On 3 May 2018, the Re.Cri.Re.  Consortium met for the final international conference of the project in Brussels, Belgium, to discuss the main findings and to share the view with policy-makers and representatives of civil society. The meeting was hosted in the European Economic and Social Committee and gave to the partners the possibilities of meeting key stakeholders and to receive feedbacks and visions on the project’s outcomes.

Re.Cri.Re. is a H2020 project that gathers together 16 partners from 12 different countries to analyze the socio-economic effects of the crisis on the representations of cultures as well as on the policies in the nowadays European societies. The project involves researchers and civil society organisations with the aim of framing better policies at the local, national and European level.

The Re.Cri.Re. project has analysed the cultural dynamics presented in the European countries and has discovered the existence of five symbolic universes: these findings must be taken into account when dealing with societies through policies. This research has led to the main outcome of the project, which is the guidelines for policy-makers, with the aim of giving some inputs regarding the cultural and social dimensions in order to implement effective policies.

The final international conference was a unique opportunity to gather both local and European actors and to present them the findings of the project in an interactive way. Thus, the meeting highlighted the results and processes to be further developed after the end of the project.

The event was an occasion to meet face-to-face and to present the research on symbolic universes and the guidelines developed by the Consortium for the policy-makers, which is the main outcome of the project. On the other hand, the Conference  created the possibility to exchange ideas and suggestions for the upgrade of the project: the round tables organized saw the presence of academic experts as well as European policy-makers, which presented their points of view on the project and the practical experiences which can be improved through the methodology of Re.Cri.Re. The discussion was very fruitful and enhanced the knowledge of the project’s results.

The agenda of the event foresaw the introductory speeches of Yuri Borgmann-Prebil, DG Research & Innovation – Re.Cri.Re Policy Officer, Antonella Valmorbida, Secretary General ALDA, and Sergio Salvatore, Scientific Coordinator of Re.Cri.Re., who presented the project, its context within the H2020 programme and its main findings in the field of symbolic universes. The symbolic universes are indeed a fundamental finding within the project, because they are the ways through which the people see the world, consequently, based on the different visions, they also have different beliefs ad behaviors and the presentation of Sergio Salvatore clearly illustrated the five symbolic universes discovered with the use of a questionnaire:

• Ordered universe is characterized by a positive attitude toward the world and the identification with transcendent values, there is faith in the ordered design of the world;
•  Interpersonal bond is the vital world of the interpersonal and emotional bonds and it promotes a moderate sense of agency, trust and openness;
• Caring society follows a vision of the society and institutions as trustworthy providers of services and commons based on the demands, people feel they are part of a system that supports their efforts;
• Niche of belongingness is characterized by a negative generalized connotation of the world being outside the primary network, translated in pessimism in the future, fatalism, untrustworthiness of institutions;
• Others’ world shows a fully negative and desperate vision of the world, with untrustworthiness, sense of impotency, lack of agency, anomy, as the world belongs to those who have power and for the others is only a matter of surviving.

The following sessions presented two round tables: the first one focused on Europe as horizon of sense and hosted Bruna Zani, European Federation of Psychologists’ Associations and Jeroen Jutte, Head of Unit DG EMPL, which presented their ideas on the guidelines and on possible practical applications. Then, the second round table on the future of EU was introduced by the presentation of Terri Mannarini, University of Salento, Italy, regarding the socio-political orientations in the Italian sample and of Giuseppe Veltri, University of Trento, Italy, about the cultural dynamics within the Brexit, which aim to show how the symbolic universes can be present in the everyday social and political life; then it continued with the interventions of Martin Bohle, Advisor DG RESEARCH, Stefaan Hermans, Director EAC, Diana Cristina Constantinescu, Europe Direct Emilia-Romagna, and Anna Krasteva, New Bulgarian University, Re.Cri.Re. Consortium.

The participants had the change to ask questions regarding the results of the project and the implementation of its findings, and provided significant insights from their local contexts. The conclusions of the Conference were presented by Sergio Salvatore, Scientific Coordinator of the project and Marco Boaria, Resources and Development Unit ALDA, with the aim of capitalizing the project results by concretely apply and reuse its findings.

The Conference is one sign that the Re.Cri.Re. project has developed fundamental outcomes for the contemporary European and local policy-makers and its Guidelines will be a tool for who wants to discover more about culture and social identities’ influence.
As said by a representative of the Re.Cri.Re. partnership, there is “a strong feeling that the Re.Cri.Re. project has just started to discover fundamental findings and the end of the project will be instead the launching of a new vision”.

Useful resources:
Read more about the project Re.Cri.Re on its website