Italian parliamentary debates on energy sustainability: How argumentative 'short-circuits' affect public engagement.

Public engagement is considered a crucial process in the transition towards sustainable energy systems. However, less space has been devoted to understand how policy makers and stakeholders view citizens and their relationship with energy issues. Nonetheless, together with technological advancements, policies and political debates on energy affect public engagement as well as individual practices. This article aims at tackling this issue by exploring how policy makers and stakeholders have socially constructed sustainable energy in Italian parliamentary debates and consultations during recent years (2009-2012). Results show that societal discourses on sustainable energy are oriented in a manner that precludes public engagement. The political debate is characterised by argumentative 'short-circuits' that constrain individual and community actions to the acceptance or the refusal of top-down decisions and that leave little room for community empowerment and bottom-up innovation.

Pain as social representation: a study with Italian health professionals involved in the 'Hospital and District without Pain' project.

Pain is a complex issue with many different aspects concerning both sensorial and emotional experience. In recent years, the Health Promoting Hospitals (HPH) network has been encouraging a new vision in health structures, with the aim of reducing any form of pain wherever possible. Following the social representation approach, we explore the concept of 'pain' as it is continuously redefined, constructed and shared among health professionals involved in an HPH project named 'Hospital and District without Pain'. Three hundred and eighty-three professionals (doctors, nurses and local general practitioners referring to the hospital of Rovigo, Italy) were involved in a free association task with the aim of exploring the social representation of pain. Contents were further investigated by means of four focus group discussions. Results suggest that the representation of pain is strongly connected to medical knowledge and to functional aspects of the health practice. Other forms of pain-more relational, psychological or emotional-which do not fall within the aetiopathogenetic system of diagnosis, cannot be managed with the traditional tools of the health practice, and are not perceived to be handled with the professionals' competence. Results will be discussed in relation to general health promotion principles and to a specific initiative on the issue of pain carried out by the HPH-Veneto network.

Peace and war as social representations: a structural exploration with Italian adolescents / Paz y guerra como representaciones sociales: una exploración con adolescentes italianos

Este artículo ilustra las potencialidades ofrecidas por la aproximación de las representaciones sociales, para la exploración de los conceptos de paz y guerra. Se administraron tareas de asociación libre con los estímulos guerra y paz a 112 estudiantes, para evaluar sus contenidos y estructuras. Se investigaron diferencias relacionadas con el sexo, la edad y la escolaridad. Se prestó atención al papel de las actividades de educación para la paz. Los resultados indican una representación dramática de la guerra, basada en la muerte y la destrucción. La representación de la paz está basada en experiencias emocionales íntimas y positivas; parece más débil y polifásica, con claves de cambio. Los respondientes involucrados en Educación para la Paz, mostraron más complejidad conceptual y más características relacionadascon aproximaciones positivas a la paz, enfatizando la relevancia de estas actividades.

The present paper illustrates the potentialities offered by the Social Representations approach to the exploration of peace and war concepts. Free associations tasks to the stimuli War and Peace were given to 112 students in order to assess contents and structures. Differences related to gender, age and school grade were investigated. Attention was devoted to the role of peace education activities. Results indicate a dramatic representation of war, based on death and destruction. The representation of peace is based on intimate and positive emotional experiences. It appears weaker and polyphasic, with cues of change. Respondents involved in peace education show greater complexity of contents and more features related to positive approaches to peace, thus underlining the relevance of these activities.