Symbolic Universes of European Societies Re.Cri.Re Sergio Salvatore

1. Symbolic Universes of European SocietiesRe.Cri.ReSergio Salvatore This project has received funding from the European Union’sHorizon 2020 research and innovation programme under grant agreement No 649436

2. An anthropological drift is occurring before our eyes, in the way people think of themselves and the world. The crisis requires a deep cultural innovation in policies and politics

3. To see the future and to design possible worlds requires to understand people’s subjectivity • Re.Cri.Re: To understand people means to map symbolic universes shaping their way of making sense This project has received funding from the European Union’sHorizon 2020 research and innovation programme under grant agreement No 649436

4. Symbolic Universes Symbolic universes, are system of assumptions for living the self and the world; they function as universe of sense They have two main characteristics: They are affect-laden, a-semantic – they do not require scientific evidence, inner consistency or reality check They envelop the entire field of experience, rather than single parts of it. This project has received funding from the European Union’sHorizon 2020 research and innovation programme under grant agreement No 649436

5. Choose the statement that you feel it is the most representative of your view European Union It’s ok; however actually I have not a precise opinion about it– I prefer to mind what happens to people around me A It is the means to promote peace, justice and progress. We have to make it able to work for that B It has been able to support and empower people’s social and economic action C D It is another trick to make those who have power even more powerful E It is a main threat to the identity and interests of Nations and territories This project has received funding from the European Union’sHorizon 2020 research and innovation programme under grant agreement No 649436

6. Symbolic Universe 1. Ordered universe It is the means to promote peace, justice and progress. We have to make it able to work for that Symbolic Universe 2. Interpersonal bond It’s ok; however actually I have not a precise opinion about it– I prefer to mind what happens to people around me This project has received funding from the European Union’sHorizon 2020 research and innovation programme under grant agreement No 649436

7. Symbolic Universe 3. Caring society It has been able to support and empower people’s social and economic action Symbolic Universe 4. Niche of belongingness It is another trick to make those who have power even more powerful This project has received funding from the European Union’sHorizon 2020 research and innovation programme under grant agreement No 649436

8. Symbolic Universe 5. Others’ world It is a main threat to the identity and interests of Nations and territories This project has received funding from the European Union’sHorizon 2020 research and innovation programme under grant agreement No 649436

9. Distribution of symbolic universes in European countries This project has received funding from the European Union’sHorizon 2020 research and innovation programme under grant agreement No 649436

10. Choose the statement that you feel it is the most representative of your view Climate change Those who have power have written our condemn. The time is already over 1 We have to be careful to avoid that the topic is used to threat our interests 2 We have to trust institutions – they are working on it 3 I do not care of them. Concerns about the future are not for me 4 It is our responsibility as human beings to counteract it 5 This project has received funding from the European Union’sHorizon 2020 research and innovation programme under grant agreement No 649436

11. Choose the statement that you feel it is the most representative of your view Climate changes Those who have power have written our condemn. The time is over 1 We have to be careful to avoid that the topic is used to threat our interests 2 We have to trust in institutions – they are working to find a solution 3 I do not care of them. Concerns about the future are not for me 4 It is our responsibility as human beings to counteract them 5 This project has received funding from the European Union’sHorizon 2020 research and innovation programme under grant agreement No 649436

12. Symbolic universes and politics • BREXIT • Italian Elections 2018

13. Implications Policies have to account of people’s symbolic universes: A) to adapt to them B) to promote their development This project has received funding from the European Union’sHorizon 2020 research and innovation programme under grant agreement No 649436

14. CONCLUSION Contemporary times require a deep innovation in policies and politics The crisis is a crisis of meaningfulness People’s subjectivity has to be put at the core of policy-making We need a policy of the desire to promote the desire of policy This project has received funding from the European Union’sHorizon 2020 research and innovation programme under grant agreement No 649436

15. A) Policies have to adapt to symbolic universes • This means to recognize that people meaning-making mediates, feeds and constraints policies • The Judo metaphor • 3 Tenets: From needs to the demand Flexibility Dynamicity

16. Tenet 1. From needs to the demand • Demand is the way the target interprets the policy • The value that the target population attributes to the policy as well as the level of commitment and cooperation depends on the demand. • Policies have to be defined not only in terms of the state of affairs identified by policy-makers (i.e. needs) but also by taking into account the meaning that people attribute to them.

17. Tenet 2. Flexibility to cultural pluralism • The target population is culturally plural: people vary in their way of feeling, thinking and acting, because each sensemaker interprets the reality in accordance to one of the several symbolic universes that are active in the cultural milieu. Therefore, the policy has to be designed in ways that allow the flexibility required for taking into account the cultural dimension of differences in the target population, as well as other dimensions (e.g. socio-demographic, linguistic, and so forth).

18. Tenet 3. Dynamicity Policy has to be conceived in dynamic terms, namely as a socio-technical system that evolves over time as a result of the progressive development of the relation with the target population. According to this conception, both the policy drivers and the target are viewed as endowed with the capacity to evolve. The dynamicity consists of the idea that the match between the policy and its targets is not a pre-condition, but a dialectical process that – starting from a minimal initial common ground - evolves over time, in terms of the recursive development of both subjects, resulting from their reciprocal commitment

19. B) Policies of cultural development • Taken as a whole, the Re.Cri.Re. analyses of the cultural milieu have highlighted that European societies lack semiotic capital – i.e. meanings feeding constructive representation of otherness and rules of game, namely, social capital • How to promote it? • 2 strategies: A new institutional deal Vital welfare

20. Strategy 1. A new institutional deal • Re.Cri.Re. showed that people perceive the institutions as part of the problem or however as being unable to provide protection from the turmoil to which they are subjected. • Accordingly, a new institutional deal is greatly needed, in order to stop and invert this cultural drift. • In the current context of socio-political crisis, characterized by critical cultural conditions, the institutional empowerment is not only a matter of technical, political and administrative enforcement, but also, and above all, of the capacity of the institutions to be attuned to the people’s way of feeling and thinking. This project has received funding from the European Union’sHorizon 2020 research and innovation programme under grant agreement No 649436

21. Examples of policies • Supranational, national and regional institutions have to regain and enforce their capacity of strategic governance of systemic dynamics • Promotion of the perception of supranational and national institutions as supporting interlocutors of local institutions and communities • Reinforcement of intermediate bodies • A new, demand-centred, administrative culture

22. Strategy 2. Vital Welfare • Welfare is the domain where people experience the institutional-political system in the context of the satisfaction of basic social and political needs and demands. • For this reason, welfare policies play a central role in shaping how people perceive, feel, trust and commit themselves to the institutional and political system. • We need policies promoting the people’s experience of the welfare services as meaningful, vital exchanges with a systemic subject committed to the demand of the user. This project has received funding from the European Union’sHorizon 2020 research and innovation programme under grant agreement No 649436

23. Examples of policies • Strategic investment in education, school system, and life-long learning. • Integration of welfare services so as to enable them to address consistently the unity of the user’s demand. The more such subsystems work in an integrated way, the more effective the intervention, and, above all, the more the users experience involvement with a systemic subject endowed with a unitary, meaningful intentionality to work as a resource for him/her • Though welfare services concern usually individual user’s needs, however they can – and should - foreground collective and systemic purposes.In so doing , the individual user can experience the integration between the satisfaction of one’s vital demand and the pursuit of super-ordered systemic aims. • It is highly worth designing organizations and supply processes of welfare services in accordance to the criterion of the demand/production intertwinement (i.e. prosumership). This means weakening the boundaries that separate providers and users in order to involve the user in the supply process. • Organization of welfare services need to be designed consistently with the aim of making the user’s participation a meaningful experience. This project has received funding from the European Union’sHorizon 2020 research and innovation programme under grant agreement No 649436