article investigates the role of blockchain technology as a social infrastructure capable of reshaping the construction of trust and identity in contemporary society. Drawing on a sociological perspective, the article examines how digitally mediated infrastructures reconfigure relational conditions traditionally grounded in interpersonal or institutional trust. Through a critical review of classical theories of trust (Simmel, Luhmann, Giddens), the article introduces the concept of algorithmic trust, a new form of sociability based on computational processes. This notion is discussed in light of contributions in digital sociology and Science and Technology Studies (van Dijck, 2021; Couldry, Mejias, 2019; Jasanoff, 2016), which highlight the political implications of technological infrastructures. The analysis focuses on key areas of blockchain application, particularly in healthcare, distributed governance and global cooperation, highlighting both its emancipatory potential and the ambivalences it raises, including the risks of technocratic control and algorithmic opacity. The article proposes a morphology of algorithmic trust and argues for a renewed sociological framework capable of capturing the transformations intro-duced by technologies that not only mediate but actively reshape the foundations of social relations.

Mary Wollstonecraft and Harriet Martineau at the origins of sociology

Milena Gammaitoni — 2025-06-20

Mary Wollstonecraft and Harriet Martineau still need to be included in the history of sociology, despite their innovative contribution to the field. The fact that they are still kept outside the canon needs to be the subject of future reflection and analyses regarding the dynamics of the social construction/recognition of female genius, which, being such a vast issue, is impossible to deal with here .
Mary Wollstonecraft , like her contemporary J-J Rousseau, can be located with considerable authority within the field of pre-sociology mainly because she was the first person who, in the 1700s, described the social dynamics that prevented the egalitarian education of men and women who were thus prevented from learning how to exercise rational thought and act freely in both time and space. Martineau, who changed the order of epistemological discourse, is often mentioned simply as the translator into English of Auguste Comte’s Course on Positive Philosophy, though she was the first, before Emile Durkheim was even born, to carry out in-depth empirical research, between 1834 and 1837, regarding the implementation of democracy in the United States. During the long sea voyage between Europe and America, she drew up a detailed account of the sociological methodology she would adopt during her stay in the USA.

Il difficile mandato. Uno studio di caso sull’autopercezione degli agenti di Polizia Penitenziaria

Francesca Farruggia — 2024-10-01

Gli agenti di Polizia Penitenziaria, principali gestori della quotidianità all’interno delle sezioni carcerarie, costituiscono l’interfaccia con la popolazione detenuta. Centrale risulta quindi la relazione custode/custodito, basata su un’inevitabile contrapposizione di ruoli. Le strategie organizzative messe in atto da ambo le parti sono state parzialmente sovvertite dall’emanazione della legge 395 del 1990 che ha previsto la riforma del vecchio Corpo degli Agenti di Custodia sancendone la smilitarizzazione e disponendo il coinvolgimento degli agenti nel percorso riabilitativo. Se il mandato relativo al contenimento dei detenuti è interiorizzato e condiviso dal Corpo di sorveglianza, di più difficile metabolizzazione è quello del reinserimento sociale della popolazione carceraria. Nelle pagine che seguono verificheremo la presenza di tale dissonanza cognitiva negli agenti di Polizia Penitenziaria operanti presso una Casa Circondariale di medie dimensioni del Centro Italia. Al centro della nostra analisi porremo le relazioni che si instaurano con la popolazione carceraria.

Le modèle double de l’incarcération

Patrizia Pacini Volpe — 2024-10-01

Female detention, along with its associated challenges, remains a topic that has received insufficient scrutiny to date. This area warrants further comprehensive analysis and contemplation. The aim of this contribution is to shed light on the intricate intersection of gender identity, equal opportunities, and the contentious matter of women’s imprisonment, an intricate and multifaceted issue encompassing both psychological distress and acute social marginalization. The sociological research, based on qualitative methods, conducted over the last three years with the contribution of former prisoners, highlights the main disparities between women and men within the penitentiary context.