Anna Tuckett, Rules, Paper, Status. Migrants and Precarious Bureaucracy in Contemporary Italy

This thesis provides an in-depth discussion of recent Italian novels and movies engaging with different notions of ‘Southernness’ and ‘the south’ and/or exploring the predicament of contemporary southern Italy as a border-space. In considering this production this thesis aims at reframing and rethinking the concept of subjectivity and national identity in contemporary Italy. The aim is to highlight the importance of the interaction among multiple cultures, histories and elements of subjectivity (gender, ethnicity, sexuality) as co-constituting in the process of creation of national and regional identity and to illustrate the concomitant emergence of new conceptions of Italian cinema and Italian literature. This is achieved by drawing from the recent recasting of the ‘southern question’ in postcolonial terms, from renovated philosophical understandings of southern Italian identity and their points of contact with decolonial theories emerging from other souths, as well as from recent historical debates on the Italian diaspora and its links with Italian colonialism. In developing a framework for discussing texts on/from the south this thesis engages and contributes to contemporary debates on the work of southern writers informed by a postcolonial sensitivity, to discussions on the impact of the work of translingual authors writing in Italian and on translingual writing as self-translation, on Italian transcultural cinema. This research aims to answer how literary and cinematic representations sustain or run counter to the process of marginalization of the Italian South on one hand and of migrants to Italy on the other. It provides a discussion of the historical and cultural contexts to which many of the texts taken into consideration refer and proceeds to analyse in depth specific case studies. Novels by Giulio Angioni, Ornela Vorpsi and Evelina Santangelo and movies by Emanuele Crialese, Emma Dante and Jonas Carpignano are discussed in relation to the different and interrelated representations of ethnicity and culture, nationhood and mobility, gender and sexuality, ‘Italianness’ and ‘Southernness’ they provide. These analyses show how these texts, by exploring and establishing links among histories, cultures and languages of different souths participate to the ongoing transformation in transnational terms of Italian and southern Italian culture and identity.

The Authors analyses the reasons of the unification of Italy in 1861 and of all the processes connected to this historical event. They showed the role of the Savoy dynasty and of the count Camillo Cavour. They also discussed the role of the contemporary pope Pius IX and what happened with the State of the Church which had existed more than 1000 years. In a very interesting way they also discuss the consequences of the unifi cation for further Italian history and for the contemporary Italy.

In a worldwide context of growing migration, many studies confirm the central role played by the family in the migration plans and strategies of individuals, that is, the decision to emigrate and how. The family also takes on considerable importance in defining subsequent modifications, such as the length and development of the plan to emigrate. According to the literature and recent studies, we find that the migration experience changes social relationships by especially altering intergenerational and gender roles. The change may be limited to family rules, or be extended to affective gender and generation bonds. The family care function takes place in a new social and cultural environment and family bonds must be reconsidered, in light of the cultural, social and economic features of the hosting country. In this regards, Italy is quite an interesting case because of its long history of migration and its recent role as immigration country. These features are discussed, with particular attention to domestic and care work, and women’s (and men’s) roles when participating in Italy´s labour market. The aim is to focus on the Italian situation in light of the literature and recent sociological research in reference to policies and practices.

Early school leaving, despite being quite common in Italy, has not been studied much. There is a lack of data and quantitative research concerning its pattern over time and its relation to social stratificaztion and inequility. The paper contributes to this topic using the first two waves of teh ILFI data (1997,1999) which contain detailed information on both educational and occupational careers of a representative sample of Italians. This makes it posssible to decribe the pattersn over time of early schoool leaving in Italy for each level of schooling. The main aim of hte paper is, however, to integrate early leaving in the typical research questions concerning the association between social class of origin, education and occupational attainment. The genral problem is : what happens if education is measured taking early leaving into account ? More in detail two research questions are asked : (a) does the association between class of origin and education found measuring education according ot the highest title achieved still hold when early leaving is considered ? in other words: is school leaving classs biased ? (b) does the picture of the transition from school to work change when early leaving is taken into account ? how do early leavers perform in the labour market with respect to both those who do not even start and those sho complete a given educational level ?

In this paper I discuss the current state of the so called populist political discourse in Italy. In particular my purpose is to shed light on some features of this kind of discourse in order to show the relation between language and policy in the discourse of populism. In this perspective I will follow the eight key points that, according to Diamanti & Lazar (2018), identify the actual populist movements, in order to verify if – and, in that case, which – linguistic traits characterize their discourse.The analysis will be focused on the semantic and argumentative aspects of the discourse of some of the most important political actors in contemporary Italy.

Cristiana Giordano, Migrants in Translation: Caring and the Logics of Difference in Contemporary Italy

The article deals with rejections of the mainstream society and subsequent foundations of alternative societies: monasticism, counter-cultural communities, utopias... The hypothesis is that all these counter-foundations share a common concern for a social life entirely controlled by human will (in alternative societies of religious kind, human will is intended to follow the instructions of divine will). A case study is analyzed: Catholic eremitism in contemporary Italy, with particular regard to ascetic practices, such as solitude and fast. These experiments of rejection of the world achieve only limited success, because of the overwhelming cognitive effort they demand. Such experiences help to understand how much of the normal social life passes unnoticed.

Il titolo della collana esprime la volontà di approfondire i profili legati al processo di integrazione europeo, non ignorandone i risvolti più burocratici e discutibili, ma sapendo guardare al di là di essi, nella logica che traspare dal gioco di assonanze indicato dal titolo. In questo secondo volume, dedicato a crisi e trasformazioni della cittadinanza sociale, ‘l’avventura di avvicinamento all’Europa’, che l’ambizione della collana racchiude, si svolge tuttavia, di necessità, in termini assai critici, alla luce del contributo che le istituzioni dell’Unione Europea hanno, purtroppo, dato al propagarsi degli effetti più infausti della crisi.

Back in vogue today is the tendency of Italian philosophy toward reflection on itself that has always characterized an important part of our historiographical tradition. The present essay firstly analyzes the various interpretative positions in respect to the legitimacy, the risks, and the benefits of such a discourse, which intends to distinguish the different traditions of thought by resorting to a criterion of territorial or national kind. Secondly, the essay examines diverse paradigms that identify – in “precursory genius”; in ethical and civil vocation; and in “living thought” – the distinctive hallmark of the Italian philosophical tradition from the Renaissance to today.

Il volume qui presentato (Alberto Petrucciani. Libri e libertà: biblioteche e bibliotecari nell'Italia contemporanea) contiene una raccolta di saggi in parte già pubblicati altrove, ed è articolato in tre sezioni. La prima è dedicata a La storia delle biblioteche: perché?come? La seconda entra nel vivo della storia della professione bibliotecaria a partire dalla nascita, nel 1930, dell'Associazione dei bibliotecari italiani (che due anni dopo diventerà Associazione italiana per le biblioteche). La terza infine è dedicata ad alcune personalità del mondo bibliotecario italiano.\nPetrucciani crede fermamente nella continuità culturale della professione bibliotecaria fin dalle sue origini (che lui colloca nel Risorgimento), tuttavia la sua è una visione fortemente marcata da quella prospettiva risorgimentale ben espressa nel famoso slogan “fatta l'Italia, bisogna fare gli italiani”. Si tratta di una visione che presenta, a parere di chi scrive, tratti alquanto utopici, anche se di un'utopia generosa a cui forse non è male far riferimento oggi, in un momento in cui la coscienza nazionale – se mai ve ne è stata una – sembra così smarrita. È vero infatti che la storia (anche bibliotecaria) italiana non è fatta solo di episodi politici umilianti, ma presenta anche una ricchezza culturale che regge a qualsivoglia confronto con il resto del mondo; tuttavia accanto a tanta ricchezza permangono gravi carenze di accesso alla cultura intesa come capacità di interpretazione critica della realtà. Non suonano allora per nulla retoriche (e forse aiutano a capire meglio il significato profondo del titolo) le parole poste a conclusione della nota introduttiva: «Il libro è dedicato ai vecchi e giovani che hanno combattuto e combatteranno quella che è sempre stata la palla al piede del nostro paese, la sua ignoranza e incultura».

The Risorgimento in Contemporary Italy

Role and perceptions of women in contemporary Italy

Electoral Campaigns in Contemporary Italy. Researches in the His- tory of Political Communication
\nIn the contemporary age, communication plays a central role in the political process and, hence, in historical analysis. Thanks to an interdisciplinary approach inspired by anthropology, philosophy, and political science, historians have become aware of the different forms of political language (verbal, iconographic, etc.). This essay aims at surveying how historians have been researching and interpreting electoral campaigns in contemporary Italy. Italian historians have identified electoral campaigns as a privileged field to observe the evolution and genealogy of several political phenomena: ideologies and symbols, different conceptions of political participation, the evolution of militancy, the organization of political movements and parties, the affirmation of leadership, and the mediation of consensus.
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\nKeywords: Political Communication, Contemporary Italian History and Politics, History of Communication, History of Political Communication, History of Italian Political Campaigns

By examining the Italian labor movement in the late 1970s and early 1980s, this book seeks to determine how trade unions set policy positions and strategic agenda in a rapidly changing economic and political environment

Fascist Culture. Revolution and violence in the Abyssinian war: an example from two different peripheries. Discussions about a scientifically fruitful concept of culture have in no way been brought to a conclusion. Instead, a kind of fertile insecurity, amplified by recent innovative studies, has been established. The essay proposes a definition of culture that is broad, non-normative, and dynamic. It thus seeks to evade the dilemmas of concepts that tend to overly delimit their notion of culture and seeks to definitely open „culture“ also for the analysis of non-democratic, illiberal, and even totalitarian regimes, as was Italian Fascism. The essay examines the Abyssinian War (1935/6), which serves as a first and crucial example of a Fascist culture based on political violence abroad. Focusing its attention on the two Italian cities of Arezzo (Tuscany) and Terni (Umbria), it shows how the regime sought to procure its interpretational models of „revolution“ and „romanity“ into two totally different local peripheries: Fascism strove to „localise“ its cultural interventions, notwithstanding its otherwise strongly centralist character. Thus, it tried to solve the manifold tensions between tradition and modernity that it happened upon in contemporary Italy and that it further sharpened by its own political culture.