Abstract

Starting from the current revival of the debate around the issue of solidarity, this introductory contribution to the monographic section of «Scienza & Politica» aims to highlighting the epistemological function of this concept in the constitution of the time and the space of social regulation. Taking into consideration the contribution of sociology to the construction and the development of the twentieth-century welfare state, it treats and questions the heuristic and normative capacity of the concept of solidarity in front of the challenges that globalization poses to the economic and social possibility of a societal regulation of global interdependencies