Mezzogiorno in idea: a mo’ di introduzione
Francesco Benigno e Salvatore Lupo
L’immagine del Mezzogiorno nella sociologia degli ultimi cinquant’anni
Maria Carmela Agodi
The sociological representation of Southern Italy
in the last fifty years
A first glance at the sociological representation of Southern Italy is
given through a review of selected essays from the journal Quaderni
di Sociologia, published from 1951 through 2001. Italian society is
shown as it was described when its Southern villages were studied by
American sociologists coming from abroad to understand the moral
basis of a backward society. It is also shown as it is looking now,
when its Southern towns are joining in the network society. This
shifting image is then used as a framework for a reflexive account
about an ongoing debate concerning the heuristic value of theoretical
concepts as «social capital», «civicness» and «trust» to understand
how Southern Italy is changing in the sociological imagination.
Retoriche dell’economia o retoriche del Mezzogiorno
Antonio Nicita
The Rhetoric of Economics either the Rhetoric of Mezzogiorno
The article, following Hirschman‚s definition of rhetoric in Economics,
suggests to compare the evolution of economics‚ rhetoric
with the evolution of economic theorizing on the Italian Mezzogiorno,
with particular reference to the process of policy design. The
provocative conclusion of the article is to consider the emergence and
structuring of several ideas on Italian Mezzogiorno, in Economics,
Politics as in the current cultural debate, as the specular reflection of
the evolution of economic ideas and schools of thought. The author
distinguishes the following rhetorics for Mezzogiorno: the rhetoric of
delayed development; the rhetoric of government failure; the rhetoric
of self-organization; the rhetoric of endogenous development.
L’oste e l’asinello: il paradigma fotografico di Enzo Sellerio
Gabriele D’Autilia
The innkeeper and the donkey: the photographic
paradigm of Enzo Sellerio
It’s very difficult to place Enzo Sellerio, one of the most representative
italian photograper of the postwar period, in the history of photography:
his personal interpretation of the pictorial tradition of Sicily,
italian neorealismo, european influences, make it impossible to
place him in traditional photographic categories. It would be more
useful, for historical studies, to insert his work in a very large class
like «humanist photography», so that we can define a subjective view
of everyday life that, in different ways, is shared by many european
photographers after WW2. In this contest, but following his own
wiew of life, Sellerio made his personal struggle against rethoric.
Ispirazioni mediterranee
Michela Scolaro
Mediterranean Inspiration
A ruote into the principal artists, representative of glance on
«Mezzogiorno»: Renato Guttuso, Joseph Beuys, Andy Warhol, Mimmo
Paladino.
Produzione Sud. Cinema, Tv e Mezzogiorno
Italo Moscati
Italy’s South seen through the lens: Italian film and television
looks at the Mezzogiorno
In this essay, the author, Italo Moscati, director, screenwriter and
critic, seeks to synthesize the long, intense and varied relationship that
Italian cinema and tv have had with the Mezzogiorno, the Italian
South. According to Moscati, the South has been viewed both alternatively,
and simultaneously, as Paradise and Inferno, and these visions –
he holds - are reflected in the way Italian cinema and television have
looked at the Mezzogiorno since the end of World War Two. Interestingly
enough, prior to that, says Moscati, no Italian film had ever
«featured» the Italian south as a either background or social statement.
After the war, this changed, and through the early 1990’s the
South and it’s problems of underdevelopment and crime would continue
to engage the talents of Italy’s major firm directors. In contrast
to all this, says Moscati, is Italian television’s failure to date to directly
examine the problems of the South in its own dramatic productions.
Antropologi e Mezzogiorno
Maria Minicuci
Anthropologists and «Mezzogiorno»
This study considers the different views adopted for the notion of
«Mezzogiorno» advanced by a conspicuous number of anthropologists
carrying out research on Southern Italy in the post World War
Two period. The work of these researchers is accounted for within the
context of their distinctive theoretical perspectives and schools of
thought. Particular attention has been paid to the absence of exchange
between Italian and foreign scholars which hampered the emergence
of the most fruitful aspects in the analytical works besides contributing
to the diffusion of stereotyped portraits. After offering a concise
survey of the crucial themes and the different ways of dealing with
them, the A. proceeds to singling out the more interesting perspectives
which allow for a comprehensive vision of the South of Italy, less uniform
and more varying than the one portrayed by other scholars.
L’immagine del Meridione nel romanzo italiano del secondo Novecento (1941-1975)
Gabriele Pedullà
The representation of «Meridione» in contemporary
Italian novel (1941-1975)
Focusing in seven of the most remarquable italian writers of the
century – Elio Vittorini, Vitaliano Brancati, Elsa Morante, Alberto
Arbasino, Raffaele La Capria, Giuseppe Tomasi di Lampedusa and
Leonardo Sciascia – the essay tries to map the representation of the
«Meridione» contemporary novels, from the fall of Fascism to the end
of «questione meridionale» in the '70s.
A proposito dell’intransigenza fascista: Farinacci e la plutocrazia bancaria
Matteo Di Figlia
Farinacci was considered
In this paper we deal with Roberto Farinacci’s political activity. We
enphasize on the relationship between Farinacci with Giacinto Motta,
the patron of the Italian eletrical company Edison, which was close to
the Credito Italiano Bank. Our aim is to show that this friendship
caused the Farinacci’s attack towards Giuseppe Toeplitz, the chief
manager of Banca Commerciale, the biggest bank in Italy at that time.
Essentially there are two main issues characterizing their friendship:
the former one is that Farinacci’s attack was justified by his fascistic
intransigence that was against the biggest financial groups. Those
groups were an oligarchy in the previous liberal government. This
was very contradictory because Motta actually belonged to that oligarchy
apparently damned by Farinacci. The second issue is not so
straightfoward: it is related to the unfreezing of the biggest Italian
banks, which was carried out strogly towards the Banca Commerciale
while it was carried out softly toward the Credito Italiano. In this
way Farinacci was considered by some fascists like the winner of the
fight against the Banca Commerciale. Now it is crucial to stress two
final remarks. The first one is that Farinacci is again close to Mussolini’s
policy; in fact Toeplitz is attacked at the same time by Farinacci
and by Mussolini, even if those common goals between the two of
them will be totally common only after 1936. The second remark is in
the twofold personality of Farinacci: he was very useful for Mussolini’s
goals. In fact he was, at the same time, intransigent to Toeplitz and
smart to keep on good relationships with the old liberal financial oligarchy
whose Motta was one of the best representative.
La seta nell’Italia del Sud. Architettura e tecniche per la produzione serica tra Sette e Ottocento
Roberto Parisi
The silk in Southern Italy.
Architecture and techniques for the silk production between
Eighteenth and Nineteenth century.
The architecture of the silk factory in Southern Italy and the diffusion
of the technologies and the technical knowledge connected to the
development of the silk production between Eighteenth and Nineteenth
century are the principal themes that the author has tried to
deepen in this article. From the Royal Factory of S. Leucio (Caserta)
to the Royal Schools of the Carminello (Naples) and of Villa St. Giovanni
(Reggio Calabria), up to the Setificio of the Royal Poorhouse of
Palermo, this paper discloses and analyses not only the dynamics and
the principal actors of the progressive diffusion of the piedmontese
techniques of silk-throwing, but also the cultural oppositions and the
tax advantages of local entrepreneurial élites, which hampered, in a
first moment, their introduction in the Kingdom of Naples. The
throwing machine «alla Piemontese» - as plant (silk-mill) and as architecture
- is meant also as metaphor of a new type of productive organisation, that is able to break the social balance and market equilibrium
of the entrepreneurial environment of Ancien Régime and to re-draw
the relationships between city and country, prefiguring, in such way,
logics and practices, but also ambiguities and rhetorics, that will characterise
the gradual process of industrialisation of modern Europe in
the second half of Eighteenth century.
Gaetano Mosca: gli anni palermitani (1858-1887)
Piero Violante
Gaetano Mosca: gli anni palermitani (1858-1887)
In 1917 Giovanni Gentile asserted that from the cultural point of
view Sicily was a segregated island. He believed that its relations with
the rest of the world were non-existent. Such idea has been very influential
for a long time. Only after the WWII many efforts were made
on the part of sicilian historians to demonstrate that a well developed
web of relations existed between Sicily and Europe. This paper argues
that the early production by Gaetano Mosca gives further support to
the critics of Gentile. In particular two expierences are analyzed: the
activity of «Rassegna palermitana», a fortnightly journal to which also
Vittorio Emanuele Orlando and Francesco Scaduto contributed. Indeed,
this was the occasion in which this «trio» – which gave birth of
the italian political science and public law – made its first appearance.
The second experience is Mosca’s 1882 doctoral thesis on the «Elements
of nationality», which according to the interpretation offered in
this paper, echoes many of the arguments set by E. Renan in his acclaimed
book «What is a nation?», published in that same year.
Il nuovo piano regolatore di Roma e la dissipazione del paesaggio romano
Vezio De Lucia
The new land use plan for Rome and the waste
of the Roman landscape
The subject of this article is the new land use plan for Rome. This
topic is linked to the more general crisis of Italian city planning that,
according to the author, started at the beginning of the 80’s as a consequence
of deregulation and the predominance of private interests over
public ones. The article denounces, in particular, the ongoing and unrestrained
destruction of the Roman landscape. The countryside
around Rome was one of the most extraordinary pictures of Italy,
well known to travellers and artists who visited the capital during the
last centuries: a wide empty space dotted with imposing remains of
Roman aqueducts and monuments. This landscape is disappearing.
From 1961 to 2001 the inhabitants of Rome have increased by 17%,
yet there has been a 260% loss of natural areas and agricultural land.
The new land use plan, completed in 2003, does not restrain this
trend, which instead has accelerated even while there is no need of
new construction. The article also deals with the area of the Fori Imperiali,
the great archaeological site in the centre of Rome that during
the 30’s was bisected by a modern street at the wish of Benito Mussolini
so that the troops could parade with the Roman ruins in the
background. In the recent past a convincing plan was devised to demolish
the fascist street and to set up an archaeological pedestrian area
in the centre of the modern city. This plan has been shelved and traffic
continues to cross the Fori Imperiali area, damaging its monuments
and causing unnecessary congestion in the most ancient part of Rome.
//Imitation of Life//: Todd Haynes e il cinema degli anni cinquanta
Emiliano Morreale
Massoni per caso
Francesco Benigno