Paolo Parigi

My main interests are in the areas of historical sociology, organizations and political sociology.  My work however covers also other areas of research—network analysis, social movements and, sociology of law.

My main historical research is on miracles that candidates to sainthood performed during the period of the Counter Reformation. By drawing on largely obscure evidence extracted from several canonization trials, my analysis shows how the Catholic Church developed rules for adjudicating miracles on the basis of popular consensus. The Church channeled the consensus of miracles into the core of Catholicism by a process of rationalization of magic. My research claims that this process perpetuated the Church into modernity.

Another cultural product that during the same period operated in a similar fashion to miracles was the horoscope. Like a miracle, a horoscope reduced the uncertainty of life by constructing a predictable frame for human behavior. The analysis of the topics and of the relationships stylized in the horoscopes of the seventeenth century provides a tool for understanding how people dealt with uncertainty at the time.

I am also working on two projects outside the field of historical research. The first project considers how a local social movement in Palermo, lead by a group of students in 2004, was able to create the conditions for the establishment of the first anti-racketeering organization in the city. In the words of one of the participants in the movement, to start an anti-racket organization in a city so heavily controlled by the Mafia is like “building an Anglican basilica inside Saint Peter.”

In a second project, I am analyzing the network of alliances that Italian parliamentary members formed during three legislative cycles—(1) 1953 – 1958; (2) 1963-1968; (3) 1972-1977. The main idea is to see what effects a change in the standing orders of the lower chamber of the Parliament the years preceding each cycle had on the patterns of co-signing bills.

Curriculum Vitæ

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