Confidence, a driver for the South

I have long maintained that in the three Italies of the social stressed in the north to compete, in the nostalgic centre of the karstic cooperate to make economies, the south has much to tell in its weaving and reweaving of social capital that questions the making of economies. This is recounted by books that have captured the bewilderment of being without representation if one does not make representation and storytelling other than storytelling. They tell us how difficult it is to produce and reproduce key social words such as trust and militancy. Trust, the 'commodity' that increases the more it is used, is the subject of Fabrizio Minnella's book 'Comunicare vuol dire fiducia' (Rubettino). As head of communications at the Fondazione con il Sud, he has tried to restore trust to social action in the south of Italy, which has been mithridised by years of extraordinary intervention announcements, and to give meaning and significance to a founding message that said: first let us build social ties, then the economic will come. Hence the practice of a generative communication of community bonding to start being close and together again, provocative in giving numbers of the last and examples of what can be done, and then questioning the many doubters that starting from the reconstructed social capital it would be possible to create development, enterprises and jobs. Textbook language of communication in a difficult and challenged environment that gives the solution by recommending to communicators "never to lose the smell of sheep". Pointing out to creatives and eventologists that without the shepherd Don Antonio Loffredo there would be no community in progress in the Sanità district and the Catacombs project which, starting from the social underground, has now flown in the high communication of the Neapolitan rebirth. The whispers of the many examples of what can be done have become noise and images of talking faces. One crosses the boundary of communication with the docufilm Oro Rosso (the tomato wealth and slavery) and then promotes a Social Film Production Con il Sud call not to make a spectacle, but an alliance with that creative and often precarious social of the many who work by communicating the anxieties of discomfort. But without losing the bar in the seductive nebula of the society of spectacle of the experiential value of a nursery school, a platform park of community experiences (Paduli) or the contaminating project 'With the children'. Minnella reminds us that the real medium is experience. All of this would not have been possible without a reversal of the communicative position space sought by former president Borgomeo from 'charitable' Fondazione PER to Fondazione CON il sud, from 'unionism of the territory' giving voice to those near to speak to those far away. Which today allows President Consiglio to point to communication as a fundamental strategy to splinter and interrogate the upper echelons of indifference. Thus making himself the spokesman for militant practices in the territories. Andrea Morniroli and Gea Scancarello give an account of this in the book whose title 'Non facciamo del bene' (Donzelli), in Minnella's words, 'passes a boulder off as a pebble' in the conclusion: 'social work is either political or it is not'. They get there by lining up pebbles of experience, recounting a praxis that becomes theory not only to communicate, but to make sense of a long work in social work and a questioning journalism of enquiry that makes good practices a boulder within the contradictions of the system. They look for traces of political subjectivation that lies within and against placing the theme of care together with that of rights. Starting from the south, from the Calabria of the Cutro tragedy, they follow the boulder of migration, in the Domitian coast in Campania they make visible the invisible city of the enslaved labour force between the camorra and the caporalato. They go up north to the upper Langa of Asti, where they co-operate with mayors to provide widespread hospitality and even involve, in a logic of social short-term rent, the families of abandoned municipalities, putting themselves in the middle of the knot of repopulation and good work. Following the thread of discomfort and mental health, in Milan the Olinda cooperative in the former psychiatric hospital is recounted, and linking up with Basaglia and Rotelli's Trieste, a self-managed conference on mental health is convened. Then, returning to Naples with the Dedalus cooperative, contaminating politics and with the councillor for welfare, it is indicated in street work to become community operators. Roads to be travelled in inland areas and in the hairpin bends of the 'Differences and Diversity Forum' doing political communication. A book full of traces to transform despair into hope: despair as Marco Rossi Doria teaches us.