To cite this version:Laura Centemeri. Reframing problems of incommensurability in environmental conflicts through pragmatic sociology. From value pluralism to the plurality of modes of engagement with the environment. AbstractThis paper presents the contribution of the pragmatic sociology of critical capacities to the understanding of environmental conflicts. In the field of "environmental valuation", nowadays colonised by economics, the approach of plural modes (or "regimes") of engagement provides a sociological understanding of the unequal power of conflicting "languages of valuation". This frame entails a shift from "values" to "modes of valuation" and links modes of valuation to modes of practical engagement and coordination with the surrounding environment. Different social sources of incommensurability are thus detected and reframed as critical tension within and among modes of human coordination with the environment.

This article analyses four cases of governance in Italian local welfare systems. Following Law 328 / 2000 , the design and management of the social services system in Italy involve different public responsibility levels, mainly regional and municipal. In order to manage social policies, Italian municipalities have to join in new inter-municipal groupings called 'Piani di Zona' (Area Plans). Moreover, the law provides for engaging in these Plans even local third-sector organizations and citizens. The article attempts to highlight the implications of this complex system that is leading local authorities to open new governance arenas. We hereby present the results of a research project on two Piani di Zona in the Region of Lombardy (Northern Italy) and on two in the Region of Campania (Southern Italy), carried out by means of institutional analysis.We particularly focus on the dynamics of participation triggered by the Piani di Zona. Our hypothesis is that the role of public administration is a fundamental variable to understand the different ways of participating. In this sense, we discuss the dynamics of local governance by relaying them to four main questions: who participates in what, where and how?

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Abstract:The economic concept of negative externalities is the dominant frame in environmental policies. Revisiting environmental damage with a sociological approach, I show how the process of externalities definition and internalisation is a political process in which a public is constituted and common problems are collectively defined and addressed. In particular, I highlight the presence in this process of two kinds of uncertainty which have to be dealt with: epistemic uncertainty and moral uncertainty. Keeping these two forms of uncertainty analytically separated is useful in order to understand the limits of the market as a way to internalize environmental externalities and to analyse in their specificities the different types of translation, mediation and composition which are needed in order to create the conditions for a truly inclusive and democratic public deliberation on environmental damage and its reparation.

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