1st Edition
Social Love and the Critical Potential of People When the Social Reality Challenges the Sociological Imagination
This book unveils the concept of social love as a kind of "Karst River" that flows through the history of sociology, reassessing it as a form criticism by people in everyday life.
Adopting an interdisciplinary perspective, this book offers both theoretical and empirical reflections on social love. It shows that love is not only central to the human experience, but that it can also help to interpret and intervene in social problems such as climate change, poverty, xenophobia, and the (post-)Covid crisis, recognizing people as actors in social change. It explores the idea of love as a key element in the promotion of solidarity and recognition in today’s plural and unequal societies.
Based on empirical research on social love conducted through both qualitative and quantitative methods, especially in Europe and Latin America, this book explores the social dimension of love. Providing overviews on key questions and studies on current issues, the book is essential reference and resource for researchers, students, social workers, and professionals in social sciences, social philosophy, anthropology, social psychology, sociology of emotions and postmodern literature.
Preface
Vera Araùjo, Bernhard Callebaut
Introduction
Gennaro Iorio, Silvia Cataldi
Part I: Overview
Insight
1. When reality challenges sociological imagination: what social love is in a critical perspective
Silvia Cataldi, Gennaro Iorio
2. Imagining on the shoulders of giants: an historical selection on the social thought on love
Silvia Cataldi
Evidence
3. For an empirical study of social love: epistemological and methodogical research approaches
Serena Quarta, Marco Palmieri, Giuseppe Pellegrini
Current Issues
4. Social systems and social love: a macro perspective on the history of civilizations
Gennaro Iorio
5. Social love as utopian and heterotopian experiences in contemporary society
Paulo Henrique Martins
PART II: Social love as overabundance
Insight
6. Social love as an approach. Notes from the field
Sari Hanafi
Evidence
7. Giving without expectations: the results of the World Love Index
Marco Palmieri, Chiara Iannaccone
Current Issues
8. Collective action and love
Adrian Scribano
9. Social love and social movements in the pandemic
Geoffrey Pleyers
PART III: Social love as care of others and the world
Insight
10. Re-imagining cosmopolitics: Love as taking care of the world
Filipe Campello
Evidence
11. Educational poverty and care for others: a relation between human development and social love
Andrea Gallelli, Paolo Contini, Angela Mongelli
12. Social Love in Pandemic Time: an opportunity to generate and regenerate social relationships
Giuseppe Pellegrini, Licia Paglione
13. Social love in healthcare professionals. Some preliminary reflections on a missing issue
Barbara Sena
Current Issues
14. Poverty and generative welfare: perspectives for a new approach to social intervention
Tiziano Vecchiato, Luigi Gui
15. Post-covid perspectives: an overview on inequalities and love experiences in South American
Rolando Cristao, Marcelo Salas, Clara Desalvo
PART IV: Social love as universalism
Insight
16. Towards a convivialist society: how to think and act for pluriversalism
Alain Caillé
Evidence
17. Universal is plural: The results of a comparative study from secondary sources
Parra Saiani, Fabrizio Martire
Current Issues
18. Common goods, collaborative practices and love
Emanuele Polizzi
PART V: Social love as recognition of others
Insight
19. Love in democracy: unfolding sovereignty, resonating common good
Andrè Magnelli
Evidence
20. Radical Love: Radical love and forgiveness: Re-suturing the social racial wounds in the US
William Calvo Quirós
Current Issues
21. Love beyond Coloniality: Encountering the other, love precarity, and the idiosyncrasies of Love from the South
William Calvo Quirós, Agnès Kehuo, Antonio Mendes da Costa Braga
Conclusions
Gennaro Iorio, Silvia Cataldi
Biography
Silvia Cataldi, PhD, is Associate Professor of sociology at the Department of Psychology of Development and Socialization Processes of Sapienza University of Rome (Italy). She teaches sociology and research methods on bachelor’s and master’s degree courses and in the doctoral school. Her research focuses on methodological aspects of social research and emerging cultural and social identity models and she is involved in many European projects. She is a board member of the European Sociological Association 20RN Qualitative Methods, and the coordinator of the international research network Social-One. Among her publications she has co-edited with Iorio two books on social love: Love at the Time of Accounting (2015) and Culture of Peace (2016).
Gennaro Iorio, PhD, is Full Professor of sociology. He is Director of the Department of Political and Social Studies of the University of Salerno (Italy). Expert in the history of sociological thought, he teaches sociology of innovation, common goods, and sustainable development goals on bachelor’s and master’s degree courses and in the doctoral school. His research projects include urban resilience and prosociality, empathy between sociology and neuroscience, north–south inequalities and social innovation. For almost 20 years he has been studying social love and has published the first avant-garde books on the subject, such as Sociology of Love (2015) now published in three languages, Italian, English and Portuguese.
