Plan B it
The Squaderno , N. 12 - June 2009
The closure of factories, the disappearance of the working class, the conversion of disused industrial buildings. The post-industrial city, services, shopping centers. Immigration, the multi-ethnic city, the issue of security, insecurity perceived by Italian citizens in their own neighborhoods. Precarious work, consumerism, property speculation, pollution, the end of "community", the fragmentation of social relations.
words that we read and hear for years and there seems to appropriately describe the phenomena and the changes taking place in Italian cities. But even words "common sense", we take for granted. Descriptions of the worlds in which we live that is difficult to discuss, which usually are applied rather than argued. Words that name just because all good or bad to understand what you're talking about. That show us unequivocally the direction in which society is going in which we live. And, not a secondary aspect, inhibit collective political action and the creation of projects of different sign. So, "you know that goes like this." In these processes
came across the experience of Plan B, a group born in Bologna in 2006 in order to "make inquiry" in the city. In this article we try to draw stock of this (short) experience, describing the strengths and limitations of 'social inquiry ", for as we practiced.
First, the reasons why we started a survey work on these issues. People who have met in Plan B came from very different experiences with each other. All we saw in some way (and note) with a certain dissatisfaction that neither the experience nor the political work provide insight into the city in which we live. Who works at the university is aware that academic research is not so much interested in studying the "reality" to follow the discussions and closed within languages of "disciplines" (sociology, anthropology ...) and this "disciplined" and self-referential. Who is a journalist known the limits of a work which must comply with specific agendas and cadences, coded language and does not provide the breadth of breath necessary for a thorough understanding of the city. You work as a teacher or educator feels the lack of knowledge of the social worlds from which people come every day to "educate" or "educate" (children, young second-generation immigrants, foreign adults, prisoners).
from direct experience of political and social commitment (unidentified in the area that is called "movement" che sta a sinistra, solitamente fuori dai partiti), d’altra parte, ciascuno di noi ha ricavato un’insoddisfazione dovuta, anche qui, alla mancanza di conoscenza dei mondi e delle persone che di quella attività politica sono troppo spesso l’oggetto e non il soggetto (gli operai, i precari, gli immigrati, i senza fissa dimora, i consumatori e così via).
A Bologna, come altrove, spesso notiamo – nelle realtà di movimento non meno che nei partiti – un approccio superficiale e frettoloso alle questioni politiche, affrontate soltanto quando sono sotto l’occhio dell’attenzione pubblica e mediatica e dimenticate subito dopo, per passare ad altro. È una città in cui si discute molto, but which are rarely identified and challenged the powers, the people, the institutions that actually take the important decisions that define the face of the city.
Dissatisfied with respect to everything and maybe I just felt the urgent need to know the city (after having lived for ten, twenty or thirty years!), We needed a "Plan B". An investigation seemed the only thing I can do at that moment was.
The group was formed a little 'chance, far from Bologna, organized around a seminar on the investigation in Calabria Community by the Project for the South and the magazine The Stranger. Back to Bologna abbiamo concentrato la nostra curiosità su un luogo che ci sembrava condensasse molte storie e molte delle “parole” che abbiamo elencato sopra: le Officine di Casaralta, una fabbrica di vagoni ferroviari nata a inizio Novecento, tristemente famosa per le drammatiche vicende legate all’amianto e dimsessa definitivamente nel 2003, dopo una lunga lotta degli operai contro la chiusura dell’azienda.
Da questa fabbrica, l’inchiesta si è allargata al territorio circostante, la Bolognina, un’area della città cresciuta attorno alle fabbriche metalmeccaniche nel corso del Novecento. Abbiamo cercato di raccontare realtà e traiettorie di vita apparentemente lontane tra loro, accomunate dal fatto di svolgersi dentro the same network of roads. We met and interviewed dozens of witnesses of the life and history of those roads and those places. We discussed with elderly local residents, workers and union delegates from factories and we collected their life stories. We met some Chinese immigrants residing in the territory. And union officials, lawyers, doctors, public officials, planners, architects, teachers of boxing. We visited senior centers and clubs, neighborhood initiatives and participated in public presentation and discussion of urban plans.
Later, we shifted our gaze on another area of \u200b\u200bBologna, S. Viola, in which they happened and are still in place processes urban transformation very similar to those of Bolognina: disposals industrial processing warehouses in shopping malls, even sensational cases of speculation, the end of the "centrality of working" on the ground.
The investigation, therefore, consisted in the most simple and yet very difficult, in talking with people, listen to their stories, opinions, feelings, find information, weaving the threads, keep abreast of what's happening , connect the facts seem far apart. Reading newspapers and books. Listen carefully to what the interlocutors that from time to time we chose had to tell.
The attempt was to non dare per scontati i processi in atto in città e sotto gli occhi di tutti (dismissione industriale, riconversione edilizia, trasformazioni urbanistiche, ecc.), ma di ricostruire minuziosamente gli eventi, di capire come sono avvenuti e a partire da quali decisioni politiche, di mappare i confronti, gli scontri e i compromessi tra i poteri rispetto a queste decisioni, di non prendere per buone le “giustificazioni” che vengono proposte ai cittadini ma andarle a verificare. E, cosa non secondaria e forse più complessa, di comprendere quali sono gli effetti di questi processi sulle storie delle persone che in quei quartieri abitano, che in quelle fabbriche lavoravano, che in quelle aree sono immigrati da altri paesi.
Un lavoro appassionante and that allowed us to understand much of the city where we live. Work, however, with the limits of which we have, at some point, had to deal. We do not want to speak here of the difficult work of this group of investigation, although there are and that we recognize (just to cite a few examples: the difficulty of giving continuity to something that is done only in our "free time", the "distrust" that we feel towards other forms of "knowledge" - academic, political, journalistic - and too often prevents us from using them for secular and the difficulty of extending the collective). These are issues that we believe present significant qualsiasi esperienza di inchiesta.
Una domanda è, ovviamente, come (e a chi) “comunicare” quanto emerso dal lavoro di inchiesta. A tale questione classica, Piano b ha dato risposte classiche e per nulla innovative: articoli e saggi su quotidiani e riviste nazionali e locali, un breve documentario, incontri pubblici, un blog (e vari altri progetti in cantiere, come un documentario radiofonico e un “foglione” periodico autoprodotto). Ma quella della “comunicazione” nasconde e ci porta ad altre due questioni ancora più importanti. La prima è: come generare processi di cambiamento? In altre parole, dopo aver fatto inchiesta e dopo averci “capito qualcosa” di quello che succede, e dato che questa realtà non ci piace, come far sì che l’inchiesta contribuisca al mutamento sociale? Come evitare che essa rimanga soltanto un approfondimento o una “denuncia” come tanti che, pur approfonditi e documentati, appaiono sui mass media e lì restano confinati?
Legata a questa, vi è una seconda questione, con la quale Piano b si è confrontato per la prima volta quando ha provato a trarre le conclusioni del primo lavoro di inchiesta: qual è il progetto politico – anche minimo – a partire dal quale – eventualmente – proporre processi di cambiamento sociale? Abbiamo un progetto di questo tipo? Quali sono le “proposte”? Quali sono i “soggetti” and what the career of this political change? As we wrote the disposal of factories Bolognina wishes to report - at least implicitly - the closure of factories only on grounds of speculation, the city's transformation into a large shopping mall, or masked insufficient involvement of citizens in planning decisions, the exclusion of by foreign offices of the discussions, a more or less creeping racism and so on. But while they were writing, we realized that it had very clear idea of \u200b\u200balternative cities (and certainly did not want to bring an impossible return to the industrial city, with its load of exploitation and harm environmental!).
We believe that these two issues - how to create social change and from which parties and political projects - are now central to those who face investigation. At other times, the investigation had the social partners. Since the fifty to sixty of Danilo Dolci Montaldi and Italian Notebooks red the great experiences of social inquiry had roughly the interlocutors in the "labor movement" (or farmer, or student), the Communist and Socialist parties, trade unions . For many there was a political horizon of social change (mostly socialism in its different variants).
The investigation now has neither a partner (As a movement?), Nor a political reference. A speaker Roberto Saviano - to quote the investigation who did the most discussed in recent years? A one million readers around the world, of course. But mostly to individuals (consumers of culture) and to movements, organizations and institutions.
In this regard, the practice of Plan B at this time is "minimalist" Each of us has enriched their daily experience (professional and political) knowledge and awareness gained by conducting investigations on the city. This is no small thing, especially when many of us do educational work or "base" (with students high school, young immigrants, the homeless, prisoners). And, perhaps waiting for a broader political project, the only two roads that remain are there precisely to get to know the reality in which we live and do basic work. The investigation may be a major tool for both.
But it is clear that this is an insufficient response.
