CityRights.eu - cityrights

The common theoretical and empirical ground of this research group is the interest in the study of social and human capital. We assume such themes have not received equal attention and development to date, and we try to bridge this gap starting from a strong focus on the concept of “person” as a milestone in our research interests and practice.
The contemporary homo faber has a special way to build his wealth by constructing relational capital, as well as of building knowledge, capabilities, plans, feelings, hopes and choices into himself.
As a consequence, our general assumption is that the person can be defined as “human capital”, and bears the ability to build social capital, in that she can elaborate political, relational, economic, cultural reality, and so forth.
Therefore, we interpret the modern citizen as an active subject who engages in wealth-building activities in many forms and dimensions. The name we gave to our group thus derives from the observation of such a homo faber in his ability to build rights of citizenship, constituting not only a rational catalogue of claims, but also a challenge to produce a better quality of life and to respond effectively to the related human needs.
The centre is articulated into five groups, each of them doing autonomous research and organizing workshops about various topics, ranging from socialization to health, from work to family to urban and community studies.
Our top priority is to clarify the connection between human and social capital, and to explain the human capacity to produce both, on the assumption that they are strictly interwoven.
In an age which provides exceeding quantities of objects of consumption for a remarkable part of humanity, we believe it is very important to understand the way modern subjects build such a reality as they deem adequate to their aspirations, constructing meanings and inventing possible usages for the objects belonging to their own personal life-world.