Paper short abstract:

As an anthropologist investigating ‘post-familial’ families in Italy, I have been called to translate my analytical knowledge into operative practices within an integrated group of public psycho-social workers. I discuss a case-study of this ‘dialogue’ as ethnographically recorded in my experience.

Paper long abstract:

Italy has a powerful tradition of public governance of daily life of families, even if family is no longer only in its traditional model. Many public services are dedicated to the'wellbeing' of family: they represent the operative tool of the state, authorized to supervise compliance with family rules and obligations as well as their putting into practice. The disciplines recognized to govern family matters are psychology, educational science and welfare work,and sometimes sociology. However, the slippery nature of the contemporary 'post-familial' families seems to challenge the psycho-social workers' operational skill of giving meanings, and therefore in managing, these ambivalent family connections.On this matter, anthropologists can provide a very useful point of view, but they lack an operational perspective to make their analyses translatable andgenerativein the psycho-social work reality.Furthermore, encounters between theoretic and practical sciences are always pervaded by skepticism, misunderstanding and identity worries, reciprocally justified by different hierarchies of knowledges, historically and culturally determined. So, what does dialogue among disciplinesreally entails? Translation and ethical issues? A loss of epistemological certainty or the intrinsic uncertainties of knowledge? I describe ethnographically a case-study involving anthropologists, psychologists, sociologists, educationalists and welfare workers.I discuss how the fabric of a multidisciplinary dialogue have been processedon the line of liminality between what is epistemologically given and what is reworked. This allow to finally achieve a 'rhizomatic' opportunity to share knowledge both across disciplines and between researchers and pratictioners, rather than each staying, 'vertically', within their own domain.