Le associazioni professionali (collegia), da ormai due decenni, sono tornate ad essere uno dei soggetti preferenziali per l’analisi della società romana di epoca imperiale. Esse si configurano come una delle espressioni più organizzate della plebe urbana e consentono di restituire un’immagine più vivida ed eterogenea dei ceti medi e inferiori. Questo libro, inserendosi nel solco dei recenti studi sull’argomento, indaga i rapporti di clientela che coinvolsero i collegia nell’occidente romano durante i primi tre secoli della nostra era. Il legame di patronato è qui descritto privilegiando il punto di vista delle associazioni professionali, per tratteggiare, così, il rapporto osservato dal basso. Il libro è preceduto da una prefazione di Nicolas Tran.

Ostia was a Roman city sui generis. In this article I will focus on a particular aspect of Russell Meiggs’ social revolution: the rise of businessmen and more generally of workers belonging to the associative world. The latter was increasingly flourishing and prosperous thanks to the commercial and economical ferment, caused by the construction of the two imperial harbours: there were at least 70 different collegia during the period under discussion. Therefore, I briefly present these associations, subdivided by areas of work and by importance, and I outline the problem of the identification of scholae in the urban fabric. In particular, I focus on the patronage of the professional associations, since its study allows us to scrutinize this modification of Ostian society from a privileged viewpoint. Almost 30 % of patrons came from a collegial milieu: this is an Ostian peculiarity since in other cities of the Roman West patrons were normally recruited among the municipal notables without any manifest tie with the associative-collegial world. This contribution shows how the composition of collegia was heterogeneous, at least for the Ostian context. The associations were indeed inspired by the fundamental cell of the Roman world, the city, and therefore they reproduced in a smaller scale its structure and its diversity. They surely strengthened their role in the local economy and even in the imperial one, with consequent repercussions in the society itself. Furthermore, this particular case allows us to focus on the constant interconnection between society and economy. In the wake of scholars such as Marcel Mauss and especially Karl Polanyi, this interplay between the latter and the former forces us to consider economy, at least the ancient one, as embedded in social structures.

How to solve the problem of professional certification is one of our association topics of interest. It is strictly connected with the changing profile of information scientists, the professional evolution and the training to the job. Professional associations, not only in Italy, must be engaged in promoting profession by working together on training, lifelong learning and professional skills certification. The goal of this Seminar is to promote a collaboration among Italian professional associations.

Precolumbian collections by italian doctors in Peru