87648 - Welfare and Social Innovation

Academic Year 2024/2025

  • Teaching Mode: Traditional lectures
  • Campus: Bologna
  • Corso: Second cycle degree programme (LM) in Sociology and Social Work (cod. 8786)

    Also valid for Second cycle degree programme (LM) in Local and Global Development (cod. 5912)

Learning outcomes

The course aims to provide theoretical and methodological tools to critically address the issue of process and structural innovations in local welfare. The course addresses "innovations" and "sustainability" in a plural way, analysing their growing interdependencies, and focuses on the governance of social complexity and the skills needed to design, implement and evaluate the "new" in local welfare. At the end of the course, the student will be able to: a) learn how to analyse contemporary society in a non-trivial way, identifying its discontinuities from the recent past; b) understand how to recognise social processes and structures according to the innovative/non-innovative and sustainable/unsustainable code, using a theoretical approach based on systems theory; c) critically interpret what is usually presented as innovative and sustainable, so as to be able to try and redesign better local welfare processes and structures.

Course contents

The course will be divided into two parts.

The first is dedicated to the analysis of the problem of sustainability, analyzed through the theory of social systems. The student will learn how to critically analyze the effects of social actions on the natural environment (physical and psychic) and on the intra-societal environment.

In the second part we will try to show how to address problems of social sustainability through an experimental governance capable of triggering social innovations.

Readings/Bibliography

1. Luhmann, N., Comunicazione Ecologica, FrancoAngeli, Milano, 2021.

2. . C.F. Sabel e D.G. Victor, Governare il clima. Strategie per un mondo incerto, Donzelli, Roma, 2024. Chap. to be studied: Introduction, + Chapters 1,2,6 and one to be selected among 3, 4,5).

Teaching methods

The lecturer will present the contents of the texts to be studied, stimulating the critical participation of the students. During the presentation of the texts, the students will have to participate in the discussion in an active and creative way, in seminar mode.

Assessment methods

There is no intermediate test.

The exam is carried out in writing, in person.

It consists of 6 questions, and will last 60 minutes.

The purpose of the written test is investigating the students’ ability to apply the notions and knowledge which she has learned, and to make the necessary logical-deductive links. The decision of the final grade takes place on the basis of the following criteria:

Grading of final mark:

  • Competence in a very limited number of topics discussed in the course and/or textbooks, limited ability to analyze the topics, overall correct language: grade 18-19;
  • Competence in a limited number of topics discussed in the course and/or textbooks, sufficient ability to analyze the topics, correct language: grade 20-24;
  • Competence on a large number of topics discussed in the course and/or textbooks, ability to make autonomous choices of critical analysis, mastery of specific terminology: grade 25-29
  • Comprehensive competence in the topics discussed in the course and/or textbooks, ability to make autonomous choices of critical analysis and ability to make connections, full command of the specific terminology and ability to argue and self-reflect: grade 30-30 L.

Teaching tools

in this course no slides, power points, or anything else are produced. It is based on class attendance and the study of texts.

Office hours

See the website of Riccardo Prandini