Table Of ContentCulture in Policy Making:
The Symbolic Universes of Social Action
Sergio Salvatore · Viviana Fini ·
Terri Mannarini · Jaan Valsiner ·
Giuseppe Alessandro Veltri Editors
Symbolic
Universes
in Time of
(Post)Crisis
The Future of
European Societies
Culture in Policy Making: The Symbolic
Universes of Social Action
Series Editors
Sergio Salvatore, University of Salento, Lecce, Italy
Terri Mannarini, Department of Social Psychology, University of Salento, Lecce,
Lecce, Italy
Jaan Valsiner, Psychologie, Aalborg Universitet Psychologie, Aalborg, Denmark
Giuseppe Alessandro Veltri, University of Trento, Trento, Italy
The book series develops and consolidates the innovative approach to
policy-making and politics based on the recognition of the central role played by
cultural dynamics, intended as on-going processes of sense making channelled by
symbolic resources the cultural environment makes available and through which
people make sense to the experience, therefore feel, think, act.
It pursues both a theoretical and practical purpose: the development of the
conceptual approach to policy and politics based on the view of human being as
homosemioticus,asasubjectengagedconstantlywiththeneedtomakemeaningful
ordinary daily experiences, as well as participation in society.
More information about this series at http://www.springer.com/series/15961
Sergio Salvatore Viviana Fini
(cid:129) (cid:129)
Terri Mannarini Jaan Valsiner
(cid:129) (cid:129)
Giuseppe Alessandro Veltri
Editors
Symbolic Universes in Time
of (Post)Crisis
The Future of European Societies
123
Editors
SergioSalvatore Viviana Fini
Department ofHistory, Society Istituto ScientificoBiomedico
andHuman Science Euro-Mediterraneo (ISBEM)
Universitàdel Salento Mesagne, Brindisi, Italy
Lecce,Italy
JaanValsiner
TerriMannarini Aalborg University
Department ofHistory, Society Aalborg, Denmark
andHuman Science
Universitàdel Salento
Lecce,Italy
Giuseppe AlessandroVeltri
University of Trento
Trento, Italy
ThevolumeisbasedonthefindingsoftheRe.Cri.ReProject(http://www.recrire.eu),thathas
received funding from the European Union’s Horizon 2020 research and innovation pro-
grammeundergrantagreementNo.649436(https://ec.europa.eu/programmes/horizon2020/).
ISSN 2523-7306 ISSN 2523-7314 (electronic)
Culture in Policy Making:The Symbolic Universesof Social Action
ISBN978-3-030-19496-3 ISBN978-3-030-19497-0 (eBook)
https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-19497-0
©SpringerNatureSwitzerlandAG2019
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Introduction
Identity and Demand for Sense
Most Europeans take the current peace and coexistence among their countries for
granted. The days of people killing each other in the never-ending series of wars
whichgounderthenameofthehistoryofEuropeseemtobelongtoadistantpast.
However,thattimeisnotsofaraway:Europeinthesecondhalfofthetwentieth
century managed to change its history radically in a relatively short time and to
transform the permanent battlefield it had been for many centuries into a place of
exchange and cooperation. Even more, European societies were able to build an
idea oftheirdestinyasasingle community.Nationalidentities werede-militarized
and adjusted to the universalist project of peace and democracy: for several gen-
erations in the post-World War II period, people thought of themselves as French,
Greek, Spanish, and so forth, and for that very reason they felt themselves to be
European.
This extraordinary political and institutional plan seems to have come to a
stumbling block and has slipped in the opposite direction, raising new concerns
aboutapastthat,untilafewyearsago,wasthoughttohavebeenputbehindusfor
good. European institutions are under threat, democracy is under threat, political
and human rights are under threat. As highlighted clearly by the French President
Macron, who spoke of the risk of a ‘European civil war’, the European Union is
looking more and more like a place of uneasy negotiation among States claiming
their sovereignty. In most European countries, deep feelings of distrust in the
institutionsandangertowardsthepoliticalsystemanditsinterpreters(theelite)are
fuelling the rise of anti-system forces, in an explosive mix of populism, sover-
eignism and far-right ideology whose representatives now feel ready to openly
question the very idea of liberal democracy. In parallel, Europeans seem to have
gone through an anthropological shift—everything seems to gravitate around
identity. Above all, before our eyes the instances and practices of identity have
acquiredtheformofthe‘enemizationoftheother’,namelytheformofaggressive
opposition to whoever and whatever is ‘other’—first of all immigrants and
v
vi Introduction
Muslims, but also LGBT people, Rom and ethnic minorities—conceived as a
threatening enemy just because of their distance/diversity.
Depending on the events—e.g. electoral trends in this or that country, policy-
makers’claims,ECBdecisions—themoodswingsbetweenpessimismandcautious
optimism about where the current institutional and sociopolitical turbulence being
experiencedinEurope,andmoregenerallyinWesternsocieties,isleadingus.Isthe
European Union on the edge of a precipice? Will the plan of a unified Europe
survive the impact of the sovereignists? Will democracy—in the sense it has in
Western societies—be able to address the challenges raised by the demand for
identity as well as by the progressive weakening of politics due to the
de-territorialization and de-statalization of political power brought about by glob-
alization?Is thewave ofenemization oftheother—with its burden of hate crimes,
xenophobia,blindnesstohumanrightsandinternationallaw—atemporaryreaction
tocontingentturmoilorwillitmarkahistoricrewritingofthefundamentalsystem
of values which is at the core of the Western Weltanschauung?
Thesequestions—whichjustafewyearsagowouldhaveseemedmeaningless—
cannot be addressed as if they were merely an invitation to confirm an inevitable
destiny. Rather, they call for a deeper understanding of the current sociopolitical
dynamics, in order to pursue possible desirable futures. Social scientists need to
understand the profound social processes that are giving rise to directions of both
disunity and unity in Europe. The history of the social sciences shows that what
appeartobeirreconcilableoppositesareactuallypartsofthesamesystemandthus
inevitably linked with one another.
A starting point in this direction is the recognition that institutional breakdown
and enemization of the other are two sides of the same coin. They are signs of the
pervasive demand for security that people make to the in-group, regarded as the
onlypossibleanchoragetobeclungtosoasnottobesweptawaybytheupheavals
that globalization has produced in their lives.
Theseupheavalsarenotonlyofamaterialsort(i.e.unemployment,low-income,
inequality,dismantlingofwelfareprotections,inabilitytoaccesscredit);theyaffect
a great many other facets of people’s life, e.g. kinds and quality of social ties,
communication formats, use of spaces, values, modes of consumption, quality
oftheenvironment.Peopledonotexperiencethepluralityofchangesseparately,as
self-contained events, but as a single whole—a generalized, radical rupture that
urgentlydemandstobegivenameaning.Onecanseethatatthecoreofthesearch
forsecurityliesaradicaldemandforsense—namely,thepeople’sstrivingtomake
the overwhelming experience of what is happening thinkable, and therefore cog-
nitively and practically addressable.
Therecognitionofthedemandforsenseatthecoreofthecurrentsociopolitical
turmoilhelpstounderstandwhytheenemizationofothernessandthedistrustinthe
institutionshavespread,andarestillspreading,farandwide,beyondthesegments
of society that actually have reasons to see themselves as victims of globalization.
Indeed, the lack of meaning has much more weight than the scarcity of economic
resources. It makes no class distinctions but unites people belonging to very dif-
ferentsocio-economicstrata.Theextra-economic,psycho-socialfactorsunderlying
Introduction vii
the current social scenario are clear for instance in the strong support for
anti-migration policies. It is widely recognized that immigration brings important
economic advantages to the host countries (though not equally for all segments
ofthepopulation).Itisthereforehardtoseethewidespreadanti-migrantsentiments
and broad opposition to inclusive migration policies as motivated by rational
evaluations of an economic order, at least for all those who would welcome these
policies if their preferences were shaped mainly by economic criteria. Economic
issues are deeply engrained in the feelings that influence the way of making sense
of things.
The Brexit referendum outcome is another example of a political choice that
people made for reasons that cannot be reduced to economic interests. Indeed, the
economicimpactthatleavingtheEUwillhaveontheUKdependsonthecomplex
interplay offactorswhich will be defined inthe frameworkof thenegotiation with
the European Commission, which is still underway at the time of writing. This
meansthatthetrade-offwasimpossibletoidentifyatthetimeofthereferendumand
people therefore chose between Leave and Remain according to criteria other than
economic advantage.
Again, it is not only low-income and poorly educated people that are increas-
inglyseducedbythesirensofanti-immigration,far-right,sovereignistandpopulist
rhetoric: support for the political groups that interpret this rhetoric is growing in
socio-economically disadvantaged European territories (e.g. Southern Italy), but
also—and even more—in rich areas like Bavaria, the Netherlands and, more
recently, Sweden. These trends signal the extent to which identity issues are dra-
matically embedded also in these areas of Europe. They show that identity issues
are not necessarily the reaction to a real worsening of current material conditions
(and/ortoarealisticforecastoftheirfuturenegativetrends);theycanalsobeaway
of expressing and managing the grievous perception that one’s entire world-as-
it-has-been-so-far is dissolving.
This Volume
Thesecommentsabovemakeitclearthatthecurrentinstitutionalandsociopolitical
scenario cannot be understood without considering people’s subjectivity.
Understanding economic, political and institutional processes is necessary but not
sufficient.Whatmustalsobeanalysedistheoverwhelmingaffect-laden perception
—spreading through broader and broader segments of Western societies—that
one’s life world is under threat. We need to understand where and to what extent
such feelings have taken root in European societies, what attitudes, choices, dis-
coursesandpracticestheyshapeandfoster.Fromacomplementarystandpoint,we
need to understand the cultural and socio-economic grounds of this perception—
namely,on the onehand, the more general cultural worldviews in which thesense
of rupture and threat is embedded, and, on the other hand, the economic and
institutional divers that help to shape (and constraint) what people experience.
viii Introduction
This volume is designed to help address this need for knowledge of the
psycho-socialsubstrateoftheunrestincontemporaryEuropeansocieties.Itreports
the conceptual and methodological framework as well as the main findings of the
Re.Cri.Re. research programme.
Re.Cri.Re. (Between the representation of the crisis and the crisis of repre-
sentation,www.recrire.eu)isa3-yearresearchprogramme(2015–2018)carriedout
by a network of 16 partners (Universities, Research Centres, Agencies) of 12
European countries, thanks to the support of the European Union (in the H2020
framework; cf. https://ec.europa.eu/programmes/horizon2020/en/). Re.Cri.Re. is
basedonthepsycho-culturalapproachthatviewssocialphenomenaintermsofthe
underlying cultural dynamics of sense-making. According to this approach,
sense-making is cultural because it is channelled by generalized, affect-laden
meaningsthatareembeddedwithintheculturalmilieu.Thesegeneralizedmeanings
—symbolic universes and lines of semiotic force in Re.Cri.Re. terms—shape how
peoplefeelandthinkofthemselvesandtheworld—thereforetheirrelationshipwith
the sociopolitical and institutional environment.
More specifically, the Re.Cri.Re. research programme was aimed at analysing
the sociocultural dynamics underpinning the political and institutional crisis
affecting European societies. To this end, Re.Cri.Re. developed 5 lines of inquiry,
over several European countries:
(1) The analysis of the cultural context of crisis;
(2) Thestudyoftherelationbetweenthesocioculturalfactorsbehindthecrisisand
the psychological and economic factors;
(3) The analysis of the relation between sociocultural contexts, media and public
opinion;
(4) Intensive case analyses of the role played by cultural factors in the
success/failureofpolicies(indomainssuchasthejobmarket,health,education
and social cohesion);
(5) From these findings, the project drew an interpretative framework of the
socio-institutional scenario characterizing the current state of European soci-
etiesaswellasvariouscriteriaandsuggestionsfordesigning‘cultural-oriented’
policies aimed at addressing the crisis and rethinking Europe.
Within this framework,the currentvolumereportsthe main findings of thefirst
stage of the Re.Cri.Re. research programme, which carried out an empirical
investigation of the cultural dynamics characterizing European societies (line of
inquiry1).Atthesametime,itprovidedapictureofhowtheculturaldynamicsare
associated with certain individual characteristics (ways of feeling, thinking, plan-
ning, logical structures of reasoning, beliefs, attitudes), and specific sociocultural
and economic phenomena (professional cultures, social representations, models of
social behaviour) (line of inquiry 2). On these grounds, the volume presents an
interpretative perspective of the current socio-institutional dynamics characterizing
European societies and points out some strategic and methodological insights on
how to deal with these dynamics (line of inquiry 5).
Introduction ix
Other findings of the Re.Cri.Re. research programme (particularly those con-
cerninglinesofinquiry3and4)—aswellasthediscussionoftheirimplicationsfor
policymaking (line of inquiry 5) are planned to be the core of the subsequent
volumes of the series of which this book is the first.
The volume is organized in five parts.
The first part outlines the conceptual framework on which the subsequent
analysis and discussion are grounded. It is composed of two chapters. In Chap. 1,
Anna Krasteva provides a general theoretical discussion of the notion of crisis,
framing a general interpretation of the current sociopolitical scenario and its pos-
siblefuturetrajectory.Chapter2isdedicatedtoanoutlineoftheSemioticCultural
Psychology Theory, which is the conceptual and methodological framework on
which the Re.Cri.Re. analyses are based. In this context, the concepts of symbolic
universe and lines of semiotic force are presented as well as the way of analysing
them.
The second part is dedicated to reporting the findings of the empirical analysis
of the cultural milieu of European societies. In Chap. 3, the Re.Cri.Re. research
group focuses on the descriptions of the symbolic universes and lines of semiotic
force mapped by the analysis. Chapter 4 complements the report with the
socio-demographic and psycho-social characteristics associated with the symbolic
universes outlined in the previous chapter.
The third part collects studies aimed at detecting the symbolic universes in
action, namely the role they play in shaping people’s concrete acts of meaning. In
Chap. 5, Evrinomy Avdi and colleagues provide a qualitative analysis of how a
groupofGreekhealthprofessionalselaboratetheirroleidentityinthecontextofthe
hardeconomiccrisisaffectingthatcountryandhowthiselaborationcanbereadin
thelightoftheRe.Cri.Re.symbolicuniverses.InChap.6,AnastassiosMatsopoulos
and colleagues present the findings of a qualitative study on how several stake-
holders of the Greek educational community perceive the reform of the teacher
evaluation system implemented by the government; also in this case, perceptions
are analysed in relation to symbolic universes. In Chap. 7, Alessia Rochira and
colleagues deal with the beliefs underpinning vaccination hesitancy in a group of
Italianpeople,andpayspecificattentiontotheanalysisofhowthesebeliefscanbe
interpretedasthecontingentmanifestationsofthegeneralizedworldviewsdetected
by symbolic universes. Chapter 8 reports a study aimed at analysing the embodi-
ment of the symbolic universes—namely the Semiotic Cultural Psychology
Theory’s assumption that the generalized meanings comprising the symbolic uni-
verses are not only cognitive models, but forms of being-in-the-world that are
embedded deeply in the body. This is done by showing that participants present
different patterns of visual attention according to the symbolic universe character-
izing each of them.
The fourth part deals with sociopolitical implications of the empirical findings
discussedinthepreviousparts.InChap.9,theRe.Cri.Re.researchgroupusesthese
results as the grounding of a general culturally informed interpretative framework
ofthecurrentsocio-institutionalscenario,thathingesonthelackofsemioticcapital
and the complementary process of enemization of the other. In Chap. 10, Viviana
