Alessandro Orsini (Sociologist)
Alessandro Orsini, (born April 14, 1975) is an Italian Sociologist known for contributions to the Sociology of Revolutions. He is a Professor of Political Sociology at “University of Rome Tor Vergata” and LUISS “Guido Carli”.
In "his Anatomy of the Red Brigades. Idological Roots of Revolutionary [...]", Orsini worked out an original theory to reconstruct the sociopsychological processes leading to the bloodshed in extreme-left and neonazi [...] groups (known as the subversive-revolutionary feedback theory) that is a provisional explanation expressed in a controllable form specifying a particular relationship among several variables. Essentially, the subversive-revolutionary feedback theory states that the willingness to give and receive death depends, in the last analysis, on how far the [...] has been incorporated into the revolutionary sect. It can be formulated through a bivaried proposal that Orsini expressed as follows:
The greater the level of integration of the [...] in the revolutionary sect, the higher its propensity to give and receive death.
Max Weber, George Simmel, George Herbert Mead, Herbert Blumer and Luciano Pellicani are the most influential scholars on Orsini’s analysis. Orsini used comparative-historical sociology to investigate the main revolutionary phenomena of modern times in the attempt to find the ideological roots of the Red Brigades’ plan. Using the comparative method, he compared the phenomenon with other similar phenomena. After tracing the sociopsychological profile of the “perfect [...]”, and after reconstructing the determinants of his or her pantoclastic fury, he went back to the past to find their precursors and antecedents, from the revolutionary sects in 16th century Germany to the Pol Pot revolution in Cambogia in 1975.
The Anatomy of the Red Brigades has been called:
a very important book that increases our knowledge of [...] and the prestige of the Italian university in the United States. (Spencer M. Di Scala, University of Massachusetts Boston, History Department, Chair).
Works
- Ripensare la nazione, Seam, Roma. (2002)
- Alle origini del nazionalismo. Storia e interpretazioni, (2003), Edizioni Kappa, Roma.
- L’eretico della sinistra. Bruno Rizzi élitista democratico, (2004), Franco Angeli, Milano.
- In difesa della sociologia storica, (2005), Franco Angeli, Milano.
- Le origini del capitalismo. Storia e interpretazioni, (2008), Costantino Marco, Lungro di Cosenza.
- The Anatomy of the Red Brigades. Ideological Roots of Revolutionary [...], (2009) Rubbettino, Rome and Soveria Mannelli