AN EDUCATION

This book is a collection of writings related to an educational journey, one that includes both classroom work (as practiced by Luca Meldolesi, professor of economic policy at Federico II University in Naples, and his students), and the formation of a group that has taken various names in suggessive phases. In both cases the aim is to capture the original core and legacy of an experience that dates from the early 1990s and which-with its dropouts and new entries, with highs and lows that have seen it engaged in both government and business activities—is still going strong today.

What distinguishes this experience is its connection with the ideas of Albert Hirschman and Eugenio Colorni, and the ambition to reframe it as an active process of change, unfolding in a particular situation and a particular time. Its distinctiveness impels us to present it to the wider world, because we discern in it ideas that might encourage others to venture onto terrain that, while less traveled, holds promise for those who aspire to an experience of democracy and civilization-in the active sense of the word.

—from the “Introduction” by Nicoletta Stiame

NICOLETTA STAME, sociologist, with an MA from SUNY Binghamton, she has taught at Paris X, Messina, Bari; Professor at Sapienza University of Roma until 2010. Presently, she is vice-President of A Colorni-Hirschman International Institute. She is interested in democratic policies of development, particularly in the Mezzogiorno, also from the perspective of their evaluation that she approaches through a “possibilist” lens.