1. Introduction

This study arises from the shared vision of psychology as a science with the power to know the social reality and to bring about changes, including political changes , seen as strategic for the regulation of living together in society.
ìFrom this perspective, the "promotion of development" is identified with the negotiation and the construction of objectives oriented to individual or organisational resource use, which can change the relationship between individuals and context, through the planning of a new type of development project.
These epistemological assumptions underlie this research, coordinated by Renzo Carli, focusing on the survey of collusive cultural processes characterizing workers with "atypical" 1 contracts, for the purpose of spurring political action on the problems of living together in society connected to the spread of "atypical employment contracts".
We start from the vision of political action and government as a potential "client oriented" service; we consider the relationship between government and atypical workers as an organization that can be constructed through democratic negotiation processes on social development projects.
Looking at labour reform, we believe that introducing a law is not enough to obtain a guarantee of its effective use: we think that our knowledge of Local Cultures 2 (Carli & Paniccia, 2002) enables us to formulate hypotheses about the use of what has been introduced, to design activities promoting development in collaboration with government interlocutors, with their expectations, and their ability to invest in professional projects.

2. Methodology

From July 2004 to May 2005 we collected 71 written texts from the same number of atypical workers, interviewed on their professional experience, through an intentionally open and generic question, sent by mail. This is a share sample, balanced according to three variables:
•  Sex (male/female)
•  Working organization size (small-medium-large)
•  Geographic area (north, centre, south)
The written texts were first read to identify Specific Cultural Models significant in the social group interviewed (R. Carli, S. Salvatore, 2001). These Cultural Models were taken to represent "cultural outlines" in the construction of the questionnaire or ISO tool, formed of the typical language of the cultural zones involved in the analysis, and we finally obtained a short questionnaire of easy application which made it possible in the subsequent steps of the research to reach a large number of people, also by phone or via internet, thus forming a representative sample of the target population.
Still in this step, the texts were put together in a single textual corpus, processed by software able to make a statistic elaboration of the text. The methodology used to study the cultural models characterizing the "atypical employment relationship" will be the Emotional text Analys is (Carli & Paniccia, 2002), object of the next paragraph.

2.1 Emotional Text Analysis

Emotional text Analysis (AET) elaborated by SPS (Office of Psychosociology) is a psychological tool for written text analysis; texts collected, according to the circumstances, by interviews, focus group, open questions in questionnaires, collection of writings or documents produced within areas of a specific organization etc.
AET makes it possible to analyse the local culture existing in a specific group of people "culturally" characterized by the relationship with a shared context in the language sample examined.
The relation between Aet and Local Culture is based on precise theoretical assumptions. The basic hypothesis is that the language (verbal or written) reflects the "double reference" principle, formulated by Fornari (1979 Carli , Paniccia, 2002) and that the words organizing the language sample can be divided into two large categories: dense words, with the maximum of polysemy if taken alone, and the minimum of ambiguity; non-dense words, with the maximum of sense ambiguity and thus with the minimum of polysemy. With Polysemy we refer to the infinitive association of meanings attributable to a word, when it is taken out of language context, reducing polysemy. Obviously this is an "emotional" polysemy which, when put in a language context, is transformed into the "sense", cognitively speaking, of the same word. Non-dense words are ambiguous words (for example, words like "to guess" or "anyway"), that need to be put in linguistic context to have meaning in the verbal or written language. From this point of view, ambiguity and polysemy are connotations in inverse proportion to each other in defining words: dense words are characterized by a maximum of polysemy and a minimum of ambiguity; if identified in a text, they can be collected on the basis of their recurrence in segments of the same text. This work of text segmentation and identification of recurrent word groups, in specific segments, is possible with the analysis of correspondences 3 between the dense words marked in the text and the text segments previously identified. These analyses are made possible by using specific text analysis software 4.
By factorial analysis of correspondences and cluster analysis 5 it is then possible to obtain groups of dense words, which we will call repertoires or clusters: "cultural repertoires" characterized by dense words co-occurring in a set of segments where the same dense words recur with the highest probability. The function of dense word co-occurrence, within the same Repertoire is to reduce the infinitive meanings of each dense word; it is as if every word considered loses a quota of polysemy, in the co-occurrence with other words, thus permitting the construction of different Repertoires. The basic AET hypothesis is the presence of an isomorphism, leading to the mind's way of being unconscious, between the co-occurrence obtained by text processing, and the emotional link between the dense words of every Cultural Repertoire surveyed (Carli & , Paniccia, 2002).
The attribution of emotional sense to co-occurrences happens through the use of emotional models, elaborated by Sps (Carli & Paniccia, 2002), which first of all let us go back to collusive, symbolic and cultural processes, peculiar to the different Repertoires, and then let us give emotional sense to the relations among the same Repertoires in which Local Culture, the research object, is articulated. These models are based on the construct of collusion, and are divided into three areas, along a continuum starting from the most general, primitive area of emotionality to arrive at the most developed and specific areas of the social bond, and thus, of the adaptation process between individual and context.
The analysis process finishes with the reading of the Cultural Space, represented by the Repertoire layout on the polarities of factorial space. The relation among the different emotional dimensions of the various Repertoires, in the factorial space 6, is considered to be the Local Culture referring to the specific context of analysis and to the related text; this culture is expressed by those who was engaged in constructing that text.

3. Cultural Repertoires

Let us introduce you to the analysis of the Local Culture studied in the population of atypical workers interviewed. We propose to begin by considering and analysing the co-occurrence, starting from the most central dense words of the Repertoire; that is, starting from words most contributing to the Repertoire's creation, in terms of statistical significance. The hypothesis underlying the analysis is that the set of co-occurrences analysed enables us to understand the "culture" characterizing that Repertoire 7. Figure 1 shows the factorial space (for us Cultural Space), defined by the intersection of three Cartesian axes, named factors, which explain the maximum of total data variance.
The output of AET has pointed out the presence of 3 clusters or Cultural Repertoires, set in the following way inside the Cultural Space: R.C. 3 is positioned on the extreme left of the horizontal axis, defining the 1st factor of Cultural Space; this repertoire is in contrast with the repertoires standing on the 2nd factor, where are placed in polar and opposite position R.C.1, on the bottom, and R.C. 2, at the top; on the 3rd factor, imagining it perpendicular to the page, there are no cultural repertoires. We begin from a description of the symbolic-collusive dynamics characterizing the single Cultural Repertoire surveyed with statistic text processing, then we study in depth the relations among the symbolic dynamics present in the three Cultural Repertoires, with the purpose of surveying the specific Culture under analysis, as it is organized within the Cultural Space.
The sequence of the cultural repertoires described is functional to their mutual positions on the factorial plan: we start from R.C. 3, situated on the 1st factor, to arrive at R.C. 1 and 2, positioned on the 2nd factor.

   Figure. 1 The factorial (or cultural) space

3.1. Cultural Repertoire 3

We start by analysing the third repertoire, the most extensive of the three comprising the Cultural Space: in fact, the percentage of text analysed that falls within it corresponds to 49% of the total text. Let us start to comment, by associating around the word that most contributed to the building up of the Repertoire under analysis.
Let us examine the meanings of the word to pay.
The Italian word "pagare" comes from Latin pacare in the sense of appeasing and from Greek pàcis: peace, quiet, because payment appeases, satisfies, makes the creditor content; payment reassures. We also say: "to pay the penalty for sth", paying off a debt with justice ("to pay off", "atone for", av. 1311, Giordano da Pisa). It refers to an agreement ("to remunerate" or "to pay" somebody giving him the money that is owed", 1211, TF, p.3), to an exchange deal between two subjects, to a relationship between somebody paying and someone receiving, a creditor and a debtors, a relationship that is not clearly defined.
Indeed attention is on the act of paying, of being paid, the final moment of a relationship making one feel appeased, at peace, reconciled, reassured, satisfied after receiving a reward.
Appeasing (with payment) also refers to a "before", made up of "sorrow, effort, coercion": it is the time of labour (from Latin tripalium, which means an instrument of torture; in the ancient meaning, therefore labour is associated with the state of he who suffers, who is tormented) where you have exhausted yourself, "you have tired yourself out" for the payer, and to an "after", when some needs will be satisfied and pacified by payment.
Let us look down the Repertoire in order of recurrence. We find euro.
Here is the first co-occurrence:

Now the polysemy of the first word is reduced by "euro" as specifying the object of that satisfaction and quiet of the senses that payment involves. We are confronted with a seemingly emotionally arid word that attributes an emotional boundary to polysemy, "confirming" the act of paying and the object of satisfaction.
Let us add the two dense words firm and part-time, because both have equal statistical weight in the repertoire's construction, so they have to be considered together in co-occurrence progression, seen from the perspective of the reduction of polysemy.

We have seen that paying refers to an exchange situation involving two players. The word "firm" in Italian is "ditta" and comes from Latin dicere, to say, to express, to make evident, to name. It's the name representing the payer, the organization for which you work ("business, company, the name of commercial company", 1786, C. Beccaria), and with which you exchange working time for payment; the "company/firm" that pays, satisfies, appeases.
It's seems that for the first time the emotional meeting implies a "subject", one who performs payment, payment of a professional performance that does not exist, except in the guise of its atypical part-time contractual form. Part-time consists of a subordinate employment relationship with a lower number of hours than what is expected for full-time job as defined by collective bargaining. Culturally part-time is associated to women workers, with the requirement of dedicating a good part of their time to caring for children, family and home. The association of the word "partial" to some of its opposites, like "total", "whole" facilitates its interpretation in co-occurrence: "partial" describes the payment when it is proportional to the partial hours spent working, "partial" describes the quiet and the satisfaction deriving from payment, "partial" is the salary , the following word forming the next co-occurrence:

"Salary" in Italian "stipendio" comes from Latin stipendium, compounded of stips "to be steady", solid as a trunk, a stump and from pendere like weighing and then paying. It's the remuneration of dependent work by employees" (av. 1642, G. Galilei). Again, it refers to receiving something fixed and constant in time, and so having an appeasing and reassuring value in a symbolic perspective. The circle of meanings every time seems to end in the emotional redundancies linked to the action of payment, to the objects of this action (euro), to its players "emotionally stifled", impersonal as a firm and a contract. There is no professional context, no performance, no idea of competences starting the game, no product. The circle closes with the salary, again decontextualized, impersonal, outside of professional exchange.
There are no interlocutors, above all there is no worker, there is a "partial" contract and a payment mediating the relationship with a faceless firm.
The picture seems open with the fifth co-occurrence:

The word social introduces a new dimension in the reading we are constructing, by introducing an "outside", compared with the autistic and impersonal circle mediated by payment; a dimension "referring to human and civil society" (1763-1764, C. Beccaria). "Social" (the Italian word is "sociale") derives from Latin socius, companion, allied, with the end in àlem, that points to belonging and dependence. A word evoking living together with others ("leading a joint life ", sec. XIV, S. Gregorio Magno), outside any relation of a commercial type, but only centred on the affective and relational sphere, giving belonging and dependence, where you meet together and you share. Payment and salary thus guarantee and satisfy the sphere of social belonging, which acquires a value for itself , separate from what you do in the working dimension; indeed this is absent in the repertoire. There are no words referring to the context of work contents, nor does it refer to professional expectation, to know-how sustaining the possibility of self–realization through work.
Let us now leave the particular analysis of co-occurrence, with the hypothesis that the building of emotional sense outlined so far permits an initial overall view of the culture present in the repertoire. Here are the other words that go deeper into the meaning of "social" that emerged apparently so suddenly in the repertoire: money, children, home, vacations, choice, family. We are confronted with a family of words similar in symbolic perspective, underlining a large investment in the affects and in family membership. "Money" in Italian "soldi" comes from soldus, gold coin, but also from solidus, solere, to be stable, upright, to be able to "choose", in Italian "scegliere", is composed of the prefix ex( from) and ligere or eligere that is electing, selecting, taking one among many things or people, separating the best part of a thing from the worst one; so electing what you believe as the best. Here there seems to emerge the emotional process of splitting, of separation between private (home, children and family) in which to invest also in economic terms, and the sphere of work that becomes so arid that it is emotionally identified with the act of payment. One moves around an emotional universe interwoven of reassuring myths, which scotomize the professional dimension shifting the attention to the affective sphere. Here you choose children (in Italian "figli", from fel-làre, or from greek root phy with the sense of being, to give existence, the particle comprising the verb to produce, to generate), family (in Italian "famiglia" from Latin familia, from famulus , famiglio, servant; from faama, home, members of home joined by blood ties), home (the word in Italian is "casa" and comes from the Latin cāsa, from greek kasa, hut, place where one resides covered, all that gives shade, roofing, protection, from Latin castrum fortress, and cassis helmet, cover and defence of the head) and vacations (the Italian word "ferie" derives from latin feriae, a splendid, glad day, consecrated to the feast, holiday, rest, peace, tranquillity, "period of deferment from sacrifices"): hence for existing, for "producing" you take refuge in the family, in affiliation dynamics, in the house that gives shade, protects, defends, keeps out strangeness (Carli & Paniccia, 2003) and brings in the private, reinforces blood ties, and in vacations, happy days, being far from sacrifices. Work is sacrifice because it is not conceivable in a dimension of professional growth, and not conceivable as a relationship whose aim is a product. One is in an affiliation dimension (McClelland, 1958), of a union among members with the same blood (we remember that the word "child"- present in the repertoire- has given rise to the naming verb "to affiliate" which means: taking a child as one's own child, but also admitting a person to a sect or an association); affiliation that appeases, protects, makes strong, reassures like a reassuring myth, an emotional universe not making prevision for feedback and evaluations on objectives and products. It seems here that family has the function of annihilating professional and social dimensions and marks itself out as an organization without product (Carli & Paniccia, 2002) that exhausts relational processes within itself, evading the relationship with the stranger (the client/the user of services). One lives without social awareness, planning and professional investment, and the attention is on the other, on the private sphere; you are confronted with a working dimension considering it just a source of money to invest in the private sphere, the only dimension "making one feel repaid", "happy", satisfied.
We have therefore examined this first cultural area enriched by the nature of the verbs present in the Cluster: to ask for, to accept, to be content, to give assent, to mature, to marry.
Some of these seem to mark the unilateral type of the relationship with the payer that you "ask for", (the Italian word "chiedere" comes from Latin quaerere, to wish, to search, to demand, to question, to pretend), from whom you receive and from which you take (meanings of the two roots of the verb to accept, from latin accipere and from the meeting between ad indicating purpose, intention and cèpere from càpere ), and you adulate (to give assent as in to consent, "give somebody a reason for everything becoming good for him") . And again to satisfy and to be content referring to pleasing, making satisfied but also paying the debt or the "price of sin". A process coming to end, to perfection (from the etymology of the verb ‘to mature') when one "marries" with the private, affiliation sphere, thus evading every alternative possibility of personal achievement and social construction of the proper professional identity.
Let us try to sum up and point out what has emerged so far from the progressive restriction of the polysemy of dense words. Our hypothesis is that this cultural repertoire – the most representative of the culture under analysis - substantiates a collusive dynamics that is central and important in the symbolization process characterizing atypical workers. There is no reference to the "inside" of the working context to satisfy the sense of belonging, either to a working group, to a professional group, or to "other" organizations, such as trade unions or political associations. Those who speak refer to family, to home, to the affective sphere in order to feel "part" of something. Work becomes an abstract entity, separate from its organisational content; it is experienced like "goods" exchanged to have in return the "salary", seen as the necessary tool for keeping or forming a family: this is the only horizon that could gratify one's desire for realization.
There are now two important questions specifically characterizing the collusive dynamic of the repertoire. The first is given by the focus on the family sphere as an exclusive dimension of personal achievement and at the same time pervading the whole of social relations and "overflowing" symbolically even into relations with employer/payer experienced in a familiar way as personal, informal, "taken for granted", "one-way" – a focus on the family dimension that refers to an expression coined by E. C. Banfield (1976) and then reformulated by other anthropologists (Tullio-Altan, 1986; Putnam, 1997) and historians (Ginsborg, 1989, 1998, 2004), the "amoral familism", which, according to the authors cited, represents one of the keys to interpreting Italian social history. We are confronted with a "closed" culture within the sphere of familiar ties, not interested in constructing new and different places of membership to represent public values, a community ethos, or anything outside, and foreign to, the family sphere. Work, from this point of view, could represent the dimension that lays the foundation for an opening to social awareness and to the assumption of responsibility towards the community to which one belongs.
The second question, strictly connected to the first, refers to the relationship made necessary between "family" and "money". Having and keeping a family is a "social duty" achieved only through economic autonomy, through earnings, ignoring every reference to emotional maturation and to development of an evolutionary autonomy: amoral familism develops in a consumerist culture, where money is the tool guaranteeing the family's own consumption, and providing the basis for its very existence.
In summary, we see a culture that does not see in work the possibility of social recognition, of symbolic retribution, but only an advantage of a material type: earnings are independent from every development of working competence. Work does not give belonging, nor growing: it is not anchored to the process of constructing one's own identity. This is conceived only inside a family sphere founded on conformist myths and stereotypes.

3.2. Cultural Repertoire 1

The 1st Cultural Repertoire represents 30% of the text.
Let us follow the same criterion used before: beginning from the word with the highest frequency in the Repertoire. The others will follow, defining the first co-occurrences.
The first dense word is guarantees.
The Italian word "garanzie" derives from French garant (1080) that, in turn, may derive from gothic * werjan, "to defend", "to protect"; due to the legal and commercial setting "guarantee" takes the meaning of "insurance", "certainty", "certain promise of positive outcome" (av. 1831, P. Colletta); "to give for certain"(1792, M. Cesarotti); "to insure against possible damages" ( to guarantee : av. 1857, C. Pisacane). Etymology evokes first of all the verbs "to defend" and "to protect". The first (from Latin to defend compounded of fendere "to strike", "to knock against" with de- subtracting, "hit with a blunt instrument ") refers to: rejecting, keeping apart, supporting, claiming; "to save people or things from dangers, damages, violences" ( defendere: beginning of the sec. XIII, Uguccione da Lodi); "to take the parts of somebody" (av. 1342, D.Cavalca); "to safeguard, to protect rights" (sec. XIV Giustino volgar.); "making proper reasons have value "(av. 1294, B. Latini); the second (from Latin to protect , compounded of pro "in front" and tegere "to cover") refers to: "to take defence, care, to give assistance, support", "who assures somebody of the follower fulfilling of a pact", "to help, to defend, to secure" (1598, Florio).
Hence "Guarantee" as protection and attentive, shrewd care, defence against something or somebody, claiming. It is just as you would foresee, the presence of a danger, there, in a trap, a danger you have to reject by threatening something that needs to be protected and defended.
Let us go to the first co-occurrence:

Future, in Italian "futuro" derives from Latin futurum, future participle of the verb esse "to be", points out something will be, is going to be.
The first co-occurrence therefore organizes from an emotional point of view, a specific place, the definition of the object to protect, to grow, to care it. The future that is not here yet and it will be on the basis of what is now. You must defend it from offences and dangers and therefore support, claim and reclaim it, "shout it with strength"; you must protect it and hence care for and help it. But defend it from what? What threatens it? What the damage consist of?
The third word of the Repertoire helps us to identify the third party of the relationship:

Flexibility, in Italian "flessibile", derives from Latin flexibilem from flexus, past participle of flectere : "to bend", and the suffix "-bile" originated from the verbal root bhal "to take" and so translating with "that takes", sometimes pointing "that can", in this case "that can flex", that "lets it bend more or less easily up to a point without breaking". The etymology of this word evokes a state of tension and in particular of the "limits" above that we cannot exclude a break. The etymology doesn't evoke a sure emotional dimension, but a possibility that can fulfilled to a certain degree. The request for guarantees, the need for protection and defence of one's own future seem to arise from the risks and the threats related to this state of insecurity, reminding us of the tension of a violin chord that cannot break... "up to a point". Flexibility is a property of an object not existing if the object were not confronted with different forces acting on it and that up to a point does not create breaks. If intuitively we identify this object in an atypical condition, we see it stretching and changing form, "transforming" in competences on the basis of the different forces that bend it: the complex and much more different requests of the labour market, the complex facets of the state of flexibility. Above the limit, this experience runs the risk of making the worker fall headlong in the whirl of precariousness (from Latin precarium , "obtained with prayers, conceding with grace", "temporary", "uncertain", "provisional"), the other face of flexibility medal, when something doesn't work, it "breaks".
With the second co-occurrence we see flexibility in the sense of "damage", "threaten", "danger" from which to defend, protect, claim a certain, sure future. We come back to a feeling of being provisional, of uncertainty, of insecurity about our future.
Proceeding with the analysis of the words of the Repertoire, we follow the project word that has been made unambiguous in the text, therefore distinguishing from other meanings of the same noun. Here we refer to one's own "project of life", what one wants to achieve, projecting forward, into the future that is not yet here but that is going to be.
We are therefore at the third co-occurrence:

The etymology of the word "project", in Italian "progetto" refers to the Latin word projectus: "action of throwing forward", composed of pro "forward" e jacere "throw", "what you are going to do in the forthcoming". The word evokes a tension, proceeding towards, an intention of giving shape to something that is just in draft form. It's the life project you are attempting to build, "to form". The word confines the future to planning dimensions, wishes, ideas of realization, of development. And it is actually the word development that is the fourth co-occurrence:

"Development", in Italian "sviluppo", as an act of developing, growing, increasing; to develop from viluppare with de - extractive and lasting, opposite to envelop with en - introductive; "releasing a velop (viluppo)" (1843, L. Pulci); "making progress, making increase" (1891, Petrarca); "to arouse, to produce" (1840, Stampa milanese); "to get rid of sth/sb, to disentangle" (av. 1503, Gallo Rime), "purchasing the ultimate form, said about living organisms" (1694, A. Mandirola); "to progress, to evolve" (1960, Diz. enc.); "to produce, to show oneself" (1823, Stampa milanese).
There is again the confirmation of a tension, an intention and wish of disentangling and evolving: you are inside a game of strengths implying emotional contrasts between what you want and you want to protect and what threatens, removes, steals (flexibility, its risks of precariousness). We come back to "a tie to untie", containing in itself some possibilities of evolution and simultaneously, marking the problems of an action that has not the "certainty of a positive outcome".
Let us see the fifth co-occurrence: post (job) :

Post (the Italian word "posto" derives from latin positum, past participle of ponere "to put") refers to "task, employment, office" (1673, P. Segneri), but also to state, grade, dignity. To be "positioned inside a working context, a post of employment is something "circumscribed, reserved to somebody for particular reasons or according to specific activities" (1611, L. Melzo). Intuitively we associate the word "steady" which marks, with "post", the search for security, the fixity of a situation still not changing, emotionally the opposite of temporariness and of the game of tension and changes implied in the "flexible" state. A post (job) has been evoked as the solution that might protect and guarantee one's future, and one's life projects. In the security of the "guaranteed" post you identify the possibility of escaping from tension, from fear, from risk, implied in flexibility, which is experienced as a precariousness.
The interpretative line taken so far, is confirmed by the next dense words present in the repertoire: to aim, exploitation, by now, guardianship, expectation, woman, strong, human.
You ardently aspire to, you strongly wish, you move to obtain what you search, "you aim" (from Latin ambire "going around, intriguing", "ardent wish of reaching and obtaining something) at a "post", a "fixed, established place": something certain in contrast with the uncertainty, mobility, temporariness, and transitoriness of flexible work.
The associating process suggested by etymology refers also to "captivating", "intriguing" to obtain a "post", "in ancient Rome it was custom, not forgotten by posterity, that those who wished obtain a small office made up to people with cajolery and promises, and went in search of people so as to gain their suffrage" (1907, O. Pianigiani); the word refers to the action of "gaining the other people's liking", to the clumsy movement of those who have no "saints in paradise" and so search for them on earth, knocking on doors, promises and cajoling to obtain something.
In the various associations suggested by etymology, we are confronted with the emotional dimension of the search for guarantees for one's future, represented by a permanent post, not by flexibility. The latter condition is marked by the lack of guardianship and by "exploitation", that refers to "abuse", to an "immoderate, illicit use of something" (1565 ca., A. Cornaro). Hence a feeling related to "unbearable" flexible working conditions of the present clearly emerges.
The "by now" marks another time, the point in which you are and in which you are preparing to be, evokes "the point of no return", from which you can't come back, the point of resignation, but also of anger: The Italian word is "ormai" composed of "ora" which we translate "now" and "mai" which we translate "ever". The etymology "suggests the present time with regard to the past, and sometimes to the future". And it is valid "now", "by now". It's a point of emotional separation, therefore suggesting the emotional splitting in two polar positions: on the one hand there is impotent resignation "by now there is nothing to do"; on the other hand, there is "now that's enough!", "By now something changes". But how does it change? By what movements? What strategies? What times? In the symbolic picture frame outlined it seems that there is no continuance between present and future, the time dimensions is fragmented; there is, on the contrary, the time deferred by "expectation". You wait for "guardianship", you expect "with attention" some transforming event that makes development and personal plans concrete. An expectation requiring "strength", capacity for "great exertion", that is "effort" of adapting to the conditions of the labour market, an effort by everybody, even by "women" who are culturally associated to the "weak sex": a "human", all-involving, invasive condition, but at the same time generic, faceless, marked by the singular: there is no trace, no clue of collective thoughts and actions.
Let u try to specify the culture expressed in this repertoire by analysing in association the last group of dense words: risks, atypical, motivation, frustration, advantage, short, creates, uncertainty. The dimension of "risk" comes back, which in a double etymology, refers to "chance", "destiny", "possibilities of damaging or negative consequences due to circumstances not always foreseen" and "rock, cliff positioned vertically", and so the sense of danger, of hazard.
We are inside a conflictual emotionality oscillating between impotence and omnipotence. An omnipotence leading us to challenge destiny, to "dare" counteracted by the "motivation" (which refers to the driving force) to create (which refers to "making" and "producing"), in perspective of "advantages". But challenging such a great thing leads to "frustration" as awareness of deceit and mistakes; it leads to living in the immobility of impotence; and it leads finally to the condition of being "atypical". This is the opposite of being typical, implying instead an mould used to make other moulds, an original model, an example. Planning the future is hazardous, without ready-made moulds, examples, or original models. We are in an emotional dimension where thinkable time is "short", is fragmented in a lasting present, which imagines the future as "uncertain": not "fixable", not "decided", not "chosen", not "specified".
Unlike the 3rd R.C., here we are confronted with a collusive dynamic anchored to the context of atypical job; collusive dynamic not foreseeing "escapes" in compensating and stereotyped myths which establish a reassuring sense of belonging, but this dynamic shows itself in a conflictual emotionality, marked on the one hand by the spur to plan future and develop it, on the other hand by fear connected to the risk of doing so because of being atypical, precarious, unprotected and exploited.
Flexibility hence is imagined as a limit to the development of one's own planning. The risk is of falling into a depressive and impotent emotional state, which on the one hand stifles the spur to build one's future, and on the other hand consumes the dimension of work in a feeling of precariousness, annihilating all mental space oriented to professional growth.

3.3. Cultural Repertoire 2

This repertoire represents 21% of the phrases of the text.
The first words we meet and that most contribute to the composition of the cluster are all contained in the abbreviation co_co_co, indicating the contract of coordinated and continuous collaboration (in Italian Collaborazione Coordinata e Continuativa) and co_pro for the contract of collaboration on a project work (in Italian contratto di Collaborazione a Progetto), two forms of Italian temporary contract that are most strongly identified with the atypical condition of collaborators.

From the legal perspective, with the term collaboration one agrees to the absence of subordinate obligation; the collaborator is not subject to the directive power of the employer because structurally he is not part of the business organization, moreover he benefits from autonomy of performance. In establishing the ways of collaboration, nevertheless, the word coordinated indicates the need to synchronize worker activity to the payer's productive cycle. An atypical worker therefore benefits from organizational autonomy in ways, time and place of work, but working activity however has to connect functionally and structurally to those of the organization. From the legal point of view, the word continuous indicates a set of working performances repeated approximately in time, the product of agreement between the parties. In coordinated and continuous collaboration there is no foreseen minimum or maximum time of contract length and the contract can even be renewed several times.
As in coordinated and continuous collaboration, also in project work, introduced by Law 30/03, the difference from self-employment is that the collaborator acts in a mainly personal way, with no economic risk, without organized company tools and on the basis of the outcome to achieve. The new law also says that a collaborator on a project is not a subordinate worker and so he must not be subjected to obligations in subordination: the payer cannot exercise control and disciplinary power over him. Hence in order to be called a project worker, the worker has to carry out his activity on the basis of the project or the working plan given by payer, but he can manage his own activity independently.
Later the Labour Ministry circular of 1/04 laid down that the autonomy of the co-workers must necessarily be compatible with possible requests by the employer for coordination with his activity
Another innovation introduced by the Law 30/03, differentiating collaboration on projects from the other contracts of coordinated and continuous collaboration, is that the contracts of collaboration on projects have to contain indications of one or more specific projects or working plans or phases determined by the employer and on this basis individual labour contracts will be drawn up. The indication of project or working plans or phases is essential, as is also its length, determined or to be determined, payment and criteria for its determination, and the forms of coordination with the employer on the execution, and the time of the working performance.
The co-occurrence has led us to describe the two contractual forms: it is as if the cluster gave an informative element, as a contextual introduction to the culture under analysis. But let us go to the following associated word:

Another word that seems to go deeper into the description of the two contracts, in particular the contractual position as regards the institution , the employer who, as we have seen, cannot exert directive and disciplinary power on the worker, but can make some requirements of "coordination" in the work. The Italian word for institution is "ente" which derives from the Latin present participle of the verb esse "to be". This word also refers to "entity" something that has great "importance and value" (1787, C. Beccaria). The word seems to reconfirm the "conditions" reported in the contract. The cluster seems to be in an emotionally dull dimension, which only "describes" formal conditions, rules, laws, regulations, again not anchored to personal and professional experience. It seems to be a "facade" cluster, confirming the presence of a contract that, we begin to hypothesize, acts as a "screen" for something, for an emotionally complete experience, which prevents evaluation of the conditions it contains.
The following word we meet seems to greatly reduce the polysemy of the second co-occurrence and confirm our hypothesis:

The word hours, in Italian "orari" introduces a "time" dimension in the labour relationship. It refers to working hours, as the time boundaries within which working performance takes place every day (times of entry, exit, length) according to what is established by the contract types examined before (co_co_co, co_pro) and in the context of what is established in contacts between hirer and collaborator.
We are inside formulas, work experience is reduced merely to its contractual dimensions. The coldness of abbreviations (co_pro, co_co_co) seems to be extended to work that can't be "told", that has no experiential value: is a mathematical equation (it's not accident that another word we find in the cluster is "numbers", as if to suggest the taken-for-granted nature of the experience (two plus two always equals four) and the cold linearity; it's a legislative event, a law that places obligations, that guarantees, that has to be respected.
Then two words with the same statistical weight come into the cluster, and seem to change the picture so far outlined.

The word reform, in Italian "riforma", again evokes the changes in the contractual dimension but testifies an opening towards the social dimension. It comes from Latin reformare "forming in opposite way", "to give a new shape with the purpose of improving, renewing, reorganizing something", "forming again", "transforming a situation", "to modify": the immobility of the cluster seems for the first time be shacked by something moving, modifying, implying the "action of bringing".
Again, in the Italian language "libertà" (freedom), comes from latin libertatem, deriving from liber "free", "who has no master, especially in contrast with slave (1348-1353, G. Boccaccio), "who has full freedom of action, of movement and so on" (sec. XIII, A. Monte), "who has the benefit of his/her person, not subjected to some master, who makes, or can make by himself/herself, in his/her own way and at pleasure", "not subjected to bonds, obligations, duties" (1572, A. Di Costanzo). It refers to Latin liberum from lub - ère, making pleasure, making agreeable, and then libens , willing "because only he who is free does what he likes".
Freedom that is not autonomy (a term that in its etymology refers to the presence of laws, even if one's own) but that evokes the idea of clearance, tension. It is as if there finally emerged a personal dimension to counteract the impersonality of contractual rules. But which meanings can this tension take?
Let us see the fourth co-occurrence:

Dependent, in Italian "dipendente" from Latin dependere (compounded of de- and pendere), "to hang under", "to be subjected to authority, to other people's power" (1540, F. Guicciardini), "who, in a job, depends on the directive power of employer (1763-1765, G. Baretti). The word's etymology refers to "obeying", "submitting" "subjecting", "to be subordinate", words evoking an asymmetric and hierarchic relation, where there is one who is "above" and has a "high decisional power" and one who is "under" and sees this power reduced.
This word permits us to define in a clearer way the symbolic meanings introduced by the words analysed so far; in particular we can recognize some boundaries of emotional sense in what is evoked by the previous dense word, "freedom". We can hypothesize that the person speaking organizes his/her emotional relationship with the contractual "formulas" (co_co_co, co_pro) in a symbolic-affective dimension playing on the polarity "free" versus "dependent".
It seems that the possibility, created by "reform", of having "freedom" in the carrying out of working activity is in contrast with an "dependent" emotional position that refers to an employment relationship marked by asymmetry of power.
Let us examine the following dense words with the objective of developing our hypothesis about repertoire culture: number, job projects, task, formally, professional performance, mask.
Alongside the polarity just identified, we can recognize others: "number" reminds us of "whatever", an impersonal dimension, "given" and "granted" which refers to "dependent" and is in contrast to "free"; "job project" is in contrast with project - understood as an abstract and decontextualized formula- of the contract for project work; "task" (action or work specifically assigned by other people) is opposed to "professional performance", to "put at somebody's disposal" (from Latin prestare) an activity, a "recognized" competence (from Latin profiteri "declaring openly", "to recognize") starting from a position of "freedom", "independence"; but also, "formally" that marks a "status", something giving shape to things and that "makes them really such as they are not", refers to the idiom "all shape and no substance" (from sub-stare, submitting, that is essential, other things from appearances).
One has the impression that, through the contrasts, there is a translation in emotional terms of the contract as a "mask" (in Italian "maschera" from medieval Latin màsca witch and then ghost, larva, disguised aspect or then peel of onion, and from Arab maskharat, funny, amd from Flemish maschelen dyeing of black, staining, dirtying). It seems that something "is revealed" and, that there finally emerge the different faces of the same coin, that from the contractual "form" emerges instead the "substance" of work experience. An ambiguous experience, often "false", a mask-contract in which the game between freedom and dependency is really a "power game", that transforms professional performance into a task, and the professional project in the coldness of a project work contract: in other words, one's professional activity gets away from liberally negotiated objectives, and is reduced to an assigned task, according to the schedule established by the hirer, i.e. by he who orders. Hence there is no integration of competences in the relationship between the collaborator and the hiring organization. We are confronted, on the contrary, with a relationship symbolized as asymmetric, based on the power of he who is "above" and can decide, and he who is "below" and has to accept: "the power of the one over the other, power without interactive communication, comparison and without competence " (Carli, Paniccia, p.71); power "given" and "unquestioning" that in the repertoire is evoked also by absence of verbs referring to possible forms of action and inter-action between hirer and collaborator.
Let us try to specify what has been hypothesized so far.
What one sees in front, in the formal, contractual perspective, and which refers to autonomy in the carrying out of professional performance, hides the real face of the atypical worker, what there is behind: that is, work reduced to a task, to the execution of regulations subjected to the control of the one who is "above".
The person speaking feels that s/he is placed in a "false" context where there is only a relation based on incompetent power, without a product shared by both parties.
We remember that the cluster under analysis is in contrast with the 1st repertoire on the second factor, that expressed a cultural process opposite to this one, because is focused on "claiming guarantees for planning the future". Here on the contrary this dimension is "not thinkable", one feels in a world without belonging and with anomie, ruled by the power of the strongest, that stifles one's personal and professional drive to self realization; one does not think about the future, because one is dragged into an emotional dynamic interwoven with anger and sense of impotence, a violent emotionality that is in conflict with the present.
The risk emerging is that of a compliant culture where freedom and self-determination are not used for the development of one's professional competence, defining plans and agreeing on objectives, outcomes, measurable products, but are measured only by the rule established by power, in challenging and contravening it.
We are therefore faced with a collusive dynamic where freedom that might be translated into autonomy and that might trigger a process of professional development, is imagined on the contrary as freedom from the bonds of flexible work, as the transgressive answer to "false" and deceiving rules, made for the employer/hirer, experienced as mythical, omnipotent power.

3.4. The Cultural Space

Let us now give an overall vision of the collusive dynamics characterizing workers with atypical contracts. The graphic (figure 2) explains the positions and dimensions within the factorial (or cultural) Space of the three repertoires just analysed.

  Fig. 2 Position and dimensions of Cultural Repertoires within Cultural Space

On the left of the first factorial axis, the horizontal one, is situated R.C. 3, that is in contrast with R.C. 1 and R.C 2 located to the two opposite extremities of the second factorial axis, the vertical one.
Let us see what meaning we can give to the three cultural repertoires, as they are positioned within the factorial space (for us the cultural space).
We begin from the horizontal axis, where R.C. 3 is situated, belonging to, as just we have seen, 49% of the phrases of the text, the repertoire most representative of the Culture under analysis.
The 3rd Repertoire is characterized by a cultural dimension based on the reassuring myth of the family bond, as a collusive result of emotional escape from the working context. We have called it amoral and consumerist familism. Family as myth, refuge, happy island; the only space where you can find morality and good, because evil is kept out of it; evil is above all in the working context, the public place par excellence . Having become a place without rules, anomic, where there is no sense of "we" to establish ties of belonging, different from the family bond, work is deprived of its role as the driving force of social integration and cohesion and it does not offer any support to the process of social recognition. It therefore no longer represents as it did in the past, the horizon for thinking and planning one's personal realization. The sphere of work has lost its values to such an extent that it is identified on an emotional plane with the money needed for the family's consumer goods. Family responsibility, moreover, is conceivable only as economic responsibility and power: family and money are necessarily related.
The dramatic nature of this emotional feeling abates in the R.C. on the second factorial axis and opposed to the 3rd; repertoires permitting at the same time to see more clearly the polar and split elements forming the cultural space under analysis.
The vertical axis, where R.C. 2 and 1 are in contrast, has the character of a factor where one thinks about the relation between the individual requirements of self-development and the constraints of the atypical working context, unlike what happens in the 3rd R.C.
At the top, we find R.C. 2, which we can define false freedom. This is the cultural dimension of context symbolization as "false": the desire for freedom is not translated into autonomy, and ends up in a power game ruled collusively by duties and transgressions. We are in an anomic working world, where rules are "false" and made to measure for the employer/payer; the possible answer is not an escape to the family bonds of the 3rd R.C., but anarchic and solipsistic freedom. We are in the awareness of deceit; we are in the falsity and contradiction between the legal level on the one hand and "what happens in reality" on the other hand. Again, in the culture, we find dimensions of collective agreement, of "double state", shown by comments like "After all, we're in Italy!" or "It could only happen in Italy", giving evidence of the collusive dimension.
At the bottom, opposite R.C. 2, we find R.C.1, defining another cultural dimension, that connected to planning. Here the bonds felt in the context are not part of the collusive dynamic referring to transgression, but in the lack of protection in flexible, precarious, unstable, provisional jobs. This lack of protection conflicts with the desire to plan.
Work is conceived as stability and possibility of development, of future planning. This stability and development however, are imagined in relation to permanent job, salaried jobs; outside these contexts, thinking about the future is transformed into something risky.
In R.C. 1 it clearly emerges what unites the "we" of atypical workers: work instability and future uncertainty. This is a symbolic area that focuses on the planning dimension, seen as the motivation to give sense to one's life before the risk of non-sense represented by atypical working contexts. In the drive towards the future and development you can glimpse the conflicting hope of escaping from anomy. There is some progress compared with the a-critical family integration (R.C.3) and with the transgressive anarchic freedom (R.C.2), that outlines a cultural system in evolution and not defensively closed within the reactivity to a working world "lacking sense".
We can hypothesize now with more accuracy the reasons for the polarity of R.C. 2 and 1, situated on the second factor. The demand of security, stability, which is possible only if you are inside an organization, if you are part of it, counteracted with the demand of freedom that, even if it is part of the collusive dynamic of transgression, does not envisage belonging to an organisation. This tension between freedom and security generates two collusive movements, that risk being translated into angry reactivity and transgression anchored to the present of R.C.2, or in an impotent and depressive state, near R.C.1, as a result of the impossibility of long-term planning.
It seems that the collusive system formed with atypical contracts outlines some cultural ways of managing the "lack" of stability and belonging, in contrast and extremely differentiated.
A lack of emotional feeling represented dramatically in R.C.3 where silence on the job is compensated by the escape into social duty, part of the consumerist and amoral family bond. There is the presence of a mythic and unrealistic "outside", showing the most important symbolic dimension in the cultural space analysed: the absence of an "inside", that on the one hand contains and gives security, and on the other hand, orientates the process of social integration and personal realization.
The lack of belonging is present on the second factorial axis in the problematic contrast between contravening freedom and risk planning.
As an atypical worker one moves, within the organization one works for, in an individual way, like a monad without belonging, putting oneself at the centre of proper projects or of proper organisational behaviour. The process of individualization seems to have a double outcome: on the one hand, uncertainty, as the characteristic of the context in which workers find themselves, becomes more and more also the feature of the plans they make, i.e., it takes on a subjective dimension. Placed before a highly changeable context, the individual has to make more and more complex choices, and continuously has to make decisions without being aware of their consequences. On the other hand, a second aspect of the individualization process is outlined, that is the spur to freedom and to self-determination, which, in the "false" context of atypical work becomes transgressive, anarchic freedom.
If R.C. 3 marked the failure of work as the motor of social recognition and personal realization, with R.C. 1 and 2, emerge the polar and split dimensions that obstruct their development in this direction. An atypical employment relationship establishes either freedom without planning, and therefore transgressive, where there is no assumption of responsibility for the development of one's professional competence, or a planning blocked by the anxiety and uncertainty of one's precarious individualization and of the fragmentation of work experience, which makes one feel the full responsibility for defining one's personal and professional pathway, and of related risks.

4. Concluding comments

From the work of analysis carried out so far 8 we can extract some initial information about the psychosocial consequences deriving from the spread of atypical employment relationships. This information urges us to make a critical reflection on current legislation regulating the labour market.
The specific cultural models emerging testify that the introduction of flexibility has brought a crisis in the meaning and the function of work as the decisive and dominant dimension in the route to professional and personal realization on the one hand, and in integration and social cohesion, on the other hand.
The gap between belonging to an organization, which is becoming more and more transitory, and the stability and development of professional careers makes the work dimension extremely problematic and pushes the individual to take on him or herself all the risks of planning his/her own professional and personal life.
As an atypical worker, the single worker has to charge his life plan alone, without external reference points. Work as stability and development is no longer conceivable and it no longer represents an element of inclusion in social reality, it no longer gives any guarantee of recognition and social improvement.
The risks of splitting, of separating oneself from one's own inner and external world are strong, as we have seen with R.C.3, taking refuge in mythic and idealized belonging dimensions- the family- as a way of protection and escape from work experience, which has become much more fragmented, lacking in sense, and reduced to the sole dimension of earnings; and so the experience itself appears split from its content, and from any reference to the construction of professional competences.
Faced with incentives to flexibility, the single worker is called upon to mentalize a fragmented experience; what he did, what he does, and what he will do are much more difficult to represent on a linear path. He is exposed to the risk of finding a block in his capacity to think of his own personal and professional growth in an ongoing time dimension. Time seems to be fragmented: past, present and future are strangers. To cope with the stress of flexibility, in the great difficulty of putting together again and mentalizing his own professional history, time is suddenly transformed into a sequence of presents. The flattening of oneself in the present is expressed with great clarity in R.C.2, where the awareness of "falsity" of the atypical working context risks ending up in a transgressive attitude towards the power of employer/payer, avoiding thinking about projects, objectives, products related to one's personal and professional growth, and thus holding back the future. For everybody, but first of all for the young, a marked gap can be opened between the desire for self-realization and the real possibilities of realization. This gap is responsible, on the one hand, for the loss of inner confidence and the reduced possibility of maintaining social ties, and on the other hand, for the reduction of self-expression through work.
Building a working career in contexts of great flexibility and uncertainty requires the subject to be able to put together his meetings, episodes, experience and competence into a meaningful story, But in this route of continuous construction of one's professional self it is important to feel that one is an individual but not alone. Emphasis on the aspect of being alone orientates one towards individualism, towards an omnipotent representation of individuals able to independently achieve a working identity, while the individual is inevitably a social being. We remember what emerged in R.C.1, where we noticed an emotional dynamic characterized by an oscillation between impotence and omnipotence in future planning; as individualized individuals, thinking about the future becomes an act of heroism, a hazard resulting in the immobility of impotence, because it implies feeling the weight of all the responsibility of defining one's own personal and professional path, with the related risks. The risk is therefore that of falling into an impotent and depressive emotional state, which on the one hand kills one's desire to build a proper future, and on the other hand sees work reduced to a feeling of precariousness that annihilates all mental space devoted to professional growth.
If in the working context, one lives as a monad, as a sum of individuals, without any reference to business, professional and trade union membership, how can one not be overwhelmed by flexibility?
This is a significant issue in thinking about possible political-institutional paths designed to bridge the gap between the atypical working context and development of professional competence. We have seen that in the past the strong membership of the organization for which people work, guaranteed access to and development of a working identity.
The trade union also played- and still plays, at least for workers with full-time and permanent contracts - a significative role in this sense, guaranteeing the defence of effective rights, on the one hand, but also thinking on work and on its meaning in a collective and shared sense. This sense of belonging represents "common reference practices". Various studies (Ajello & Meghnagi, 1998; Zucchermaglio, 1996; Pontecorvo, Ajello& Zucchermaglio, 1995 ; Zucchermaglio, 1996) have noted that belonging to a professional group or work collective is the basic element for the construction of professional know-how.
Belonging is not constituted by simply "doing" regardless of where, how, or with whom one does a certain activity; work experience is related to the social context, to the organization where it is carried out, to the relational system that comes with it and to the type of shared and subjective elaboration of knowledge. The learning and professional development process is the outcome of complex paths situated inside the contexts where the worker applies his know-how in relation with others: the people involved give rise to a community able to comprehend and support itself, constructing, through interaction, a "shared grounds" for self-identification, at least of the professional part of their identity.
Now with flexibility these forms of belonging are challenged. As is also the possibility of recognizing oneself in a professional or working community, which makes it possible to compare and exchange experiences on professional growth and career. What atypical workers lack therefore is really being part of the fabric of the shared social context that acts as a reference point against the tendency to fragmentation of identity paths linked to work.
The specific cultural models that have emerged call for profound reflection about the psychosocial consequences that might spring from another undifferentiated proliferation of flexible employment contracts. We refer in particular to all the cases of abuse and over-use of project work contracts by firms, with the support of the political system, with the purpose of unloading onto workers the risks involved in the extreme turbulence of the international economic system.
If, as discussed in the introduction, political action can be considered as a potential "client"-oriented service, through knowledge and the subsequent shouldering of specific social demands, we believe that the "product" of the research-intervention presented may contribute to the acquisition of competence on the part of political institutions, which will take concrete form in a planning capacity with articulated processes of exploration and dialogue with the "end-users" and a constant evaluation of the action models chosen. We hypothesize that the survey, measurement and analysis of the cultural dimensions characterizing atypical workers can be considered indicators of the competence in dealing with the stranger on the part of the institutions. This will give the institutions advice and strategic directions for policies oriented to using labour reform to promote development.

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Notes

* Specialist in Health Psychology. Top

** Attending a specialization at the Health Psychology postgraduate school, "La Sapienza" University of Rome -Lecturer, "La Sapienza" University of Rome, Italy. Top

*** Ph.D. student in Clinical Psychology, University of Lecce – Lecturer, "La Sapienza" University of Rome. Top

**** Ph.D. student in Clinical Psychology, University of Lecce, Italy. Top

***** Ph.D. in Community Psychology, University of Lecce. Top

****** Professor in Clinical Psychology, "La Sapienza" University of Rome. Top

1. Since the passing of law 196/97, flexible employment contracts have been extended on a large scale, destined to a further expansion with the recent law 30/2003, named "Biagi law" which aimed to increase hiring flexibility through the introduction of new contract types: project work, on-call jobs, job sharing, staff leasing, introductory contracts, casual contracts of an auxiliary type; in the context of the new regulations that emerged with the passing of this law, the Italian labour market is characterized by as many as 21 different employment contracts, differing from standard employment, which can be applied in 48 different ways, according to the contract stability or to the length of working hours (Istat, 2004). Top

2. By Local Culture we refer to that collusive process, based on the affective symbolization of the context, characterizing specific social groups, called organizations or special structures. In this sense, it is possible to talk about the Local Culture of a hospital, a city, a firm, a school or in this case, of people who share the same context in terms of experience of atypical employment contracts. Top

3. As all factorial analysis methods, analysis of correspondences can extract new variables - the factors - that have the property of synthesizing the information in an orderly way. It is also possible to prepare graphs to represent - in one or more spaces- the language entities collected by co-occurrence. Top

4. In this case the software used is Alceste (Analyse des Léxèmes Cooccurrents dans les Enoncés Simples d'un Texte) by Max Reinert. Top

5. This is a set of statistical techniques with the objective of identifying groups of objects (in this case, of dense words) that have two complementary characteristics: within them, the maximum resemblance among the constituting elements (the words belonging to each cluster); among themselves, the maximum difference. Top

6. In correspondence analysis each factor organizes a spatial dimension - representable with a line or an axis - on whose centre is the value "0" and developing in a bipolar way towards the "negative" (-) and "positive" (+) extremities; in such a way that the different clusters of dense words set on the opposite poles are those that differ the most from each other, like "left" and "right" on the political axis. Hence the analysis results are synthesized by graphics (Cartesian planes) making it possible to see the proximity/distance relations- that is resemblance/difference - among the different word groups considered. In fact interpreting a factorial axis means finding what is similar, on the one hand, between all that is on the right of the origin, and on the other hand, between all that is on the left, and then expressing the opposition between the two extremities with concision and accuracy. Top

7. The analysis of the co-occurrence starts by considering the etymology of dense words compounding the clusters or Cultural Repertoires. As R. Carli and R.M. Paniccia (2002, p. 169) point out: "the recourse to words' etymology serves to orientate the researcher within the polysemy of the dense word, identifying emotional areas where the mind can associate". For this purpose, we used the following dictionaries: Devoto G., Avviamento all'etimologia italiana, Le Monnier, Firenze, 1989; Cortellazzo M., Zolli P., Dizionario etimologico della lingua italiana, Zanichelli, Bologna, 1984; Castiglioni L., Mariotti S., Vocabolario della lingua latina, Loesher, Torino, 1966; De Mauro T., Grande Dizionario italiano dell'Uso, Utet, Torino, 2003. Top

8. The present study represents the first of the necessary phases of research now in progress, using ISO methodology for the purpose of realizing the cultural map of a specific area: in this case, of the population of atypical workers with work experience under atypical contracts. This map enables us to identify the indicator of organisational development of the culture surveyed in the area under analysis, to hypothesize the direction of future development and critical dimensions. The phase we have described, based on emotional text analysis of interviews of a limited group of subjects, has led to the identification of specific cultural models, significant of the social group of people interviewed (R. Carli, S.Salvatore, 2001). These models therefore represent "cultural outlines" for the construction of the questionnaire or ISO Tool, composed of language expressions characterizing the cultural area under analysis, to arrive finally at a short questionnaire of easy application with the advantage of reaching, also by phone o via internet, a large number of people, in the later steps of the research, and so forming a representative sample of the target population. Top