Francesco Sidoti

Francesco Sidoti (born 22 March 1948 in Sicily) is an Italian sociologist and criminologist, docteur du troisième cycle (École des Hautes Etudes en Sciences Sociales, Paris), and professor emeritus at the Università degli Studi dell'Aquila. He has worked with Norberto Bobbio at Centro studi di scienza politica Paolo Farneti, in Turin, and was a guest scholar at Brookings Institution, in Washington DC.

Disastered modernity
Sidoti is the precursor in his country of academic courses on criminal investigation – searching, interviews, interrogations, evidence collection and preservation, etc. – as applied science to the study of facts that inform court cases. The focus of those courses were not forensics exclusively but essentially criminal investigation in democratic societies as related to the level of civic awareness, faulty criminal inquiries, legal blunders etc. Sidoti has worked in that respect within the “limits of public rationality” and their impacts on individuals and institutions, thereby arriving at the notion of a ‘disastered modernity’ and its sudden, destructive, unforeseen consequences.

″Expressions such as ‘disaster capitalism’ or ‘disastered modernity’ are in contrast to Zygmunt Bauman’s famous notion of ‘liquid/ late modernity’, which in spite of being useful conveys an idea of a pleasant place where people shift from one social status to another in a ‘fluid’ manner – like day trippers changing home, partners, jobs, values, political and sexual orientation. The idea of a ‘disastered modernity’, on the other hand, replicate Anthony Giddens’ 1999 BBC Reith Lectures, when he doubted that citizens could "bring our runaway world to heel" without confronting those who profit directly from the chaos. He is among other illustrious pessimists, such as Zbigniew Brzezinski, who spoke of a world seemingly "out of our control", like an airplane on automatic pilot, speeding continuously but with no secure destination″.

The solution, according to Sidoti, is to encourage a “specific form of cosmopolitanism”, one in which cultural and artistic activities are not restrained by national or parochial boundaries – based “not on ideals but on a state of necessity”. He goes on to conclude that even though “globalization seems ungovernable it remains nonetheless the only chance we have [considering that] only a cosmopolitan perspective can reunite humanity with nature”.

On investigation and democracy
Sidoti specifically conceives investigation as a search for accountability – it is about personal liability for something peculiar or anomalous that has not hitherto been explained. Investigation is not necessarily a search about crime, but an attempt to uncover who is accountable for an unsolved mystery, puzzle, problem or abnormality. Seeing from that perspective, differently from research – which is careful study of a given subject, field, or problem, undertaken to discover facts or principles – investigation presupposes the possibility of creating an ‘enemy’ and it is thus often on the verge of risk and retribution.

An individual investigation may concern situations and operations likely to present specific assessments and is therefore subject to prior checking. It may range from risk analysis to computer crimes, from organized crime to unsystematic crime, from serial killers to environmental disasters, from journalism to independent supervisory authorities. Good democracy is always based, just as investigative procedures, on checks and balances. The same goes for congressional hearings and free journalism, so there is no true investigation without an open society and without a spirit of critical, democratic rationalization. * Investigation Day, L’Aquila 2002, 2003, 2004, 2005, 2006, 2007, 2008, 2009, 2010, 2011;
 * Izmir, Canakkale, Konya, Istanbul, Antalya, Gaziantep, Ankara, Erzurum, Trabzon, Bursa, Heidelberg, Ludwigsburg, 2008-2009: EU Project;
 * Annual Conference della WAD (World Association of Detectives), Zurigo 2007;
 * L’intervento per le vittime del crimine, in collaborazione con John Jay College of criminal Justice, Roma 19-21 Gennaio 2006;
 * Milipol internazionale, Parigi 2005;
 * L’identificazione, Buenos Aires 2005;
 * La nuova criminologia, Parigi 2005;
 * Criminologia, psicologia, investigazione, Bar-Ilan University 2004;
 * Criminologia e investigazione negli Stati Uniti, 2004 (New York University, John Jay College, Brookings Institution);
 * Il terrorismo internazionale e la sicurezza globale, seminario internazionale di studi, Centro studi criminologici, Trieste 2003;
 * Evidenza e leggenda nella psicoterapia contemporanea, le risposte cognitivo comportamentali, Pescara, AIAMC, ottobre 2003;
 * Sicurezza e libertà individuali. Forum di Quaderni radicali, Roma, 4/5 dicembre 2002;
 * Ricordando Paolo Borsellino, Palermo 7 luglio 2001;
 * Security: Reasons for Survival, Lisbon Security 2001;
 * Intelligence in the Next Century, Priverno 2001;
 * La Seguridad ante el Nuevo Milenio, Barcellona 2000;
 * Politics, Economy and Reform, Hankuk University of Foreign Studies, Seul 1999;
 * The Vulnerability of Democracies, The 12th International Congress on Criminology, Korea 1998;
 * The Mafia and organised crime in the ’90s, Griffith University, Brisbane 1998;
 * Panel on Corruption, International Political Science Association, Seul 1997;
 * The Waste Era, New York University, 1997;
 * The Crisis of Confidence in Adv. Democracies, Society for Comparative Research,Bruxelles 1996;
 * Criminality in Southern Countries, New York University, 1993;
 * La justice juvenile et la Mafia, Vaucresson, 1993;
 * First European Congress of Sociology, Vienna 1992;
 * Onatiko Lege-Soziologiako Nazioarteko Erakundea, Pais Vasco 1990;
 * Congreso Mundial de Sociologia, Madrid 1990;
 * European University Institute, Firenze 1989;
 * Georgetown University, Washington DC 1987;
 * Foreign Service Institute, United States Departement of State, Washington DC 1986.

Critical response
Mary Gibson has compared Istituzioni e criminalità to David Garland's Punishment and Modern Society: A Study in Social Theory, and says that Sidoti places Italian debates on crime in the international context. In the same mood, Osvaldo Croci reviewed Sidoti's Morale e metodo nell’intelligence saying that whereas "few Italian academics have devoted attention to the study of security and intelligence [and] popular media has contemptuously tended to dismiss these issues as something fascist or of the right”, Sidoti on the contrary “weaves an intricate, and intriguing web of themes which together make a compelling case for the need to take security and intelligence issues seriously”.

Selected bibliography

 * Sidoti, F. (1979), L'apprentissage d'une institution. Mouvements et bureaux dans les régions italiennes, École des Hautes Etudes en Sciences Sociales, Paris.
 * Sidoti, F. (1981), I limiti della razionalità pubblica, Evoluzionisti e razionalisti nella teoria sociologia, Edizioni di Comunità, Milano.
 * Sidoti, F. (1996), Istituzioni e criminalità, Cedam, Padova.
 * Sidoti, F. (1998), Morale e metodo nell’intelligence, Cacucci, Bari.
 * Sidoti, F., Tribuzio G. (2003), Le sfide dell'Asia. Modelli educativi a confronto, Il Cerchio,
 * Sidoti, F. (2009a), The Italian Secret Services, in A.V., Geheimdienste in Europa, VS Verlag für Sozialwissenschaften.
 * Sidoti, F. (2012), Il crimine all'italiana. Una tradizione realista, garantista, mite'', Guerini, Milano.
 * Sidoti, F., M. Gammone (2013), Che cosa significa essere europeo? Una ricerca al cuore e ai confini dell’Europa, FrancoAngeli, Milano.
 * Sidoti, F. (2015b), Ideal and Geopolitical Borders, in Aa.Vv., Contemporary Studies in Humanities, Ehrmann Verlag, Frankfurt.
 * Sidoti, F., M. Ali Icbay and H. Arslan (eds) (2016), Research on Cultural Studies, Peter Lang, Bern.
 * Sidoti, F., M. Gammone M. and M. Ciotti, Manqing Fang (2017) (a cura di), La Criminalità in Italia e in Cina, Ghaleb, Roma.
 * Sidoti, F., Gammone M., Veneziano C. (2018), I Carabinieri e l'identità italiana, Ets, Pisa.
 * Sidoti, F. (2019a), Estremi d'odio, d'amore e d'amicizia, Linea, Padua.
 * Sidoti, F. (2019b), Intelligence Failures: The Turkish Case, Linea, Padua.