Sociology in times of pandemic: Metatheoretical considerations and the example of the Covid-19 crisis

The Covid-19 crisis initiated debates among sociologists concerning metatheoretical principles of sociology and how sociological analyses should be done in times of pandemic. We discuss the methodological basis of the explanatory sociology approach and demonstrate its relevance in times of pandemic. We start with the paradigm of realism and then proceed to the guiding principles of causality and methodological individualism. It is argued that this is the appropriate and reasonable epistemological basis for sociology and enables explanation of social phenomena as well as prediction of unintended consequences of social interventions associated with the Covid-19 crisis. We state that this sort of sociology now is disputed neither within the scientific community nor outside in the media and the general society, although this had been the case constantly before the pandemic. © The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Fachmedien Wiesbaden GmbH, part of Springer Nature 2021.

Firms, employment, territories and post Covid-19 industrial policy

This paper contributes to the debate on the new industrial policies, particularly those aimed at the recovery post Covid-19 pandemic. We propose an approach that integrates the reference to three pillars of the new industrial policies, together with the method exploiting the complementarity between instruments, and three selection criteria. The latter regard the necessity to enhance quality jobs, collective goods related to the emergent needs of territorial communities, and investments in education and training. We use this approach to derive indications on the type of actions to be implemented for Italian firms and productive systems after the emergency and in face of long run technological, environmental and social challenges. For this purpose, we identify four groups of firms, which allow us to argue on the need for an appropriate differentiation of complementary action sets within the themes and common lines of policy derived from the priority criteria. The groups include firms facing demand compression, firms with development constraints due to resource interdependencies, firms with wavering strategies regarding investments and supply chain integration, and firms which grow together with the new collective needs. We conclude by deriving implications on both policy coordination levels and multilevel governance. © 2021 Societa Editrice il Mulino. All rights reserved.