1. Facing Migrants. 2. The “Immigrant Emergency” and Its Victims. 3. Democratic Exclusion. 4. A Sense of Hostility. 5. The Logic of Public Opinion. European policies and Italian laws (1995, 1998): expulsions, detainment centers, deportation, hostility toward foreigners, police brutality, coincidence foreigner-deviant, “penalization” of foreigners. Italian press: forms of violence against migrants as the effects of a situation caused by immigration. The Turco-Napolitano Law: legal and illegal migrants, fundamental human rights and civil rights, camps-prisons, arbitrary evaluations. A political barrier: language discrimination (immigrant, extracommunitari, clandestini, irregolari, third-worlders), equation migrant-enemy (invading our national space), an ontological enemy, modern metoikos. Public opinion, construction of the world, performative and productive character.

1. Someone to Hate. 2. The Tautology of Fear. 3. Actual and Virtual Citizenship. 4. What Every Citizen Knows. 5. Material Evidence and Criminal Bodies. 6. A New Kind of Racism. The persecution of internal foreigners in the history of Europe, the nowadays mass media role for hearsay, urban legends, prejudices, and fears to become a social truth. The press as decisive actor for production of fear: titles, generating definitions, news manufacturing, tautology of fear. The Northern League as political interpreter for the voice of the people, neighborhood as group’s identity, new identification, clichés as definition of reality. The body of immigrants: the body to abuse (women), the threatening body (men), a body to be contained, removed, eliminated.

1. Science, Opinions, Immigration. 2. The Rhetorics of Immigration. 3. Culture Has Nothing to Do with It. Scientific discourse, public opinions, mass media, the role of experts, scientific “data” and power of persuasion, obviousness. Moral rhetoric, demographic rhetoric, cultural rhetoric, scientific rhetoric. Race, ethnicity, nation, asymmetry. Cultures, civilizations, universal religions: a society’s process of label construction.

1. Stadiums, Camps, and other Accomodations. 2. At the Bottom. 3. Minding Our Own Business. The “Albanian problem” between 1991 and 1997: the internment in Bari, stadium as the trash dump, the Otranto tragedy, construction of the Albanians as a threat, performance of a script, removal or redirection of the significance of the event. Entrepreneurs as benefactors and educators, lower salaries, workers’ rights, union relations.

1. In Limbo. 2. Persons and Non-Persons. 3. The Genealogy of Non-Persons. 4. On the Margins of Rights. 5. Disappearances. Italian law, temporary permessi di soggiorno only. Migrants as non-persons: norms relative to citizenship, suppression of the reality of concrete social relations, work, friendship, emotions. Moral dilemmas, shifting of meaning, depersonalized terms.

1. A World of Uncertainty. 2. Goods, People, and Borders. 3. Inside the Paradox. Afterword. Globalized world: supremacy of movement, elimination of economic and communication borders, faster circulation of goods, symbols, and ideas, acceleration in decision-making time. Promethean nature of global capitalism: producing universal cultural forms, the exclusive economic system of society, homogenization of material cultural world-wide. Liberalism, uncertainty in the economic prospects of the developed world, local and state restraints, quality of life, end of the modern social contract, material existence precariousness, the decay of social relations. Equality, lower labor costs, inequalities, migrants and refugees. The need of a complete overturning of “the enemy” presupposition. The Bossi-Fini law: temporary residency, contract for residency, will of the employer.

1. Legality Pills. 2. Left, Right, and Immigration. 3. The Intellectuals Enter the Field. Legality as dominant question in Italian politics: the new frame microcriminality-organized crime, deviance-organized crime-microcriminality, immigration-threat to citizens’ security. The left policy: social and cultural reactions, political-ideological Northern League legitimation, relation economic transformations-legal conditions of people. New ethics and cultural tautology of fear: deviants are exclusively responsible for what befalls them, new acting cycle journalists-politicians, citizens-imprenditori morali, politicians-journalists. War evacuee and economic evacuee.

1. Essere persona: Adriano Olivetti. 2. Esistere come attualizzazione responsabile. Si delinea la figura della famiglia di Adriano Olivetti ma soprattutto la sua formazione culturale, e gli autori che più di altri hanno svolto un ruolo determinante: Emmanuel Mounier, Henry Bergson, Simone Weil, John Dewey. Cultura e prassi, responsabilità e impegno politico.

1. Il pragmatismo etico di Adriano Olivetti. 2. La costruzione della fiducia. 3. Verso l’Employee Relationship Management. 4. La formazione informale: il ruolo della cultura. Analisi delle attività della Olivetti dal dopoguerra al 1959: collaborazione tra impresa, forze sociali, comunità per conseguire gli utili che garantiscano la realizzazione di fini etici superiori. I servizi sociali, le case e le scuole per i dipendenti, le biblioteche di fabbrica, il Consiglio di Gestione, l’Associazione Spille d’Oro, il Centro di Psicologia, Edizioni di Comunità, la rivista Comunità.

1. La storia non è finita. 2. Integrazione tra senso e significato. 3. Amo, volo ut sis. La svolta della Olivetti dal 1997: Omnitel e Infostrada, Telecom Italia. Il ruolo della formazione informale oggi, l’attualità della formazione e della strategia di Adriano Olivetti.

1. Getting the traders out of the temple. 2. The ecstasy of the connection. 3. These are not tricks. 4. Purity is in the flux. 5. Every access a rite. 6. The spirit of the Net. Taking my mind back to what a “priest” of the Beyond said to me one day many years ago: “The Net will burn those who try to exploit it but do not believe in its values.” Today’s world is strewn with Icaruses who have fallen wretchedly from the chariots of their myopic greed. The true democracy of thought is one that looks nobody in the eye. It looks “within”, into the mind. And into the heart. Yes, the heart. Emotions are the sail propelling thoughts on the great ocean of ideas. Once we said prayers before we went to bed. Now we download our emails.

L’infanzia - L’adolescenza: Napoli, la guerra, le scelte - La formazione: Jung, Freud, Klein - Gli incontri... - Io e gli altri - Le questioni teoriche - Da dove, verso dove? - Maestri e allievi - L’amore... i figli - Psicoanalisi, società e politica - La clinica - Le comunità terapeutiche - La vecchiaia e la morte.

1. L’acolto a scuola. 2. Anche il maestro ascolta. 3. Interpretazione partecipata. 4. Gli oggetti ci raccontano storie. 5. In ascolto della natura. 6. Prestare ascolto al qui e ora. 7. Assumere il punto di vista dell’altro. 8. Dilemma etico. 9. Mi racconti la tua storia? 10. Argomentare. Pratiche filosofiche a ascolto: capacità comunicativa, obiettivi trasversali, insegnanti e studenti, esercizi per sperimentare e attivare l’ascolto in un’ottica filosofica. Ascolto di testi, oggetti, gesti, elementi naturali: le esperienze degli studenti della scuola superiore, esercizi di turnazione fra insegnate e alunni, interpretazione partecipata, storia dell’altro, la natura, gli oggetti, il momento presente, assunzione del punto di vista dell’altro, dilemma etico, dibattito preparato, dialogo socratico. Esempi concreti, modalità, tempi, strumenti.

1. L’evoluzione del pensiero liberale. 2. La guerra come prassi storica. 3. La Lega delle Nazioni e l’assetto internazionale. 4. Soldati e partigiani. La guerra tra gli uomini. 5. Antimodernismo come risposta alla crisi. Le origini del pensiero politico in USA e in Europa secondo Robert Kagan: realismo materialista, normativismo utopistico, Hobbes, Locke, Kant. Influssi trotskisti e neoconservatori. Pensiero politico illuminista, pensiero politico romantico. La Grande Guerra: dagli eserciti alla mobilitazione totale. Carl Schmitt, Leo Strauss.

1. Gli anni di Ronald Reagan: 1981-1988. 2. Gli anni di George Bush: 1988-1992. 3. Gli anni di Bill Clinton: 1992-2000. 4. Il primo mandato di George Walker Bush: 2000-2004.

1. Riflessioni conclusive Guerra preventiva, multilateralismo, esportazione della democrazia: il momento unipolare. Lo strappo con l’Europa, il ruolo della Nato. Movimento neocon e ascendenze trotskiste: legittimità, efficienza, scontro di civiltà. Lettura premoderna del concetto di guerra, evangelizzazione liberal-democratica.

The reader is provided with an overview of the limited amount of literature dealing with the topic of community development, showing how as the community development sector has evolved over time, increasing its impact, funding and professionalism, so too have the institutions of that sector abandoned their missions and gone from institutions bound and accountable to the people they serve to institutions that are bound and accountable to outside funding sources. In essence, the institutions of the community development sector, the so-called “Community Development Corporations,” or “CDCs” have gone from responding to crises as vehicles of community empowerment to being paid for “managing the crisis” and in the process accepting funds from private and public sources of support to manage the very people they were set up to serve.

Too often we use words loosely and employ concepts in ways that do injustice to the goals to which we purport to strive. This chapter provides the reader with examples of how sloppy concepts and definitions of our words can lead to frustrating or even perverse outcomes. Following some of the simple rules outlined in this chapter will assist those with the right intentions to avoid the traps of unintended consequences. But the use of terms can also be purposely used to manipulate the very people we are supposed to serve in the name of pseudo-scientific social service theories that are specifically intended to foster dependency and justify funding and contracts for CDCs.

Following up from the previous chapter, the author explores the loose and inappropriate use of the term “community.” Most define community loosely as a group of people with something in common. But commonality is only the first of three, inter-dependent and indispensable components of community. Having explored these in depth, the concept of community is contrasted to that of a “neighborhood.” Recent programs designed for “community-building” are described and critiqued. A “transformative model” of community-building is then described in light of past experience and in an attempt to remain true to what should be viewed as truly making up a community.

“Empowerment” is another one of those concepts bandied about in the community development sector without any sincere regard for the basis for accumulating and maintaining power. Often in the community development setting, “empowerment” means picking out one or two articulate residents and training them for “leadership.” Alternatively, local institutions have organized “visioning” sessions and through input that is restricted and reinforcing of isolation as opposed to integration, these same groups claim they are “empowering” local residents. But power, like trust, wisdom or even democracy, cannot be given. Power is the direct result of people who join together, with each giving something of themselves, for the purpose of attaining some collective goal. This chapter explores this concept in more detail, with examples of how empowerment has been exercised in a community setting.

When the author first began his work in community development, he thought that he was undertaking a purer form of human interaction intended promote “change” since he equated politics as “dirty,” which it came to be seen by many in the post-Nixon era. But this perception of politics was short-sighted and counter-productive. Politics is exercised in all areas of effective community development all of the time and an understanding and engagement of politics, from the most local level to the highest levels of government is necessary for success in any community development effort. In this chapter, “politics” from all levels is explored as well as the implications of political trends over the past decades that have created a situation where political considerations are becoming harder to engage as government becomes more centralized and attenuated from the average citizen.

This chapter lays out the personal experiences of the author who began work as a volunteer at Casita Maria Settlement House on Simpson Street in the South Bronx in early 1970s; took a full time job there as a social worker in the mid-seventies; and moved into the area at a time when landlord abandonment and arson were destroying a culturally rich and vibrant community. While still working at the Settlement House, the author began organizing residents of the area, culminating in the creation of one of the premier self-help housing groups of that era: Banana Kelly Community Improvement Association, Inc. This group went on to develop over 1,000 units of affordable housing, train thousands of youth and adults in the construction trades, and provide valuable services to thousands of residents.

The concept of culture is critiqued for its use and common understanding. Is culture no more than the sum and total of linguistic expression, musical preferences, culinary tastes, and the passing of past history down through the generations? Or is culture the expression of people living and working collectively within a given environment as they attempt to understand, enjoy, explain, and ultimately transform their collective environment, and from these collective activities forms of religious expression, work modes, tools, games, and other forms of productive activity and needed distraction are developed, culminating in what can be explained as a particular culture? If the latter is the better definition, then true culture, as opposed to fabricated and mass marketed “culture, is dying and its death has implications for our quality of life and future hope for democracy.

This concept of social capital has found expression in the field of community development, but also in third world development as well. Its definition varies and is often viewed as a blessing: when people can improve their collective and individual qualities of life by providing for themselves what they could not attain in isolation. But it is also viewed as a potential curse by institutions such as the World Bank who see the potential for some limited form of local self-sufficiency becoming a barrier to comprehensive, all-encompassing free markets. In this chapter, the author explores this concept and settles on defining social capital as the “currency” of community.

Too often, community organizing is undertaken in a way that uses local residents to advocate for an outcome that, though mostly in their collective interest, is defined by those who “know better.” When such is the format for organizing efforts, the organizing must be continual, with the needs, rationales and targets for organizing constantly reinforced and adapted. In other words, organizing, though often necessary to avert a local crisis, is no substitute for “community organizing” that has as its core goal the development of transformed social, economic, and political structures that change power sharing arrangements and are sustained by local institutional frameworks that are responsive and accountable to local residents. This chapter explores groups best known for their organizing prowess, their successes, and their shortcomings.

Understanding bias, a necessary tool for day-to-day survival, along with how to manage that bias effectively and relate it to the debilitating exercise of prejudice and destructive manifestations of racism, is necessary for organizing and community development within any area that is comprised of residents from multiple ethnicities or within any area needing to collaborate with those of other ethnicities. In this chapter, the author relates his own experiences in community development as they relate to these topics. Hard won lessons, including naive assumptions about not only how racism between Hispanics of different ethnic backgrounds can manifest, but how racism can even exist within ethnic groupings, are explored with a view of how to manage within such circumstances.

Understanding the economic context within which a community development effort operates is critical to success. Short of an organizing campaign that simply, successfully, and outright threatens the status quo, to achieve successful outcomes, organizing to impact on prevailing power sharing arrangements requires research and policy elaboration that makes the objective case for changes in public policy along with demands for any greater share of public resources for the redress of any social ill. In this chapter, organizing and research efforts are discussed regarding their rationale, the process undertaken, and the results attained.

Legislation is one of the primary outcomes of government. But as an expression of “public policy” how able is the average citizen to glean public policy from enacted legislative statutes and the regulation that accompanies legislation? This chapter explores policy making in more depth, demonstrating that public policy cannot be ascertained by looking at the “legislative intent” of a statute, but by studying the outcomes – who wins and who loses? Only by understanding how “free markets” cannot go hand in hand with true democracy; only by understanding how a “right to work” can result in a loss of workers’ rights; only by understanding how “choice” within a free health care market can result in limited access to health care, can we truly ascertain the true intent of any legislation, and by analysis, can we then ascertain the actual power-sharing arrangements within our democratic system.

Having lived through the devastation of the South Bronx the author experienced first- hand the impact such devastation can have on community and on individuals. Planning can be and has been benign or it can have pervasive and long-lasting negative consequences. How does a community developer work to mitigate the enormous impact exacted on a population that has been deprived of a stable, let alone, nurturing environment? What role does environmental psychology play in planning the redevelopment of a neighborhood? These topics are explored in this chapter.

Having organized the community development corporation, Banana Kelly Community Improvement Association, Inc. in the mid-seventies, and having become the first Executive Director of the group, leading it to its initial success and notoriety as one of the premier self-help housing groups in the country, after his departure, the author endured witnessing the transition of the group, seeing the group deteriorate into an organization with corrupt leadership, distressed housing conditions, and disempowered residents. This changed in 2002 when the New York State Attorney General forced the ouster of the corrupt leadership of Banana Kelly. This chapter briefly recounts the story of the group’s revival, a revival due in no small way to the perseverance of the residents and dedication of a small working board and staff.

The author makes the case that there is a direct connection between the loss of community and the loss of democracy. The thesis presented here represents a culmination of the points made throughout the book, but further focuses on the threats to democracy, positing that political structures, processes and power are directly derived from the dominant economy. If the economy is decentralized, with meaningful economic tiers operating at the local, regional and national level, then political power will be likewise decentralized. But as our economy has become more centralized and global, so has political power become more centralized and attenuated from the average citizen, who has now made the transition from public citizen to private consumer of government and private services, pronouncements of the glories of “democracy and free markets,” notwithstanding.

The first chapter puts forward the premise of the all topic, that is the problematic distinction between politics and culture as fundamental condition of democratic conflict in our times.

In this chapter is clarified the scope of contemporary democracy: the massmediatic universe seen as a set of transmissions that establish the condition and the means of democracy itself.

The chapter faces the topic of advertising in his function of director of the massmediatic world as a whole, through an appropriation of democratic rhetoric, with commercial aims. Basic starting set of the creation of people expectations to which politics are then bound to answer.

The chapter faces the problem of journalism as condition and implement of democracy, both on the historical sense and as actual codification of clichés and protocols of transmission bound to create the standards of democratic discussion.

The subject of the chapter is television seen as contemporary motive power of consent and democratic legitimization, antecedent any role of political parties. With some clarification on the WorldWideWeb as a dominion of horizontal communication that makes possible just a virtual democracy.

In this chapter is described the shaping of the contemporary populist culture, in his theological and philosophical roots, outlining the growing of a populist form of democracy in radical opposition with the constitutional vision of democracy.

The chapter develop a survey of the condition of intellectuals in contemporary society, seen as a fundamental contrast between a kind of intellectual that appropriates populist rhetoric as a mean of social recognition, delegitimizing the critical intellectual, the one who reassert the distinction between culture and politics.

In this chapter thorough the examination of a couple of well-known Italian intellectuals, Massimo Cacciari and Giorgio Agamben, is make clear the dilemma of the contemporary critical intellectual, basically splitted between mediation and intransigence.

In this chapter, after an historical excursus of the subject, is faced the question of the nature of Universal Suffrage in a society made increasingly poorer in terms of culture, by the information system itself. And the consequent reduction of the capacity of an acquainted and rational choice.

This chapter goes over the philosophical problem of identity, in classical authors and in contemporary thinkers, in order to propose a critical confrontation with the fictitious identities that populist culture tends to affirm in habit of democracy.

This chapter is a critical survey of the “rights culture”, intended as a “commercial” perversion of civil and human rights that determine a virtual and self-defeating proliferation of it, legitimized by a consumerist interpretation of the liberal tradition.

The last chapter is a reflection on the production of contemporary Art, in particular on the work of Andy Warhol and Joseph Beuys, trying to draw out from it useful indications in direction of a more consistent democratic culture, in the times of triumphant populism.

1. The Challenges. 2. Regimes of Innovation 3. The Regime of Economics of Techno-scientific Promises. 4. The Regime of Collective Experimentation. 5. Conclusions. The need to think about the actual science, linear paradigm: models of innovation, terms of distribution of power and agency, collective learning, social relations, models of society.

1. Introduction. 2. The Institutionalisation of Risk in Europe. 3. Why Scientific Risk Is a Normative Issue. 4. The 2000 EC Communication on the Precautionary Principle. 5. Conclusions: Re-imagining Fact-value Relationships. Scientific and technological risk: probability, safety, notions of risk, politically-weighted assumptions, interests and public values. Risk assessment, risk management, costs, benefits, public mistrust in ‘risk-governance’. Relevant forms of risk. Difficulties and political questions. Uncertainty: risk, uncertainty, ambiguity, ignorance, indeterminacy.

1. Introduction. 2. Legal Discourse and Order in Europe. 3. The Unpolitics of European Ethics of the Life-sciences. 4. Conclusions. Science as object of governance: ‘soft’, non-legally binding instruments, administratively implemented governance. Legal status of the human body. Principles, democratic legitimation, public mistrust and disaffection. Intersections: scientific and ethical expertise, normative issues, questions of public deliberation. Bioethics and ethics: normative discourse, self-legitimating way, democratic deliberative mechanisms, warrants. Politics of ethics, ethical issues, ethics experts, public’s role, ethics as soft law.

1. Introduction – the Challenges. 2. From Education to Engagement: European Framing of Science-public Relations. 3. New European Regimes of Public Engagement. 4. Forming and Performing Publics: Ways of Collective Knowing. 5. Conclusions: The ‘Growing Unease’ Revisited. Getting society on board the innovation train: partnership, participatory modes of governance. Public understanding of science, lack of scientific culture, lack of trust of policy and scientific authorities, models of public dialogue,learning/communication processes. Partnerships between science and society: public consultation, public debates, public involvement, scientists role. Legitimated players, stakeholder democracy, patients’ associations, Wiki movement, informal collective practices. Contextual visions of techno-science and innovation.

1. Introduction. 2. Learning and Imagination. 3. Learning and Forgetting. 4. Risking Collective Experimentation. 5. Conclusions. Different learning practices, material practices of specific knowledge-cultures. Real and theoretical risks, assumptions about science, innovation and governance. The Chernobyl radiocaesium case as residual imprecision: experimental state, contingency of scientific knowledge, society as laboratory. The dominant idioms of control and prediction, contingency, lack of full control, and difference.

1. Introduction: Why Narratives? 2. Narratives, Master Narratives, and Reflection. 3. Narratives as Normative and Performative. 4. Master Narratives of Science, Technology and Society. 5. Conclusions. Narratives: routinely reproduction, historical origins, myths, social imaginaries, society shaping. Science policy narratives: communication, information, narratives construction. Right questions, risks outside of artificial laboratory conditions, citizens constructive knowledge-roles, public techno-scientific issues,human values. Innovation: scientists, “facts-before-values” master narrative, social shaping. Science, technology, progress. Facts and values, citizens as participants, critics and knowledge-creators, active and creative public role.

1. General (Conceptual) Observations. 2. Practical Recommendations. Equally legitimate and authoritative interpretations, complexity, contingency, policies for distribution of societal knowledge. Fourth hurdle regulation, innovation trajectories, precautionary assumptions, plural conditional advice, local capacity, audits, niche-based ‘pilot’ experimentation, intellectual property laws and regulations, distributed/decentralised social capital, collective experimentation, ethical paradigms, culture change.

La premessa dell’intero discorso: si delineano i termini della problematica distinzione tra politica e cultura, come fondamentale condizione del conflitto democratico.

Si chiarisce l’ambito della democrazia contemporanea: l’universo massmediatico inteso come insieme di trasmissioni che costituiscono la condizione di possibilità della democrazia stessa.

Si affronta il problema del giornalismo come condizione e strumento della democrazia, sia sul piano storico, sia come attuale codificazione di cliché e protocolli di trasmissione che tendono a costituire il canone della discussione democratica.

La televisione come contemporaneo centro motore del consenso e della legittimazione democratica, antecedente al ruolo dei partiti politici. Con alcune precisazioni sul WorldWideWeb come luogo di una comunicazione orizzontale che implementa una democrazia solo virtuale.

Il tema della pubblicità nel suo ruolo direttivo dell’intero mondo massmediatico attraverso un’appropriazione della retorica democratica a fini commerciali. Luogo di formazione delle aspettative della gente cui il mondo politico è poi tenuto a rispondere.

Il formarsi della contemporanea cultura populista, muovendo dalle sue radici teologiche e filosofiche, delineando il manifestarsi di una forma populista di democrazia in radicale opposizione alla concezione costituzionalista della vita democratica.

Un riesame della posizione dell’intellettuale nella società contemporanea: colui che si appropria della retorica populista a fini di riconoscimento delegittima l’intellettuale critico, teso a sua volta a riaffermare la distinzione tra cultura e politica.

Attraverso l’esame di due note figure di intellettuali italiani, Massimo Cacciari e Giorgio Agamben, si intende chiarire il problema dell’intellettuale critico contemporaneo, diviso tra mediazione e intransigenza.

Dopo un excursus storico sul tema, si pone il problema della natura del suffragio universale in una società resa culturalmente sempre più povera dallo stesso mondo dell’informazione, e del conseguente restringimento della possibilità di una scelta consapevole e razionale.

Si ripercorre il problema filosofico dell’identità, nei classici e nel pensiero contemporaneo, al fine di proporre un confronto critico con le identità posticcie che la cultura populista tende a riprodurre sotto forma di diritti democratici.

Un riesame critico della “cultura dei diritti”, intesa come una perversione “commerciale” del diritto che ne determina una proliferazione virtuale e controproducente, legittimata da una interpretazione in chiave consumista della tradizione liberale.

La produzione dell’arte contemporanea, e in particolare il lavoro di Andy Warhol e di Joseph Beuys, fornisce indicazioni utili alla formazione di una nuova cultura democratica nell’epoca del populismo trionfante.

1. Introduction. 2. Seligman’s Analysis of the Modernity Dilemma. 3. Dooyeweerd’s Analysis of the Modernity Dilemma. 4. Conclusion A discussion of trust in society must start with a consideration of the larger cultural-philosophical framework. This chapter provides a critical analysis of the Enlightenment modernity framework and tensions inherent within it. It also involves a sociological and philosophical analysis using Seligman and Dooyeweerd. Questions of authority and transcendence are treated, as well as the place of the individual in society.

1. Introduction. 2. The Idea of Trust: A Survey of Recent Treatments (Francis Fukuyama: Trust: The Social Virtues and the Creation of Prosperity; Peter Sztompka: Trust: A Sociological Theory; Barbara Misztal: Trust in Modern Societies; Adam Seligman: The Problem of Trust). 3. Conclusion An examination of the nature of trust that has emerged from within the Enlightenment framework. Four major authors are surveyed: Fukuyama, Sztompka, Misztal and Seligman. A definition of trust is evaluated, as well as its relationship to modernity. The question of whether trust is “working” in Western Enlightenment society is considered, and in the end, if it can emerge from an Enlightenment framework.

1. Introduction. 2. The Cultural Roots of Covenant: The Ancient Near Eastern Sources. 3. Covenant as Dialectic. 4. Babel as Anti-Covenant. 5. Toward a Definition of Covenant 6. Distinguishing Between Contract and Covenant. 7. The Dynamism of Covenant. 8. Conclusion The search for an ethical framework for social relations not grounded in the modernity framework but in a transcendent one instead. Covenant is explored in its cultural and historic roots in the Middle East. It is traced in the biblical narrative, where a pre-structural ontology of relationality is argued for. Covenant is defined and explore as dialectic and as an alternative to the monism of Babel. Covenant distinguished from contract.

1. Introduction. 2. Covenantal Traces in Northern Italy. 3. Covenant in the Thinking of Four Sixteenth to Eighteenth Century Western Political Theorists (Johannes Althusius; Thomas Hobbes; John Locke; Jean Jacques Rousseau). 4. Conclusion An exploration of the early appearance of covenant in Western culture as cultural and religious monism was disintegrating in the West. Northern Italy from 1100-1350 and the emergence of contract and covenant. Althusius, Hobbes, Locke and Rousseau are examined with regard to their treatment of covenant as a societal concept. The analysis looks at a “strong” and “weak” form of covenant, with the former rooted in transcendence, and the latter in human autonomy.

1. Introduction. 2. Aristotle’s Substance Ontology and the Search for Order. 3. Covenant as an Alternative to Substance Ontology. 4. Covenant as a “Counter-Tendency” to Societal Disintegration (The Idea of Civil Society and Its Foundation; Covenant as a Foundation of Civil Society). 5. Conclusion: Implications for Trust in Civil Society in Light of Covenant Social differentiation leading to disintegration, but without a corrective for it. A response is needed at an ontological level, especially so as to respond to the question of the “self”. Individual substance ontology is contrasted with covenant as relational ontology, highlighting an ontological shift toward transcendence and relationality. Are “Reason” and “Individual” sufficient to serve as the basis of modern civil society?