Abstract: In this paper I will try to provide some arguments against a broad definition of "empathy". Firstly, I will deal with attempts to define empathy as an umbrella concept. Then, I will try to point out the four main elements which contribute to the confusion that researchers in both the social and political as well as the scientific and philosophical domains face when dealing with empathy. In order to resolve this confusion, I suggest applying David Marr's distinction to the field of empathy. Instead of providing an umbrella definition for empathy, which tries to account for all the data coming from different disciplines, I believe understanding that there are different levels of explanations and that different disciplines can contribute to each of them will provide a more detailed and less confused definition of empathy.Keywords: Empathy; D. Marr; de Waal; Identification; Helping-behavior; Cost-benefit Analysis. Contro una definizione ampia di "empatia"Riassunto: In questo articolo cercherò di fornire alcuni argomenti contrari all'adozione di una definizione ampia di "empatia". In primo luogo cercherò di definire la nozione di empatia come una sorta di ombrello concettuale. Proverò poi a indicare i quattro principali elementi responsabili delle confusioni di cui gli studiosi cadono vittima sia in ambito sociale e politico sia in ambito scientifico e filosofico quando si occupano di empatia. Per sgombrare il campo da questa confusione proporrò di applicare la distinzione avanzata da David Marr al campo dell'empatia. Anziché dare una definizione di empatia come una sorta di ombrello concettuale, cercando di tenere insieme tutte le evidenze provenienti da discipline diverse, sono convinta che la comprensione del fatto che possono darsi livelli differenti di spiegazione e che discipline diverse possano contribuire ognuna per proprio conto alla comprensione di questi livelli costituisca la via migliore per raggiungere una definizione di empatia più specifica e meno confusa.Parole chiave: Empatia; Marr; De Waal; Identificazione; Comportamento di aiuto; Analisi costi/benefici.
Teoría de la cognición social motivada: las personas adoptan un sistema ideológico en un esfuerzo por satisfacer diferentes necesidades de tipo cognitivo y social. Literatura científica: Ideología Política: diferencias cognitivas entre liberales y conservadores (Jost et Al., 2003) Sensibilidad a la repulsión (Inbar, Bloom e Pizarro, 2009) Empatía (Shih et Al., 2009; Galinsky et Al., 2008) ¿Existe una relación entre estas variables? Hipótesis: Los conservadores son más sensibles a la repulsión y muestran una menor capacidad empática. Muestra: 43 participantes. Medio: Cuestionario en papel. 1. Escala para la detección de la sensibilidad a la repulsión: A . Repulsión personal: "Pruebas un saltamontes asado" B. Repulsión personal por un evento ajeno: "Te dicen que alguien ha probado un saltamontes asado" C. Repulsión ajena: "¿Cuánta repulsión sentiría una persona al probar un saltamontes asado?" 2. Escala de la Empatía: Fantasía: "Sueño con los ojos abiertos y fantaseo con cierta regularidad sobre las cosas que me podrían suceder". Consideración Empática: "Cuando veo a alguien explotado, siento que debo protegerlo". Toma de perspectiva: "Creo que hay dos puntos de vista en cada cuestión e intento entender ambos" Malestar Personal: "Me asusta el hecho de encontrarme en situaciones de fuerte tensión emotiva". 3. Escala de la Ideología Política. Análisis de regresión: Variable independiente Escala Empatía, variable dependiente Ideología Política. "Fantasía": β = -.261, p = .146, "Consideración Empática": β = .012, p = .942, "Toma de Perspectiva": β = .018, p = .912, "Malestar Personal": β = .332, p = .069. Diferencias de Género: Comparación de medias. Efectos en la sub-escala "Fantasía" de la empatía. F (1,38) = 3.695, p = .062 Liberales: Hombres M = 3.131, Mujeres M = 3.821; Conservadores: Hombres M = 3.143, Mujeres M = 3.071 Sensibilidad a la repulsión: Diferencia entre las medias de respuesta para la sub-escala "personal" de la repulsión y para la sub-escala "personal ajena" en cuanto a la ideología política. Existe relación solo entre la sub-escala "personal" y la ideología política. Escala de la Empatía: débil relación positiva entre la sub-escala del "malestar personal" y la ideología política conservadora. Ideología Política y Sensibilidad a la Repulsión: Los resultados obtenidos confirman nuestra hipótesis. Ideología Política y Empatía: El efecto obtenido con la sub-escala "malestar personal" puede ser explicado a través de la propia ideología política (evasión de incertidumbre) ; Theory of motivated social cognition: people adopt an ideological system in effort to satisfy various needs of cognitive and social type. Scientific literature: Political ideology: cognitive differences between liberals and conservatives (Jost et Al., 2003) Disgust sensitivity (Inbar, Bloom e Pizarro, 2009) Empathy (Shih et Al., 2009; Galinsky et Al., 2008) Is there a relationship between these variables? Hypothesis: The Conservatives are more sensitive to disgust and show a decreased ability empathic. Sample: 43 participants. Instrument: paper questionnaire. 1. Scale to detect sensitivity to disgust: A . Personal disgust: "Taste a grasshopper grill" B . Own Disgust about a people's event: "Someone told you that another person eat a grasshopper grill" C. people's disgust: "How much would a person disgusted in sampling a grasshopper grill?" 2. Empathy scale: Fantasy: "I Daydream and I fantastic with some regularity, about things that could happen to me". Empathic consideration: "When I see someone being taken advantage of, I feel protective feelings toward him". Perspective taking: "I think there are two different perspectives for each question and I try to understand both". Personal distress: " I'm afraid in front of strong emotional tension situations". 3. Scala Politics Ideology. Regression analysis: Empathy Scale independent variable, dependent variable Politics Ideology. "Fantasy": β = -.261, p = .146, "Empathic consideration": β = .012, p = .942, "Perspective taking": β = .018, p = .912, "Personal discomfort": β = .332, p = .069. Gender differences: comparison of averages. Effects subscale empathy "Fantasy". F (1,38) = 3.695, p = .062 Liberals: Males M = 3.131, Females M = 3.821; Conservative: Males M = 3.143, Females M = 3.071 Disgust sensitivity : Difference between the average answers for the "own subscale " and disgust and for the subscale "other people" about the political ideology. There is a relationship only between the "own subscale" and political ideology. Scale of Empathy: weak positive relationship between the "own subscale" of distress and the conservative political ideology.
Almost all of the robotic weapons used today in war or in military missions require a human operator to make key decisions: they are unmanned systems. The lethal autonomous weapons systems (the so-called killer robots) are weapons programmed to autonomously select their target and decide whether or not to attack without any meaningful human intervention. These lethal autonomous weapons do not yet exist, but the technological developments could afford to produce them incredibly quickly. We describe the main objections advanced against the development and use of these weapons: issues of compliance with international humanitarian law, problems of accountability for fully autonomous weapons, lack of human emotions and empathy, deskilling of the military profession and destabilization of the traditional norms of military virtue and reduction of the war to murder. Behind the most part of these objections to the lethal weapons systems there is the fear that, because of using them, we could irremediably loose our humanity. According to the critics of robot killers, i.e., these are machine whose use in battlefield crosses a fundamental moral line, that we should not overcome if we are still interested in beings humans. We show that these concerns are not justified, because killer robot represent only the last effort of human beings to produce, through technology, tools with which to fight and defeat the enemy.
La riflessione pedagogica è stata da una parte accusata di silenzio e di mancanza di approfondimento rispetto alle responsabilità educative coinvolte nello sviluppo dei fenomeni mafiosi; d'altra parte ci confrontiamo con la diffusa domanda di comprensione di tali realtà e del ruolo della società civile e con un aumento di interesse, da parte delle Istituzioni, verso percorsi educativi. Questa ricerca intende contribuire al dibattito pedagogico sulle possibili progettualità educative per costruire una risposta civile alla problematica delle mafie. Per fare ciò, si accostano diverse griglie interpretative (storiche, sociologiche, giuridiche) e si confrontano percorsi di differenti criminalità organizzate (mafia, camorra, 'ndrangheta a livello nazionale e internazionale in primis, ma anche Yakuza, Cosa nostra americana e Triadi) con l'obiettivo di formarsi un angolo visuale più ampio e nello stesso tempo profondo della problematica mafiosa nella società globalizzata. Da questo confronto emerge l'importanza di comprendere, accanto alla pervasività delle mafie, la permeabilità dei contesti e le convergenze con gli stili esistenziali inautentici del nostro tempo, improntati al consumo, all'utilitarismo, al disimpegno, all'antropocentrismo. Ripercorrendo l'evoluzione delle iniziative che sono state svolte sul piano politico-istituzionale e su quello civile, constatiamo soprattutto a partire dagli anni '80 l'emergere del discorso educativo. Per comprendere i possibili obiettivi educativi, si analizzano infine diversi progetti, narrati attraverso la documentazione, le interviste e i questionari rivolti ai protagonisti, e confrontati con le riflessioni pedagogiche in merito alla cittadinanza e alla legalità. L'ascolto dei familiari delle vittime, le esperienze dei campi della legalità "tra nord e sud", di rigenerazione sociale e cura degli spazi e dei beni pubblici e dell'abitare la città, consentono di aprire l'orizzonte all'utopia di una civiltà dell'empatia, a patto di non sottrarsi all'investimento educativo nello sviluppare la capacità di ascolto della realtà e delle ragioni dell'altro, di coltivare l'arte della resistenza nel segno dell'empatia. ; Pedagogy has been blamed of silence and superficiality on the relationship between mafias and education; however, nowadays we are facing a spreading of interest among civil society and institution around educational projects. This research aims to contribute to the pedagogical debate around possible directions to support the civil society response to the problems of mafias. First of all, it deepens different theoretical framework (sociological, criminological, historical, law) and compares the different evolution of mafias (Cosa nostra, camorra, 'ndrangheta in the italian and international context, but also yakuza, triads, and italo-american mafia). The aim is to keep a wide and deep perspective of the problem of mafias in the globalized era. From this analysis emerges the importance of comprehension not only of the pervasiveness of the phenomenon but also the permeability of the contexts and the convergence with inauthentic lifestyles which are connected with consumption, utilitarianism, anthropocentrism and disengagement. Considering this, the research address to understand the evolution of political-institutional and civil initiatives. The importance of education has increased since the '80s, when the law enforcement agents have started to be murdered. To comprehend possible educational goals, the research analyzes different projects, which are narrated through the documentation, interviews and surveys of actors involved and it confronts them with the pedagogical reflections on citizenship and legality. Listening to the relatives of victims, working on the land confiscated to mafiosi and turned into social land trust or social projects, restoring and taking care of public spaces and goods, trying new way of social living: these practices allow us to open the horizon to the utopy of the civilization of empathy if we engage in the development of the ability to comprehend reality and the reasons of the other and to nurture the art of resistence, in the sign of empathy.
The paper presents a pedagogical approach to civic education characterized by the combination of the dialectical (or Socratic) method and theatrical techniques and then it reflects on the effectiveness of the teaching approach in the light of its experimentation in the classroom with students. The teach-ing strategy was developed within the European project Forming active European Citizens through the dialectical method and theater (EAR) in order to promote the skills, attitudes, knowledge and values mentioned in the Competence Framework for Democratic Culture published in 2018. The contribution focuses on the discussion of the results of a participatory actionresearch carried out in two Italian Comprehensive Schools, demonstrating how the EAR teaching methodology has contributed to consolidate and develop some important citizenship competences, in particular inclusive cooperation, empathy, active listening and civic-mindedness. ; L'articolo presenta una metodologia didattica di educazione civica caratterizzata dall'impiego congiunto del metodo dialettico (o socratico) e delle tecniche teatrali per poi riflettere sull'efficacia dell'approccio didattico alla luce della sua sperimentazione in aula con gli studenti. La metodologia didattica è stata elaborata nell'ambito del progetto europeo Forming active European Citizens through the dialectical method and theater (EAR) al fine di promuovere le abilità, le attitudini, le conoscenze e i valori menzionati nel Quadro di competenze per la cultura democratica del 2018. Il contributo si sofferma sulla discussione dei risultati di una ricerca-azione partecipativa condotta in due Istituti Comprensivi italiani andando a dimostrare in che modo la metodologia didattica EAR abbia contribuito a consolidare e sviluppare alcune importanti competenze di cittadinanza, in particolare la capacità di cooperazione inclusiva, l'empatia, l'ascolto attivo e il senso civico.
This work is placed in the context of studies on the accessibility of audiovisual products in the realm of independent cinema, with its ability to provide access to social, cultural, historical and political truths, and also in the context of studies on audiovisual translation as an instrument providing access to audiences with specific and general disabilities, and to audiences with normal hearing. Against the backdrop of documentary festivals and, in particular, within the framework of the Sole Luna Doc Film Festival, scrutiny is placed on interlingual subtitling (also for the deaf and hard of hearing) as the most frequently used and disseminated practice. The three dominant languages are, first of all, the source language of each documentary (some in European, others in non-European languages), secondly, the primary target language and, finally, the secondary target language. The English language, used as a language for global communication, and the Italian language as a local language, are the languages through which stories about identities with different cultural roots – impacted and constrained by social issues and marginalisation – unfold within the narrative space of subtitles. By means of a specific corpus of bilingual subtitles selected from the documentaries chosen for analysis, this study sheds lights on the concept of stories or narratives made accessible through bilingual subtitles identified as spaces of narrativity. The narrative space marked in the selected speaking Anglo-Italian subtitles is investigated according to the model of the Appraisal system through which it is possible to extrapolate the textual voices (both oral speech and written texts) that are embedded in common peripheral contexts, and to comprehend how these identities have interpersonally constructed their personae, while producing greater solidarity and empathy on the part of the public.
The Covid-19 epidemic period has irrevocably revealed the need for a general rethinking of behaviours, priority values, sociability, and resource allocation. Libraries and librarianship are also facing the urgency of a 'paradigm shift', due to the wear and tear of the 'public library' concept and model. This essay tries to deal with both librarianship and library crisis highlighting the accelerator role played by the pandemic. In particular, the tendency to wait and see, which in some cases has 'infected' the library field, is critically analysed. As if the difficult situation and global vulnerability justified a loss of essentiality of library services, a renunciation of activism, a retreat to ordinary administration. On the contrary, the 'living-together-library', outlined in the last part of the article, chooses the path of active and proactive intervention during the pandemic. This idea enters in the daily dimension with empathy and respect and works on the hypothesis of a politics of reading as 'motor for change'. ; Il periodo dell'epidemia da Covid-19 ha fatto emergere in modo irrevocabile la necessità di un generale ripensamento dei comportamenti, dei valori prioritari, della socialità, della distribuzione delle risorse. Anche le biblioteche e la biblioteconomia si trovano di fronte all'urgenza di un 'cambio di paradigma', a seguito dell'usura del concetto e del modello di 'public library'. Questo saggio cerca di affrontare in parallelo la crisi della biblioteconomia e quella delle biblioteche, evidenziando il ruolo di acceleratore svolto dalla pandemia. In particolare, viene analizzata criticamente la tendenza all'attendismo e al moderatismo che in alcuni casi ha 'contagiato' il campo bibliotecario. Come se la difficile situazione e la vulnerabilità globale giustificassero una perdita di essenzialità del servizio bibliotecario, una rinuncia all'attivismo, un ripiegamento sull'ordinaria amministrazione. Al contrario la biblioteca 'con-vivente', tratteggiata nell'ultima parte dell'articolo, è quella che sceglie la strada dell'intervento attivo e proattivo durante la pandemia, entrando con empatia e rispetto nella dimensione quotidiana, e lavorando sull'ipotesi di una politica della lettura come 'motore del cambiamento'.
Il saggio presenta la raccolta di racconti Sharmilla, and Other Portraits come un'azione di Hi/Storytelling ove la narrazione della storia del Sudafrica nell'arco di circa venti anni si articola nel racconto delle storie di diversi personaggi. I ritratti sono colti attraverso la lente della razza, senza che essa emerga come tema centrale, ma venendo piuttosto percepita come parte integrante dell'esperienza quotidiana in un paese che ha vissuto per decenni l'imposizione della segregazione razziale. In questo saggio alcuni racconti sono utilizzati per proporre un paradigma di lettura del presente storico europeo e mondiale in una congiuntura di vasti movimenti di persone spesso contrastati da politiche di esclusione e di emarginazione. La dimensione estetico-letteraria di Sharmilla viene osservata considerando l'uso creativo e politico della parola per mostrare gli effetti del discorso della razza sui lettori. I racconti provocano forme di empatia verso i personaggi, interrogando gli stereotipi comuni e diffusi sulla diversità. In tale ottica il testo letterario rivela un valore pedagogico ed etico che trae ispirazione dalla prospettiva teorica degli Studi Culturali e Studi Postcoloniali. ; This essay introduces Sharmilla, and Other Portraits as a form of Hi/Storytelling, namely, as a narrative both of the history of South Africa in the span from 1989 to 2010, and of the individual stories of the characters over the same period. The portraits are perceived and described through the lens of race – however rarely mentioned as such and without it emerging as a central issue. In this essay, a selection of short stories is used to suggest a reading paradigm of today's European and global condition, when vast movements of people are contrasted by policies of bordering, marginalisation, and exclusion. The aesthetic and literary dimensions of Sharmilla are examined by considering the creative and political use of words in order to lay bare the effects of the discourse about race on the readers. These effects generate forms of empathy with the characters and interrogate common stereotypes of difference. In this way, the literary text shows its pedagogical and ethical value which relies on the methodological approaches of Cultural Studies and Postcolonial Studies.
Questo saggio si propone di fare una ricognizione degli studi che in Italia, a partire dagli anni Sessanta, hanno trattato il tema del Servizio sociale e della propria identità di genere. A tale scopo viene svolta una desk analysis e una literature review sul tema dei livelli occupazionali degli assistenti sociali che si incrocia inevitabilmente con quello del genere. Sotteso al tema occupazionale è quello ben più spinoso del posizionamento di ruolo negli organigrammi lavorativi dei professionisti e delle professioniste. La tematizzazione critica del gender mainstreaming come strategia di policy making interseca, infatti, il rapporto tra democrazia e potere, insieme alle ricadute e le implicazioni pratiche che si collegano al tema delle diseguaglianze del mercato globale del lavoro e nei contesti lavorativi. Il tentativo fatto è quello di evidenziare come il valore strategico del benessere collettivo passi necessariamente attraverso una professione tradizionalmente femminile esercitata mediante capabilities di genere di cui sono portatrici le assistenti sociali. E tale evidenza - numerica (l'80% dei social worker sono donne) e metodologica-procedurale (esercizio della cura, presa in carico, empatia ed strategie di empowerment della persona) - non consente ancora di affermare che la professione dell'assistente sociale sia un mestiere unisex. ; This essay aims to make a survey of the studies that in Italy, since the 1960s, have dealt with the theme of social work and one's gender identity. To this end, a desk analysis and a literature review are carried out on the issue of employment levels of social workers which inevitably intersects with that of gender. Underlying the employment issue is the much more thorny one of role positioning in the work organization charts of professionals. The critical thematization of gender mainstreaming as a policy making strategy intersects, in fact, the relationship between democracy and power, together with the repercussions and practical implications that are connected to the issue of inequalities in the global labor market and in working contexts. The attempt made is to highlight how the strategic value of collective well-being necessarily passes through a traditionally female profession exercised through gender capabilities of which social workers are carriers. And this evidence - numerical (80% of social workers are women) and methodological-procedural (exercise of care, taking charge, empathy and strategies of empowerment of the person) - does not yet allow us to affirm that the profession of the social worker be a unisex craft.
La prima parte del saggio si focalizza sulla scena teatrale italiana dagli anni Novanta in avanti, con una particolare attenzione alle produzioni del teatro meridionale e napoletano. La puntuale ricognizione di artisti, luoghi teatrali e festival all'interno del contesto sociale, politico e culturale, fornisce l'indispensabile cornice per poter collocare l'esperienza teatrale del regista napoletano Davide Iodice. Il corpo centrale del libro vede la ricostruzione della produzione teatrale di Iodice, evidenziando la scrittura scenica come base fondante del suo linguaggio teatrale, la drammaturgia come connubio di elementi verbali e scenici, il suo impegno attivo in ambiti sociali degradati. L'analisi approfondita dei suoi spettacoli si è avvalsa di articoli, recensioni e interviste, ma soprattutto dell'archivio personale del regista, materiale inedito costituito da appunti, disegni, schizzi e quaderni di regia, che ha permesso di ricostruire il percorso creativo, i meccanismi e le riflessioni alla base degli spettacoli, sollecitando ipotesi e offrendo un punto di vista unico. La ricognizione del materiale, una sorta di flusso di coscienza, ha permesso inoltre di dimostrare quanto spesso i disegni originali rappresentino la prima visualizzazione di un'idea, di un pensiero sedimentato camminando in solitudine e non necessariamente per il pubblico. Per tale motivo, tra i disegni di ispirazione poetica, è stato fondamentale identificare quelli che trovano corrispondenza con gli elementi scenici. L'analisi del suo più recente lavoro procede a partire dal laboratorio teatrale, il cui percorso è stato seguito per alcuni mesi, annotando ed analizzando le suggestioni registiche, le improvvisazioni degli attori, il training corporeo, per avere un ulteriore punto di vista sul percorso creativo di Iodice e per indagare sullo spettacolo dalla sua genesi. ; This essay analyzes the artistic activity of the Neapolitan stage director Davide Iodice. The first part is devoted to the cultural, political and social features of the theatrical context in which Iodice operates, with particular attention to the artistic processes peculiar to Naples and southern Italy as a whole. The central part focuses on the reconstruction of Iodice's works. His wide-ranging production is analyzed according to topic, albeit trying to follow a diachronic sequence. Information was mined from secondary sources, namely articles, press releases and video clips, and above all from such primary sources as interviews with Iodice himself and access to his rich personal archives that contain notes, drawings and director's notebooks from the early 90s onwards. Thanks to this unique unpublished material, it was possible to follow Iodice's creative process from its inception up to the process of 'stage writing'. The innovative work of Iodice with homeless, during which their lives and memories are transformed into 'stage writing', is analyzed based on the contents of his director's notebooks that shed light on his talent for deep interpersonal communication and empathy. The analysis of Iodice's more recent work starts from the theatre laboratory that he conducts personally. Given the access to his theatre director suggestions and comments during training sessions together with the actors'improvisations, it was possible to follow Iodice's creative process in its making and to deconstruct the work from its genesis.
The main aim of this thesis is to investigate the experiences that can be traced to the notion of "withholding" (or trattenimento according to the Italian more precise way to literally describe this phenomenon). By this term I refer to those physical spaces of social inclusion and exclusion within which existences are held without an apparent (at least at the beginning) normative justification. I consider these situations inherently anomic but surprisingly recurring in our century and the latter part of the previous one. The coercive restraintment in well-defined spaces, brought by the breach of a rule of criminal law, defines a new status of existence, that of "withheld" (or trattenuti). The reality of this (relatively) new form of life has been the main subject of my research as direct product of the obsession for securitization. Withholding is presented to the researcher as a sort of permanent state of exception.The heterogeneity of the places of withholding of existences has been studied from the point of view of the geographical location. From this analysis I have been able to underline the global nature of the phenomenon and, thanks to the concrete forms of execution, to legitimize the image of continuity with the experience of the internment camps, mentioned above. For the withholding process, in some cases, a whole geographical space is directly used: islands, archipelagos and enclaves. Other times it uses urban structures: I am referring to ghettos (from the Parisian suburbs, or banlieux, to the ghetto of Shanghai) and even to boundary walls. Walls and borders carry an inherent exclusion, but sometimes their meaning is much more profound. The story of the Berliner Mauer is, from this point of view, absolutely paradigmatic. Behind the justification of action and preventive safety, the lives and rights are deleted. Even the name periodically returns with the strength of the model and example, although negative. It is the "wall of shame", the wall of Tijuana that separates Mexico from the United States, the wall that separates the Western Sahara territories Moroccan domination from those of Arab domination, the separation wall between Israel and the West Bank. In other cases withholding takes place in constructed and ad hoc delimited situations: like centers of temporary stay and assistance (CPTA), today CIE following the intervention of the EU law; the safety devices terrorism in national and international transport (waiting rooms in airports and train stations); the "red zones" at the summits of heads of state and government of the world (not least the Genoese one in 2001). We can observe, together with Foucault, the mutation of the police apparatus in a system of "governmentality". But places of withholding are not just a European experience. I'm thinking about the internment camps in Libya or Palestinian occupied territories. They have now really assumed the form of an anonymous "archipelago – gulag" of segregation and detention. Especially after the second Intifada, the territories seem to have taken almost spontaneously the structure of the internment camp, while the freedom of movement of Palestinians fades, the principle of detention seems to appear with ever greater clarity. We are really confronted with the genesis of a biopolitics of progressive isolation of the Palestinian territories; the confinement of a people in a dimension of functional enclave of control. A state of emergency becomes a form of government. Looking to withheld existences, the common feature seems to be the rejection of normalization of difference. We are dealing with lives or threatening, social pathologies that power must identify and separate. The referent is mainly represented by minorities (ethnic-racial, linguistic, religious, political) deserving, if not elimination, of some concealment. Screw deviant, but also, and especially meaningful in the sense that has been indicated above, anomic as stolen from the ordinary processes of criminalization with the intervention of the criminal law. It is a "sacred" existence in a process of reflection that starts with Jean Marie Guyau, passes through Emile Durkheim, and finally comes to Giorgio Agamben. Withheld's lives are worthless, according to Hannah Arendt' "exemplary human being reduced to the most elementary reactions, the model citizen of a totalitarian state, a city that can be produced only imperfectly outside the camp." A distinction, however, seems possible and reasonable, in light of the observations made so far. According to Bauman withheld can be divided in outsiders and insiders. The first earn their subjection to detention just because they come from another jurisdiction which makes them extra-national (stateless) or, more generally, foreigners; while on the other side we look at that surplus of native humanity who, unable to be violently amputee, should be at least hidden or fenced, building spaces of anti-city in cities. The last part of my research is dedicated to an ethnographic study of these dimensions, a qualitative research carried out in many centers of detention and "reception". Empathy has been one of the most important instruments in the interviews in order to understand. to verstehen, in a weberian way and approach, the existences and spaces between criminal and non criminal Law. Ethnography is always the writing of difference, but with the aim to make closer words that seem to be only apparently far from each other (especially in terms of understanding).
