Abstract

In this paper I deal with the contribution that social sciences provided to the building of the political, social and economic planning during the Italian fascism. I show the way in which social sciences worked out as strategic knowledge, knowledge which are usually able to shrink the complexity of social systems or organizations. The role of social sciences as strategic knowledge poses interesting questions about the connection between scientific activity and political action, the responsibility of scientists in front of corporate actor, the general social utility and use of the science. In this paper I analyze the planning knowledge which embraces the scientific organization of the labour, the psychotecnic or psychology of the labour dedicated to workers' selection, economic and social corporativism and more in general the theoretical field identifiable as social engineering. These fields of social engineering were shaped by a dominant and powerful theoretical approach: sociological organicism. This sociological view inspired any attempts to plan and design social system in several of its parts and components. The racialization of public space was the final effort to drive society toward a integrated, ordered and disciplined organism, which fascist political élite should control in all its aspects avoiding discrepancies and conflicts.