The role of sociology in the promotion of actions aimed at social innovation in the Mediterranean area

The change in contexts and their complexity, especially in the Mediterranean area, has raised the need to start reflecting on modernizing innovative actions able to provide social responses to the real needs of citizens and, moreover, able to combine resources and quality. This is necessary since the expansion of rights is associated with a decreasing public funding capacity. The future challenge will surely be a retrenchment in public spending, orienting it towards the threefold structure of choice (need, preferences, goods) and overcoming of rational choice model (preferences, goods). In a context characterized by these features, the sociological knowledge becomes paramount for reading social phenomena. The role of sociology is to produce “knowledge” through which society can observe the occurring phenomena recognizing their problems, thus allowing for a continuous, ongoing improvement.