CIVIL ECONOMY, DEMOCRACY , TRANSPARENCY AND SOCIAL AND ENVIRONMENTAL ACCOUNTING RESEARCH ROLE: SOME REFLECTIONS IN THEORY AND IN PRACTICE DERIVING FROM 2ND CSEAR CONFERENCE-ITALY

In this book we are publishing some scientific papers that had been presented at the conference, and some experiences that are emerging in Rimini area that we consider very interesting to promote a social responsible district and the role that Social and environmental accounting will play to promote it. The Second Italian Conference on Social and Environmental accounting research was held from 17th to 19th September 2008 at the University of Bologna Rimini Campus. This conference was promoted by the Centre on Social and Environmental Accounting re-search(CSEAR)-University of St. Andrews(UK) that was involving the most important scholars in the world about this subject. It was organized by the University of Bologna at Rimini and it is the second Italian one after Bergamo that organized the first Italian conference on 2006. This initiative is developing alterna-tively of Spain that has more experience in this field. The Conference has been a deliberately informal gathering of researchers, teachers, students, and practitioners concerned with research, teaching and practice in social and environmental ac-counting in the very widest sense. The conference involved 50 delegates and the emphasis was on a high level of interaction, discussion and debate in a friendly, supportive atmosphere. Among delegates there were some guests, such as : Rob Gray(St. Andrews –Scotland-UK- video conference), Carol Adams(University La Trobe-Australia) , Carmen Correa Ruiz ( Univer-sity Pablo de Olavide de Sevilla-Spain) Jeffrey Unerman(Royal Holloway –London- UK), Jesse Dillard( Portland University-USA) and Antonio Matacena( University of Bologna).