The Challenge of self-help/mutual aid. Association of citizenship as a factor of social cohesion

The problem of social cohesion has not been addressed yet in relation to the emergence of health as a key factor of citizenship and social inclusion: after defining a specific approach to the different dimensions of the social cohesion, the article addresses this problem on the bases of the findings of a national qualiquantitative research on self-help/mutual aid for the chronically ill in Italy. Their analysis highlights the role that these associations of citizenship can play as a factor of social cohesion by redefining the criteria of social belonging and civic integration of those, like the chronically ill, who does not correspond to the new rules of the "somatic ethics "of the healthist and narcissist society. In particular, the two distinctive elements that characterize self-help/mutual aid, the "circle of sharing" and the "helper principle", can represent significant mechanisms for the creation of new forms of social cohesion that can produce social integration even for those weaker social subjects that the healthist imperatives of the biological citizenship would tend to exclude and marginalize.