Marzio Barbagli, former professor of Sociology at the University of Bologna, will discuss the book with the author Pier Giorgio Ardeni, professor of Development Economics at the University of Bologna; Giorgio Tassinari, professor of Business Statistics at the University of Bologna, introduces and moderates .
Abstract
In the end, the mature capitalism of globalization was able to ferry us into a world where the ancient class divisions have once again made the difference.Do social classes still exist in Italy? Is there a bourgeoisie and a proletariat or have we all become middle class? And how do classes influence the crisis of democracy and representation?
Fifty years ago Paolo Sylos Labini published the Essay on Social Classes, a fundamental book that transformed the very idea of the Italian social structure in depth, highlighting how in the years of the economic boom a vast middle class was born, no longer proletarian and not yet bourgeois, now hegemonic. In this half century, no one has returned to investigate society in such depth and for a long time we were content to say that "classes no longer exist", that "the class war is over" and even that "now we are all middle class".
Pier Giorgio Ardeni has 'returned to the scene of the crime' and resumes his analytical work where Sylos Labini left off. The result of his research describes the changes that have occurred and how the whole of Italy is crossed by social differences that remain strong and clear, which limit social mobility, access to education, possibilities and opportunities. Of course, classes are no longer what they once were because professions and lifestyles have changed, but they still exist, after they had convinced us that they had dissolved in this 'liquid' society of ours.
These pages, following step by step how the class structure has evolved in Italy and quantifying the weight of the various strata and classes as their characteristics and composition change, aim to show how inequalities in the distribution of income correspond to differences in profession and educational qualifications and how the social structure still influences power relations. The relative weight of the classes has varied and with it their 'political' weight, in the channels of representation. A book that wants to demonstrate how classes still exist, indeed, and it is from these that we must start again to rethink the crisis of democracy and representation.