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A 'Blurred' Object:
A Review of the Italian Literature on the Concept of Learning Society
Paolo Landri (p.landri@irpps.cnr.it) Domenico Maddaloni (dmaddaloni@unisa.it)∗1
CNR-IRPPS
(Institute of Research on Population and Social Policy, National Research Council) Roma – Fisciano
Italy
∗ Another version of this paper has been published in the book New Society Models for the New
1.Introduction
The meaning of a word depends on its context of use. The term learning society
does not immediately refer to an “out there” but can be declined by its interpreters/users in different practices. The spread of a term within discursive practices is the result of a complex process of translation among “communities of speakers” temporarily sharing the same vocabulary. Sometimes the same word is used with the same meaning; some other times the same word has different meanings; there are even cases when different words intend the same meanings. The life of a term and a meaning is intertwined not only with the life “out there”, that is the social-institutional order and its change, but also with the living experience of the “communities of speakers” - this results in a plural semantics that produces, while describing, the activities themselves.
The concept of learning society is to be considered as a boundary object that can be translated in different ways, depending on the social communities that decide (or do not decide) to appropriate it (Star and Griesemer 1989). The aim of this chapter is to show how the term has been translated into the Italian debate on topics such as social change, welfare, citizenship, education, employment - to quote only the most important ones. Here, the different speakers involve communities of psychologists, pedagogists, sociologists, economists and media scholars. Our review of the conceptualisation of learning society will start with a discussion of the Italian ways to intend individualisation, reflexivity (par. 2) and work flexibility in a postindustrial context (par. 3). We will then address the understanding of learning society for schooling and training (par. 4). Finally, we will consider some Italian critiques to the concept of learning society and its underlining political strategies (par. 5)
As a start, we should note that the meaning of “learning society” seems to have scattered in different discourses across the disciplinary communities. In the context of the Italian literature, the term “learning society” is rare; very few articles link “learning” with “society” (società dell'apprendimento). More frequently, Italian scholars use concepts such as “knowledge society” (società della conoscenza), “information society” (società dell'informazione) or “post-industrial society” (società post-industriale). These concepts overlap with the issues addressed by the term “learning society” within the wider international scientific communities2.
In this respect, “information society” was the first term used in the Italian debate, both to describe the emerging characteristics of the “new” society, and to study the effects of ICTs on social interactions in everyday life (Società Infocom: Gallino 1999). “Knowledge society” is a more recent term, promoted by the EC documents resulting in an isomorphism of discourses and national policies concerning employment, education and citizenship (CE 1996; 2000). In particular, the term “knowledge”, by covering a wider meaning than “information” and “learning”, appears to be a convenient passepartout to align researchers and scholars of different disciplinaries. Moreover, within the Italian society, the concept of “knowledge” is mirroring important changes: while “immaterial” goods, such as information and competencies, are acquiring a major role, “knowledge” is seen as a competitive factor. By focusing on the economic level, these new conceptualisations of societal change have been addressed by
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the terms “post-industrial society” and “post-fordist society” (even società dei lavori: Accornero 1997).
As we will try to show in the next pages, the concept of "learning society" is a
blurred object in the Italian debates on social and institutional change. At the same time, there are emerging signs of a process of the de-differentiation of learning, as well as of networking among institutional and organisational domains. Perhaps, in the next future, these processes could represent a valuable opportunity for new arenas of research beyond the traditional disciplinary boundaries.
2. Individuals and reflexivity
One of the main issues concerning the learning society is the role of individuals; more precisely, how the subjects are mobilised in the learning society. In this respect it has been noted that the advent of the new society, whatever concept might be used to define it, implies the restructuring of life courses and, in particular, the individualisation of biographies (Saraceno 1986).
Unsurprisingly the Italian debate remarks some issues of social inequalities and personal risk factors emerging from the increasing heterogeneity in biographical courses (Mingione 1998; Spanò 1999). Nowadays, it is generally accepted that the compulsory relationship between working life and life course, already weakened in the industrial or Fordist stage of social and economic development, is definitively ended. In Italy, for example, as Accornero and Carmignani (1986) noted for the first time, youth has become, for the majority of the population, a phase of experimentation. A great deal of activities - from secondary school and training courses to informal activities or temporary jobs - are pursued in order to build up a personal pathway to social inclusion, mobility and reproduction. Italian young people also show an increasing awareness of the plurality of meanings associated to work (Gosetti and La Rosa 1999). Still, in a postmodern age of growing heterogeneity of biographies and identities, the same may be said for adulthood and old age: it is even more the case, when considering the actual social and cultural context in which traditional gender differences are being overcome (Spanò 1999; Mingione and Pugliese 2002)3.
In modern public welfare systems, in Italy as well as in other countries, one of the main problems is how to promote a personal empowerment based on some “education to reflexivity”. In the Italian sociological literature on youth, but even on adult unemployment and social exclusion, the reference to the concept of “reflexivity” is spreading, as it is shown by the recent works by Clarizia and Spanò (2000) or Spanò (2001)4. “Reflexivity” includes education and vocational training but, in a context of growing uncertainty in the making of a positive and satisfactory life course, it mainly refers to a general attitude to risk evaluation, rational choice and risk management. Then, among Italian social scientists, there is a growing awareness that information, counselling and placement services are as important as educational and training courses (Reyneri 1996; Varesi 1997). Still, the Italian employment and welfare public institutions - more specifically the employment services and, as Frey (2000) has clearly
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However, this does not mean that Italy is reaching the goal of equal opportunities. Generally speaking, women show better performances at school or the university; still, even more than in other countries, their path to employment, mobility and reproduction is undermined by their gender role and by the lack of an effective universal public social care system (Reyneri 1996; Mingione and Pugliese 2002).
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shown, education and training programmes - are scarcely able to make these competencies available to the labour supply.
Finally, the debate on reflexivity, loosely defined as a general capability of “being-into-the-world”, is related to the issue of social capital (Coleman 1990) as a factor of economic development at a macro level, and of social insertion, mobility and reproduction at a micro level. Leaving the theoretical reflections on the nature of social capital aside (Mutti 1998; Bagnasco, Piselli, Pizzorno, Trigilia 2001; Bagnasco 2002; La Valle 2002; Pelligra 2002; Rullani 2002), its role within learning society can be found in the growing influence it has recently played in the sociological, educational and economic debates on unemployment, job search and competencies.
3. Work and flexibility
The debate on work in new societies can be traced in the studies on the impact of the information society. The interest is on the changes in the nature of work and the organisation of production generated by the shift from an industrial to a post-industrial economy, based on personal and collective services, information and communication technologies, non-material (post-materialistic) needs and demands. In this respect, in the Italian debate there are voices that hail at these changes, à la Gorz or à la Rifkin, as the main progress for workers as well as for citizens (see, for instance, De Masi 1994; 1997; 1999). This line of thought focuses on the historical tendencies towards a general reduction of working time and physical effort, the development of teleworking, the progressive changes in the structure of occupation, with the general diffusion of autonomous and creative jobs, the growing importance of leisure - the time for otium - compared with working time in the construction of personal and social identities.
Even if these arguments might meet some empirical evidence, Italian sociologists observe that, in the occupational structure, a sort of trade-off between autonomy and creativity at work and job precariousness is gradually emerging (Accornero 1997; A. Barbieri 1997)5. According to scholars, job precariousness is actually growing in a globalising context. Moreover, the balance in industrial relations is shifting away from trilateralism - State/entrepreneurs/Trade Unions - to advantage financial and economic business, together with managers, consultants and knowledge workers operating within its organisational domain (Gallino 2000).
We can place the recent Italian debate on new economy and work flexibility within this framework. In a post-fordist and post-industrial historical context, like that of Italy in the '90s and the beginning of the new century, this debate tries to give an answer to the social, cultural and even psychological problems related to the dimension of work in a learning society.
From the point of view of the new economy (Castellano 2002), we can find many analyses, developed by economic scholars as well as by sociologists, which are devoted to clarify the impact of recent technological and organisational innovations on labour demand. These innovations are conceived, as Rullani (2001) noted, as major social structural changes on the way to Postfordism: the cost reduction effects of ICTs and of organisational changes related to them take place at the level of “new economy”; the major changes in economic (and social) interactions are driven by the development of new media at the “net economy” level; finally, the innovations in the knowledge
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production/utilisation regime happen at the “knowledge economy” level. Moreover, these levels of social change are deeply interrelated in a (hyper)complex system of technological, economical, organisational, social and cultural arrangements.
Generally speaking, the consequences on labour demand are those predicted by economic theory: innovation produces a growing need for qualified workforce, at the expense of unskilled workers (Bugamelli et al. 2001; Bugamelli e Pagano 2001; D'Antonio 2001; Frey e Livraghi 2001; Gambardella e Varaldo 2001; Paneforte 2001). It is also important to note that, in the transition to “digital economy” (alternative label for “new/net/knowledge economy”), the process of enterprise creation is improving, with Italian firms showing a strong commitment to investments in ICT (Colombo, Delmastro, Mariotti 2001; Castellano 2002).
New business fields are rapidly growing: ICT goods production, telecommunications and networking infrastructures, e-commerce services. New ICT or ICT-related firms are developing also in areas of the Mezzogiorno; technological and organisational innovations related to the knowledge economy are covering all economic sectors. In this respect, it is particularly important that, in the knowledge society, knowledge workers are becoming a rising social class (Butera, Donati, Cesaria 1998; Bianco 2001).
As for the Italian debate on work flexibility, we find supporters of welfare and labour market reforms (and the burden of reduced protection on the side of subordinate workers: for example, see Ferrera 1998; Gualmini 1998; Boeri 2000). According to this approach, reforms should be seen as a major device to economic recovery, improved employment and social welfare performance. Other scholars, on the contrary, underline the negative impact of greater work flexibility on political order, social arrangements, and even the sense of self (Gallino 1998; Maddaloni 1998; Gallino 2001). They intend welfare reforms as a case of “retrenchment of the State” (Schaffner Goldberg and Rosenthal 2002; for the Italian case, Morlicchio, Pugliese, Spinelli 2002).
However, common to both views is the recognition of the “backwardness” of Italian social protection system. Like the welfare and labour market regulation system of other Southern European countries (Ferrera 1996), the Italian one has been built to meet the economic needs and the monetary demands of “regular” subordinate workers and their families. This excludes other potential social needs, such as those of women, unemployed youth, and informal workers (Ferrera 1993; Bartocci 1995; A. Barbieri 1995; Negri and Saraceno 1996; Ferrera 1998: 79-105; Boeri 2000; Morlicchio and Pugliese 2000; Morlicchio, Pugliese, Spinelli 2002). Unsurprisingly, the Italian welfare system is generally included in the “conservative”, “corporative” and “particularistic” type of welfare regimes (Ascoli 1984; Ferrera 1984 1993; Esping-Andersen 1990 2000; Bartocci 1995; Mingione 1998).
The Italian social-historical record requires major changes in welfare system and labour market regulation. Reforms are necessary in order to make growing subordinate labour flexibility sustainable in economic, social and psychological terms, both to workers, unemployed people, and youth attending schools, universities, and training activities (Centre for Economic Policy Research 1995; A. Barbieri 1996; Reyneri 1996; A. Barbieri 1997; Ferrera 1998; Gallino 1998; Paci 1998; Boeri 2000; Frey 2000; Gallino 2001)6.
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4. Schooling and training
The concept of learning society marks either the decline of the “traditional” closure of the school system (the apparent gap with the “world outside”) and the development of bridging processes (through intentional policies or unintentional effects) among institutional domains (the school, the labour market, the firms etc., which were areas clearly separated in the life course of a subject, in the recent past).
These processes have been grasped by several contributions focusing on themes such as: new modes of organising the educational system; the growing relevance of the discourse of the “competence”; learning in and out the organisations; the perspective of the lifelong learning; learning by ICT. These strands of research have been recently reinforced by the educational and employment policy reforms aiming to align with the claims for a “learning” or a “knowledge” society (Alberici 1998, 2002).
In this respect, the end of the ’90 proved to be important for the restructuring of the social policies, and for the Italian public policies as well, due to the decentralisation of the State in favour of local authorities: Regions, Provinces and Municipalities. In the same period, other reforms introduced the perspective of lifelong learning. They tried to intervene on the whole educational framework to promote “successful education for everyone" through the setting up of a co-ordinated educational and training system. Previously, the attempt to change the educational system had regarded little but important reforms such as that of low secondary school and primary school (Benadusi 1988; Ventura 1998).
4.1. New modes of organising the educational system
The emergence of learning society seems to produce the decline of centralised educational bureaucracy (the eclipse of the educational bureaucracy: Benadusi e Landri 2002). The changes take place within the wider restructuring of the Italian public sector, sometimes rhetorically presented as the “managerialisation of the state”, the alignment of organisational discourses of the public sector within the “New Public Management” paradigm. In this respect, an influential metaphor is the “entrepreneurial state” (amministrazione imprenditoriale), useful to stress the necessity of new modes of organising the public sector to be carried out by a successful imitation of private companies (D’Albergo e Vaselli 1997).
These transformations can be considered either as an example of the retrenchment of the State (in particular, the privatisation of education) or as the “societification of State” (Berg 1992). This latter means the tentative to attribute more “powers” to local actors by fostering participation and democracy at the local level, and by improving the responsiveness of the public organisations to the citizens' needs (Benadusi 1997; Ribolzi 1987; 1999).
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The decline of educational bureaucracy has meant the exploration of the
organizational other (Meyer 1996), that is the shift to the rhetoric of the organisation,
where the management of a school seems to be detached from the everyday practice of education (Benadusi, Landri, Viteritti 1999; Benadusi e Serpieri 2001; Serpieri 2002). The passage has occurred because the predominant perspective of “hierarchical management” stressed organisational similarities between schools and universities and other organisations (Romei 1986; 1995; Vairetti 1996; Strassoldo 2001). In this literature, alongside with a claim of “more management” for schools and universities, a perspective of professionalisation has implied the construction of new roles such as the “headteacher” seen as a “manager” (Fisher e Masuelli 1998) or “task leaders” (figure obiettivo) considered as “reflexive practitioners”. Those new roles have been expected to improve the capacity of the schools to act as “corporate organisations”. At this level there has also been an attempt to reverse the teachers' deprofessionalisation by their inclusion in the new important social class of knowledge workers (Butera, Coppola, Fasulo, Nunziata 2002)
Furthermore, there is a raising debate on the technologies of the management
(and self-management) of schools and universities, which tries to introduce accounting rituals (Castoldi 1995; 1998; Strassoldo 2001). It reinforces the tendency to define “blueprints and standards” meant to control and define the “building blocks” of the equality of educational organisation. It obviously presents implications for the role of the State, that re-defines the public intervention boundaries while limiting itself to the position of “stirring at a distance”. Whatever the attitudes to the process of restructuring the educational system, the construction of new instruments has been accompanied by the circulation of a new body of knowledge for managing schools and universities (Landri 2001b; Landri 2002; Benadusi e Consoli 2003; Lichtner 1999).
4.2. The competence discourse
Another important strand of research regards “competence”. Its concept plays a major role in the relationship between school and society (Benadusi e Consoli 2000; Benadusi 2002). In this respect it is evident a process of isomorphism of the pedagogical discourses of schools, private companies and the public sector. There is a common agreement on the necessity of raising the skills and the competencies of the labour force in a significant way; at the same time, there is no common definition of what “competence” is, with its concept becoming either a “battlefield” or the coordination locus between organisations and scientific communities (Ricotta 1998; Bresciani 1993; Butera 1992; Camuffo 1993; Consoli 1998; Levati e Saraò 1993; Lundvall 1996; Piccardo 1995; Spencer e Spencer 1995; Varchetta 1993; Alessandrini 2001; Pellerey 2001; Viteritti 1999)
An important question concerns the “curriculum of the learning society” for employability. In this debate, by importing contributions of the international literature, it has been developed a relevant reflection on the key or core skills (Chiari 2000; Fassari 2002; Viteritti 2002; Benadusi e Consoli 2000). It is well known that key skills are sets or repertoires of competencies to be considered at the core of a “good” working performance. According to the scholars proposing it, a major factor of those skills is transferability, i.e. the possibility to ease the passage from a life situation to another. At the moment, in the Italian debate, there is no agreement on the list of core skills and, above all, on the certification of competencies - even if the model elaborated by ISFOL has become the main institutional reference7. That model identifies three classes of
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competencies: diagnosing (problems and attitudes); working in-group (communicating, negotiating, deciding); copying with (tackling problems, developing creative solutions, and the like) (ISFOL 1993; De Francesco 1998).
This list and, in general, the approach to key skills have been criticised both at the methodological and the theoretical level. In particular, it has been argued against the implicit equivalence between the classification of a set of competencies as core or key skills, and employability, in favour of strategies and methods to help the process of competencies creation (Ajello, Meghnagi e Mastracci 2000; Seely, Brown e Duguid 1991). Unlike the classificatory approach to skills, here the attention is on the situated relevance of the expertise as well as on competence to analyse the set of opportunities and constraints for employability and citizenship, within the private companies and schools (Chiari 2000; Gallino 1998).
Critical studies regard also the identified skills (Fassari 2002; Viteritti 2002): here competencies seem to be generic and concerning a general “how to handle with life”. In this discourse, integration between competitiveness, social inclusion and citizenship is taken for granted. However, while it may be an appealing political proposal, the mainstream approach attributes a functional role to schools and vocational and educational training (VET). This produces an “overloading of social expectations” which reveals the rhetorical character of this perspective. In this case the discourse of competence shifts the question of competitiveness “onto the shoulders of individuals”, legitimising the retreat of politics from economy, education and training.
4.3. Learning in and out the organisations
The Italian debate regards the learning processes within organisations and local business networks, too. An important stream of research, highlighting the relevance of learning, has been developed within the process of institutionalisation of the VET as an interorganizational field (Lipari 2002).
In particular, with some notable exceptions during the ’70, the Italian organisation studies were characterised by a disciplinary approach mainly derived from economics and scientific management literature. This approach attributed a marginal role to training and, accordingly, it was not a enabling factor in the professionalization of the roles in VET. During the ’80, differently, there was the mobilisation of interest on training by private companies, consultants, and professionals of those organisations delivering in-service and vocational training. The same interest was proved also by academics and the wide world of research aiming at the elaboration of theoretical approaches and methodologies for VET.
The resulting literature has been marked by the plurality of approaches and research findings. It has contributed to widen the studies on the learning in and out the organisations; in a sense, it has anticipated the claim for the learning society, establishing a durable channel with the international organisation studies and with the knowledge management literature. In particular, these studies have introduced into the Italian debate the recognition of the plurality of the places for learning and the importance of learning-in-practice, lowering the traditional barriers between the “workplace” and the traditional producing and transferring knowledge institutions (schools and universities).
This literature emphasises the “learning dimension” as a constitutive level of everyday activities in and out the organisations. The approach is present in books, articles and contributions of different kinds, on the concepts of: organisational learning
(Gherardi 1994; Gherardi and Nicolini 1999; Tomassini 1993); community of practice
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and competence (Lanzara 1993). These concepts are also treated in a critical perspective by the concept of institutional learning, where the learning category is stretched up to bridge organisational themes and political issues (the “intelligence of institutions”: Donolo 2001; De Leonardis 1998; Gualmini 1995).
In addition, the question of learning society is relevant for the well-known Italian industrial districts (Bagnasco 1977; Becattini 1989; Trigilia 1989). These networks of local business, with their community-based relationships, made the development of trust possible, allowing cooperation as well as competition. In this respect, if not prominently discussed, these networks were relevant for training (Crouch, Finegold, Sako 1999), which is “often listed among the collective-competition goods delivered by the Italian small-firm system” (ibid. 171). The training was indeed informal; it usually involved skilled craftsmen transferring relevant knowledge to their sons and daughters, providing assistance as experts. In this it was possible to see an opportunity for vocational training, compensating for the failure in completing education up to the leaving certificate, in those regions of the industrial districts (Centre and North-East) where the average of dropouts is higher than in the North-West and as high as in the poorer regions of South.
If this informal pattern is often associated with backwardness, it was not the case for these regions, thanks to the notable economic performances of their local networks, particularly in the ’70s when they paradoxically configured a kind of “local economy of knowledge and learning”. Whether these districts are able to confront the challenge of a “learning society” calling for high-skills and a more certified educational and learning process, is a disputing point: there is a general agreement among local governments, trade unions and associations of firms (Confindustria) on their commitment to the production of highly skilled labour force.
Nevertheless, it has been noted that the kind of skills to be transferred through the informal networks is limited; some scholars have also observed that Italian firms have designed their market strategy to compete with poor countries thus avoiding high-skill competition. This is the reason why, in the industrial districts, the new policies of labour market, as well as the new educational approaches focusing on the role of the Region and the Province, are now facing strong difficulties. As a result, the new centres for vocational and educational training are likely to be more successful in their efforts to meet the perceived training needs of the firms than in trying to raise the entrepreneurs' interests beyond their immediate horizons.
4.4. The perspective of the lifelong learning
Living in a learning society seems to imply, for the individual, the perspective of the lifelong learning; the reinforcement of permanent education for the life course plays a major role in the new social policies aimed at the employability as well as at a durable social inclusion. However, this has not been the case for the political agenda of adult education in Italy (Gallina and Lichtner 1996; Demetrio 1997). The lack of attention has lead to an unsatisfactory adult provision in education and training, and to a decreased participation and completion rate. This was particularly sharp during the period 1993-1996.
general, the overall description of “literacy” through the major international research highlights that low levels of literacy regard mainly the employed and the unemployed in their forties, and young people between 14 and 19 (Gallina 2000). In addition, another survey carried out between ’97 and ’99, with a sample of adults aged between 16 and 65, points out at the presence of fairly 2 millions of illiterates and a great amount of functionally illiterates (Vertecchi 2000).
Indeed, the “Labour Agreement” in the ’96 marked a turning point in a “non European narrative” (Demetrio 1997). For the first time, education and training was esteemed crucial in economic growth and employability, also for fostering democracy and social cohesion. The consequence for adult education was the adoption of lifelong learning. It meant a commitment to develop adult education services by means of a more proactive role by trade unions and employers; the reinforcement of the links between education and work experiences; the introduction of pathways and credits during all stages of the educational system; in particular, the establishment of a separate track of higher education, strongly connected with employment.
As for the organisational support to the policy, the 1997 Regulation set up the Adult Education Centres, that is a way to coordinate education and training adult provision to develop need analysis, credit recognition, individual learning agreement, and tutoring. Even if the policy implementation of the Regulation shows a patchy performance with many differences at the regional level, this change can be considered as the specific way to the “learning society” (Alberici 1998; Calise 2001). It also means the recognition of a scattered but relevant community of researchers working with a pedagogical and sociological approach, for long concentrated on adulthood and on the importance of learning during the life-course.
4.5. Learning by ICT
If the importance of new technologies is growing at the level of public debate, similarly, the scientific community shows a specific interest in their use for learning (Calvani 1995; Calvani and Rotta 1999; Calvani 1999; Cremascoli and Gualdoni 2000; Talamo 1998; Maragliano 1998; Pian 2000). There are notable investments by the Ministry of Education leading to the wide application of the ICT to various aspects of education, with a growing interest by private companies in developing instruments and softwares for schooling (the perspective of e-learning).
Moreover, it must be noted that, even in Italy, the theme of educational reform has been explicitly connected to ideas of “cognitive democracy” and postnational citizenship development, as shown by the widespread influence of the recent work by Edgar Morin on teachers and educators (Florenzano, Morin, Delors 1998; Morin 2000; 2001; 2002). The diffusion of the new technologies highlights the problems of the new citizenship. In particular, there has been a claim for “new rights of citizenship” (Bobbio 1990) in respect to the structures of information and knowledge of the new society. This would lead to consider the relevance of defining the new dimension of digital citizenship (cittadinanza digitale) (Carboni 2002). In some extent, the question of “learning by ICT" overlaps with the “cyber democracy”, i.e. the opportunities to participate in an active way to the policy making as well as to the collective decision-making (Capecchi 1994; Rodotà 1997).
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technologies would represent a possibility for enhancing active citizenship (Balbo 1995) and also the everyday life of elderly and disabled people (Capecchi and Pesce 1993).
4.6. International dimension and cultural contexts
A point under discussion is also the “global” or the “European” character of the new society and the new economy. In this respect, the Italian literature largely overlap with the debate on the globalisation and Europeisation of learning, knowledge and economy. This literature focuses on the positive and negative effects of modernisation.
Europeisation is to be considered as an important driver for learning society: in some respect, from the Italian perspective, “Europe” has so far represented a point of reference for the importation of major trends from other advanced countries by means of the European Union's institutional practices. The perception of “the gap from Europe" has provoked new educational and economical reforms, at least to fill the distance in principle. During the ‘90, on the international level, surveys focused on the educational attainments (IALS, for example) and researches on education and training showed an Italian educational deficit from Europe. This awareness has triggered a discussion on the changes which are necessary to meet the educational objectives of the European Commission (Besozzi 1999).
Besides, EC represents a key actor for funding vocational training and all the policies aimed at the convergence among the European countries for learning and education abroad. For example, ERASMUS and CAMPUSONE are two projects, involving many Italian universities, that provide opportunities for the attendance of courses in foreign universities, and the internationalisation of higher education. This funding role of the EC is particularly important for the regional and local policies supported by European Social Fund (ESF) in a significant way. The financial support has been relevant for the institutional change, since it has been accompanied by a new perspective of rationalisation of the economic resources and by the managerialisation of the public, private and local agencies (Ferrera and Gualmini 1999). Furthermore, the influence of the EC on policy evaluation has acquired a growing importance (Palumbo 2002).
As for globalisation, the debate is stimulated by the translations of the most important international contributions, and is overlapped with the discussion on the knowledge economy. Globalisation raises the demand for developing new pedagogical approaches, and for rethinking the organisation of knowledge. Another visible effect of globalisation is the growth of international migration. Since the end of ‘80s, after a long period in which Italy represented a “country of departure” towards advanced industrial societies, the country has turned into a possible destination for migration (Pugliese 2000; Ambrosini 1999; 2001). For the educational system, the change has raised the problem of multiculturalism, i.e. the question of devoting attention to migrants and their cultural diversities (Scannagatta 2002; Colombo 2001). The issue has been addressed both on the level of adult education (Zucchetti 2001) and of children and youth education, in order to make the citizenship rights effective and productive (Dutto 2000; Lostia 2001).
5. Critiques of the concept of learning society
1996; Ginsborg 1996; Ginsborg 1998) show that the historical unbalance between the North-West, the urban-industrial and post-industrial regions of the country, and the Mezzogiorno, the relatively underdeveloped Southern regions, has been somehow additionally complicated by the emergence of the so-called “Third Italy”, situated in the North-East and in the Centre. As noted before, the development pathway characterising this 'area', consists of small towns, industrial districts, little firms, municipal welfare, societal cohesion and cultural homogeneity. Yet, it is important to remark that in this context, regional disparities have not disappeared: on the contrary, perhaps, they have deepened in the recent years.
Differences in economic performances and social conditions are reflected in the labour market performance. The notion of the “Italian model of unemployment” (Pugliese 1993; Reyneri 1996), a model which could also be called “Mediterranean” (Pugliese 1996), has been established to indicate a strong unbalance in the country's unemployment composition. Everywhere, young people (15-24 and even 25-34) and women suffer from unemployment more than adults and men, due to the Southern European way to labour market regulation and social welfare regime: a man for each woman (and her sons), a (regular) job for each man, a set of guarantees and rights for each job (Bruni 1993). While in the Northern and Central regions unemployment is frictional, cyclical and sometimes technological, in the Mezzogiorno unemployment is
structural, that is, it is connected to an economic feeble context in which, still today, the public sector works as the major economic actor (Chiesi 1998; De Vivo 2002).
The industrial crisis of the Nineties provoked debates on local development, small firms growth, informal economy, even human capital growth (see, for example, Bodo and Sestito 1991; Pennisi 1993; Bruni and De Luca 1994; Brunetta 1995; Cersosimo and Donzelli 1996; Gallino 1998; Meldolesi 1998; Meldolesi 2000; Roma 2001). Starting with “pacchetto Treu” onwards, a great deal of effort was done in order to move the Italian labour market regulation system towards active labour market policy. Still, according to most scholars, these changes have not produced specific results on youth mass unemployment in Southern Italy. On the contrary, the impact of the industrial decline of the '90 on the labour demand in the Mezzogiorno affected employment performances even for adult males (Pugliese and Rebeggiani 1997; Maddaloni 2000). This was probably related to the lack of an incisive industrial and regional cohesion economic policy (Gallino 1998). From this point of view, employment perspectives for unskilled workforce seem to be deeply negative. It has been noted that, in the Southern regions, most policies implemented by the Centre-Left Government (1996-2001) and meant to boost “employability” in trying to bring the education system closer to the world of work8, proved to benefit young unemployed with an university degree or a secondary school certificate. This would leave aside unskilled people who remain unskilled and unemployed or, more frequently, ill-employed in the irregular economy (Cortese 2000; Reyneri 2000; Maddaloni 2001).
It is to be noted that the competitive advantage of skilled workforce cannot be seen as a driving force to the acquisition of higher levels of certified education for the whole population, and to the diffusion of strong positive attitudes towards competence maintenance. In Italy, as in almost every developed country, the structure of the labour demand is moving towards the tertiary sector, and professional roles are changing profile often needing some sort of higher education or vocational training (Reyneri 1996; Chiesi 1997; Istat 2001). Still, these processes are developing under the sign of persistent low activity and employment rate. For instance, expressing sectorial
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employment in terms of working age population, we find that in 1997 in the European Union tertiary employment affected 60,5% of this part of the population, while in Italy the rate was 51,3%. Specifically, the biggest difference between EU and Italy does not concern activities such as trade and retailing (UE 9,1% - Italy 8,6%) and hotels and restaurants (2,5% - 2,3%) where low skilled professional roles are prevailing still today; the main concern affects hi-tech and hi-skill sectors such as transportation and communication (3,6 - 2,8%), finance (2,1% - 1,7%), business services (the so-called “advanced tertiary”: 4,6% - 2,8%) and communal services9 (17,8% - 13,5%) (European Commission 1998; Gasbarrone 2000).
As widely recognised by the Italian economic and sociological literature, these results show a backwardness in the social foundations of (Southern and Northern) Italian economic and labour market performance. There is also an ever-growing risk of “systemic” decline, on one side, of the Italian role in the international division of labour and, on the other side, of regional and societal cohesion.
Considering the first aspect, as Fuà (1980) noted some years ago, it is widely recognised that the Italian model of structural economic change is affected by the lack of the so-called entrepreneurial organisational factor. This undermines the development perspectives of small and medium firms in terms of size growth as well as of technological and organisational innovation (Traù 1999; Varaldo 1999). Moreover, still today it is difficult to develop a dialogue between Italian big business and medium, small or micro-enterprises, a dialogue meant to create more advanced organisational and management frameworks (Gambardella e Varaldo 2001). In this sense, it is difficult to foresee whether Italian firms will benefit from the opportunities supplied by the advent of a new/net/knowledge economy or if, differently, they will suffer from the constraints emerging by structural and systemic unbalances (Varaldo 2000; Castellano 2002)10.
Considering the second aspect, according to the economic and sociological disciplinary communities, the Italian welfare system is still based on family reproductive functions. It is a “familistic” welfare, using the expression by Esping-Andersen (1995; 2000). This prevents a massive growth of labour demand in personal services - may these be private, voluntary or public. Besides, the Italian economic structure, generally and increasingly based on small sized firms competing on costs rather than on quality, prevents a massive growth of labour demand in business services as well as in hi-skilled professional roles in industrial activities. We could easily continue this list, for instance by noting that the widespread diffusion of phenomena such as self-employment or multiple occupations, both in the North and the South, could be regarded as an obstacle to the development of the Third Sector and personal and communal services in general. This is due to the lack of a clearer distinction between working time and leisure time and, above all, of a more equitable social distribution of work opportunities.
The historical features of the Italian models of change, development and welfare seem to affect, in a cumulative way, social insertion and mobility perspectives of large part of the population, including those with a high education degree, especially if young (Borghi and La Rosa 1999) and/or women (Gasbarrone 2000). They even produce higher levels of social exclusion and cultural marginality for young, but also adult, people from urban lower classes in Southern Italy (Morlicchio and Pugliese 2000;
9
Note that the concept of “communal services” does not include only employment in public, central and local administrations and in social services, but also in the Third (or Non Profit) Sector and in the so-called “social firms” in cultural as well in social activities.
10
Pugliese 2000; Reyneri 2000; Maddaloni 2001; Morlicchio, Pugliese, Spinelli 2002). Unsurprisingly, Italy shows the worst performances in the European Union - considerably lower than those of Spain and not much higher than those of Portugal and Greece - on topics such as vocational training activities developed by small, medium and even large private firms. In 1999 only 24% of Italian firms activated training to improve their human capital, a percentage that raises to 36% for Spain, to 75% for Germany and to 96% for Denmark. These empirical results do not change significantly when considering the more developed north-eastern regions, where the percentage of firms involved in training activities was 27,5% (in the Mezzogiorno it falls to a mere 15,4%) (Istat 2002).
This fundamental point may be made also by the social capital debate perspective. In Italy, as well as in other Countries, the higher the educational degree of an individual the higher his/her capability to get a job: both in Northern and Southern Italy, the most common way is by the means of information, solidarity, and cooperation networks based on kinship, friendship, political relationships (Reyneri 1996). Thus, as an economist can easily show (Checchi 1997), the efficiency of educational investment for the individual is heavily dependent on the intervening variable of social capital. Yet the “social capital” on which the individual counts in his/her job search is primarily defined by the strength of strong (not weak) ties, i.e. the above-mentioned kinship, friendship or political networks (Bianco 1996; Bianco 2001). In Italy the empirical evidence associated with these analytical findings, has been so strong as to define the school leaving as “a scrap of paper” (Rossi 1997) and the social classes as “castes” (Fabbri and Rossi 1997).
Finally, as for the relationship between the learning society whole project, the Italian educational reforms of the Nineties and citizenship and democracy, we may observe that the connection is counterbalanced by the insistence of political and educational institutions on themes perceived as 'cool' by the academic establishment. A strong influence on policy and on macro-and micro-innovation has meant the insistence on the use of new media, together with an obsession for “professionalisation”. This would mean the explicit link between education and, to be ironical, two specific professional roles: the detective and the astrologer, as one critic of the university reform has recently remarked (Ferraris 2001).
6. Conclusions
In this chapter we have discussed the discourse of learning society in the Italian scientific debate, leaving aside the inquiry on the different policies concerning its practical concept. It could be actually noted that there is a lack of articulated analysis on the topic (not to mention Alberici, 2002), even if there are many policies tending to turn the ideas of the learning society into practice.
Our initial classification of the research strands indicates that the notion of "learning society", for the Italian scientific communities, is a 'blurred'object. The term entered the Italian debate thanks to the release of the European communitarian documents, which emphasised the concepts of education, employability and competitiveness (Commissione Europea, 1996, 2000). At the same time, the epistemic communities of humanities and social sciences would prefer the term “knowledge society”: a reason for this is that the concept of “learning” is associated with discipline specialisations (pedagogy, psychology, sociology etc.), without providing a specific appeal to a wider set of programmes and research groups.
15
year - or ideological - delineating contrasting ways of thinking that obscure the level of the involved everyday practices.
In conclusion, we can say that, with the exception of the Nineties and its policies explicitly referring to knowledge and learning as the two coordinating themes between employment and social policies, the norm is to consider the concept of learning society in a very fragmented way. The consequence is that there are few chances for the setting of joint research programmes able to grasp its relevant and on-going developments. We can only expect that the recent signals of the process of de-differentiation of learning, and the beginning of the bridging processes among institutional domains (the school, the work, the firm etc.) will offer us productive opportunities for new research arenas beyond the traditional disciplinary boundaries.
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