Oriente OccidenteOriente Occidente Logo
Sep 05 2013 - 15:00

MART Sala Conferenze

Mediterranean, an Opportunity for Europe

Franco Cassano

Franco Cassano, university professor and writer, and Federico Zappini, representative of the Trentino Forum for Peace and Human Rights.

The meeting is introduced by Federico Zappini.

The Mediterranean has always been a point of contact between the civilizations of the West and the East, and between the North and South of the world. While Northern Europeans are not only physically distant from the Mediterranean world, those in the South find themselves in the unenviable position of acting as absorbers of instability flows coming from Africa and the Middle East. Yet, for Europe, developing a culture of inter-Mediterranean relations appears to be a political, cultural, social, and economic opportunity. This border, which seems to be the ultimate boundary, could instead become the immediate beginning of a Europe rediscovering itself and its deeper mission.

Since 1980, he has been a full professor of Sociology of Cultural Processes at the Faculty of Political Science at the University of Bari. He has published several works, including Autocritica della sociologia contemporanea (1971); Marxismo e filosofia (1973); Hegel e Weber, with R. Bodei (1997); Il teorema democristiano (1979); La certezza infondata (1983); Approssimazione (1989); Partita doppia (1993); Il Pensiero meridiano (1996) (translated into French, Spanish, Japanese, English, and Macedonian); Mal di Levante (1997); Paeninsula (2008); Modernizzare stanca (2001); Oltre il nulla (2003); Homo civicus (2004); L’alternativa mediterranea, with D. Zolo (2007); Tre modi vedere il sud (2009); L’umiltà del male (2011); and Beati i costruttori di pace, with A. Riccardi (2013).
He writes for various newspapers and Italian and foreign journals. He has directed the Rassegna Italiana di Sociologia, the Interdepartmental Center for Peace Research at the University of Bari, and the association for the revival of active citizenship, “Città plurale.” In 2013, he was elected to the Chamber of Deputies on the PD list.

He is thirty years old and was born in Cles, but has lived in Trento for several years. In recent years, he has actively participated in the political life of this territory, paying particular attention to issues of immigration and social marginality, intercultural encounters, and conflict mediation. He enjoys writing and (trying to) share what he experiences and thinks. He believes in politics and its role in envisioning the future. He works at the Trentino Forum for Peace and Human Rights. He collaborates with the website Politica Responsabile and manages the blog pontidivista.wordpress.com. He looks with interest at the Mediterranean and loves Marseille.