Sense Of Responsible Togetherness: A New Challenge For Our Societies

The actual sociocultural context seems to be characterized by a diffidence towards “the other” that leads to an individualistic vision and to clearer shapes of affective disinvestment toward the local community. It results in relational models focused on competition and power, which increase the conditions of social injustice and disengagement in participatory action. These aspects lead to a multidisciplinary consideration and to a critical vision of the actual relational models of togetherness, with attention to the dimensions of awareness and responsibility. This presentation introduces the idea of responsible togetherness referring to local communities, discussing also the interdependence of other concepts like the social cohesion, the sense of community, the social responsibility, the social participation. We would like to propose a critical vision about the togetherness in local communities, that relies on sharing the same spaces, being in close contact with someone else, but also on the possibility to represent new forms of social relationships in which individuals don’t delete each other or are mutually exclusive, but that include the sense of responsibility to provide concrete resources within the community. Thus, the different dimensions included in the concept of Sense of Responsible Togetherness (SoRT) will be presented and discussed. From our first studies, paying attention to the responsible togetherness processes can foster the ability to negotiate social norms through the construction of relational spaces that are functional to a collective perspective. Intervention and research require the acquisition of skills and methods for monitoring and analysis of new relational spaces of socialization and the construction of good practices for the prevention of psychosocial risk. Interventions should be created in local and virtual communities to promote responsible ways of co-living in local communities.