Lo sviluppo di comunità nelle città in transizione. Il caso di studio di Monteveglio.

Transition Towns is an international movement developing a systemic approach to inspire concrete actions, organized by citizens, from a bottom-up ethos (Hopkins, 2009). However, the movement has attracted little research and there appears to be no research using qualitative methods and a social and community psychology perspective. The Transition movement has the potential to have long-term effects in terms of revitalizing local economy, enhancing human relations and improving the quality of life of citizens, so it is vital that it is grounded in robust, interdisciplinary and scientifically informed conceptual frameworks (Haxeltine and Seyfang, 2009) like the research on new communities (Zani, 2005). Monteveglio is the first and the only town in Italy which has implemented transition principles in an official institutional document: resolution n. 92/2009. Using the case study approach (Yin, 2009) we aim to understand the Monteveglio community changes and if they can be attributed to the transition process. Considering the history of Monteveglio and its political-economical context within the wider global framework, and doing so through the voices of the community, is an innovative approach to the issue both thematically and methodologically. The main assumption of social psychology is that human behavior is the result of personality and context: people cannot be studied independently from the context they live in (Lewin, 1951). So, in order to understand the history of Monteveglio and the role of Transition in it, we listened to its witnesses by conducting semi-structured interviews, examining the documentation and doing participant observation. Using these multiple sources of evidence, triangulating data and maintaining a chain of evidence, we developed converging lines of inquiry, pointing out the connection of community trust and trade (McMillan & Chavis, 1986; Arcidiacono, 2002) as main factors of development. The Transition Towns movement endorses a holistic and systemic approach (involving all the aspects of human life) in order to lead to social change. So, our study on Transition calls for support from different subjects and to bridge the gaps between them. Thus, we developed theoretical propositions from different disciplines forming a broad theoretical background. Therefore, philosophical reflection (Latouche, 2010) on environmental ethics (Shiva, 2002) is necessary to go beyond the anthropocentrism, as permaculture claims (Holmgren, 2010). This involves the economy too, whose search for new wellness indexes is still wide open (Commission on the Measurement of Economic Performance and Social Progress, Stiglitz, Sen, & Fitoussi, 2009; Sen, 2010), as human wellbeing is a much more fleeting concept. Crossing philosophy, economy and social psychology, with a transdisciplinary approach (Nicolescu, 2002; Morin, 2001), we obtained an output which is something different from the sum of the inputs. Finally, we discussed with the participants the meanings we gathered in order to give them feedback. Aware of the limits of present research and of the potentials for further research, we proposed an empowered community eager to plan future steps through democratic processes and active citizenship. From a theoretical perspective, we suggested implementing transition using a participatory action-research frame, to promote enhanced communication and continued collaboration.