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The following essay reconstructs the long and complex debate on the industrialization of Southern Italy hosted by the journal «Prospettive Meridionali». The Catholic-oriented journal, directed by the Christian Democrat Giorgio Tupini, between 1955 and 1956 invited politicians, trade unionists, economists, intellectuals, and entrepreneurs to express their views on the methods and timing necessary for industrializing the South of Italy. The debate took place at a time when the Democrazia Cristiana, the leading governing party, supported the theories of the “nuovo meridionalismo” and Pasquale Saraceno, which viewed industry as an indispensable tool to help the southern economy. In particular, three trends emerged from the debate: one was opposition to the industrialization of the South directed by the state because it was seen as detrimental to the free market and damaging to the country’s economy; the proposal to initiate a broad economic process that, in addition to industrializing the southern part of the country, would also address social and cultural issues; full support for the state’s action, considered the only entity capable of undertaking risky economic initiatives and viewing industrialization as the most effective solution to the problem of unemployment.

The essay investigates the presence of exotic, valuable, rare and often bizarre objects in the noble courts of the fifteenth-century South, with the aim of assessing the degree of diffusion of foreign artefacts among the wealthy classes, but also in the regional and local market circuits. In particular, some inventories of the Apulian area will be examined, belonging both to exponents of ecclesiastical feudality, such as the bishop of Otranto, Nicola Pagano, and to leading figures of the southern baronage, such as the count of Ugento, Angilberto del Balzo, son-in-law of powerful prince of Taranto and known above all for his involvement in the great conspiracy of 1485. Through the detailed description of a wide range of objects (books, jewels, crockery, tapestries, clothes, kit items, various accessories or other), with the indication of the material and the origin, it will be possible to offer a contribution to the reconstruction of the dynamics economic-commercial that fueled the circulation in Southern Italy of manufactured products from outside the Kingdom (Venice, Vicenza, Verona, Florence.) and internationally (Catalan, Parisian, Dutch, Balkan, Turkish, etc.). The same objects will also allow you to get an idea of the orientation of tastes and preferences, the dictates of fashion, the cultural suggestions, style and mentality of the time.

In 12th-13th centuries southern Italy, there were some pieces of lands without any stable ownership and intended for cereals and livestock: the demania. They were also characterized by communitarian management. The aim of this article is to propose some hypotheses on their origins, by linking them to the aristocratic patrimonies and to the public estates during Early Middle Ages, on the basis of some exceptional sources from the Salernitan archives.

The essay investigates the representation of the woman of Southern Italy Italian cinema during the years of the economic miracle (1958-1963). In particular, the script focuses on the network of relations between fiction and non-fiction cinema, not neglecting essential references to archival documents. The result of these relationships is a lively imaginary in which the female figure, complex, multiform and irreducible to rigid stereotypes, becomes a revealing mirror of the changes of the entire country, and at the same time retains traits related to the past.

Angilberto del Balzo, Count of Ugento and Duke of Nardò, was the lastborn child of Francesco del Balzo, Duke of Andria, and Sancia Chiaromonte, sister of Queen Isabella, the wife of Ferrante (king of Naples from 1458 to 1494). His inventories provide evidence of the economic wealth, munificentia and splendor enjoyed by one of the most important families of the fifteenth century feudal aristocracy in southern Italy. The account analyses an undoubtedly valuable source (preserved in the Paris National Library) which, in addition to clarifying various aspects of the count of Ugento’s feudal dominion, also permits the recreation of features of the everyday life, habits and customs of an aristocratic society in thrall to current fashions, attracted by exquisite detail and fond of luxury and ostentation. Some of the items listed in particular constitute a tangible indication of the Balzo family’s status and political power, its economic wellbeing and its place in an echelon which could, and was obliged to, live, appear, eat and dress in opulence. The description of goods and objects in everyday use represents a source of undoubted interest for the history of material culture and, more generally, social history.

Some papers kept in the Foggia State Archive reveal a little-known cross- section of the migratory phenomenon between the two southern shores of the Adriatic in the early nineteenth century. It consisted in the mutual displacement of “foreigners” who reached the coasts of the Kingdom of the Two Sicilies and depleted then inhabitants to be used, in all probability, for slave duties. One of the most striking episodes of aggression was recorded in Monte S. Angelo in 1804, when a group of unfortunates was captured by unidentified foreigners. The story can be reconstructed thanks to a series of documents, including the declaration made by the prefect of Lucera who intended to initiate, by faith of slavery, the procedure for their freedom. The expulsive phenomenon, which therefore did not stop at the old regime but persisted even after the Enlightenment claim of fundamental rights, deserves to be reconstructed with particular regard to the historical-juridical implications: it generated - still in the 19th century - serious consequences of public order, which deeply affected the southern society, its perception of insecurity, trust feelings between population and institutions.

In Naples, as in several other cities of the Campania region (Italy), the word femminiello/femminella “traditionally” refers to effeminate men who behave and act as women. In the last decade femminielli/femminelle were the subject of a true heritagization process, intended to enhace and capitalize their “ancient identity”, now considered on the verge of extinction. Nonetheless, still today, people who self-identify as femminiello/femminella embody an “old-fashioned way” ideal of femininity, sometimes claiming the specificity of their local identity, and distancing themselves from the LGBTQI+ representations and identities. Based on the data collected during a long term fieldwork in Campania, this essay focuses on the processes of production, reproduction and manipulation of the femminielli/femminelle’ identities. More specifically by crossing literature and field notes, I will propose an analysis of the interactions between an orientalist and colonial imaginary that “produces” the femminiello/femminella as otherness (southern) and the reversal that occurs with the distinctive claim of gender experiences embodied by people who still identify as femminielli/femminelle. How do these imaginaries interact? And what implicit stereotypes lurk in such representations?

From the end of 1970s and the neo-liberal shift in world politics and economics, inner areas of Italy have faced an apparently endless crisis. However, the sudden outbreak of the Covid-19 crisis could provoke an unexpected U-turn. Nowadays, the physical and social remoteness of inner areas work as an attraction for people in search for authentic experiences in food, nature and cultural heritage, outside the standard tourist offer and within the framework of “under-tourism”. However, the “imagined remoteness” that drives the public and academic conversation towards the tourist seduction of the inner areas could be misleading for the simple fact that it is “imagined”. Not many people know what it means to live in a remote area, where social and physical distances are huge and the basic services scarce. Thus, the success of post-lockdown tourism strategies centered on inner areas would depend on the positive matching between the needs of the “new” tourism business and the ones of “new” destinations. In this article, we propose a possible interpretation of the above-mentioned challenge, based on the elaboration of data collected during a three-month field work conducted in several small towns of the Basilicata and Calabria regions (Piccole Dolomiti Lucane Regional Park and the Pollino National Park). Our analysis aims to give a more realistic picture of the notions of emptiness and remoteness by assessing the degree of compatibility and the semantic distance between the expectation of the tourism business and the needs of the inner areas.

This study proposes the re-orienting of the radical transnational politics exchanged in the first anti-fascist and anarchist newspaper Il Risveglio, produced in 1927 in Australia. It combines a critical analysis of its transnational and translocal political imaginaries with an examination of the linkages of its “trans” of gender, race, class and imperial relations to unsettle its responses to the historical, Italian based southern discontent. It argues that its focus on the social question and the predominance of northern-based responses to women’s equality and the racialisation of migrants effaces and negates the lives of diaspora from the southern regions. This negation also intersects with its support for the formation of a white working class and negation of Indigenous sovereign ontologies and epistemologies in the settler colony of Australia. This paper demonstrates that the effacement of the southern discontent is re-configured across varied and relational systems of radical diasporic knowledge.

Riassunto Questo articolo descrive le caratteristiche e l'origine del caporalato (una forma di mediazione illecita all'assunzione lavorativa, in inglese “gangmaster system”) nell'Italia meridionale, come è cambiato quando i migranti sono diventati la principale manodopera in agricoltura, il modo in cui porta allo sfruttamento dei lavoratori, e la reazione dei lavoratori stranieri contro questo sistema.Presentiamo due esempi di come i lavoratori hanno affrontato il caporalato in Puglia: nel primo caso, la provincia di Foggia, i migranti non sono stati in grado di organizzarsi per protestare contro i caporali; nel secondo caso, Nardò, hanno dato il via a uno sciopero che ha dato visibilità nazionale a questo fenomeno.

Abstract Italy is a country marked by serious inequalities between its northern and southern regions in terms of welfare, economic production and level of public services. Southern Italy has also suffered serious cases of environmental devastation. A body of literature with a postcolonial approach interprets these inequalities as the outcome of colonial relations of power that have made the south a historic victim of racist representations and authoritarian means of government. Another line of investigation is dedicated to the study of the socio-environmental conflicts which emerged in southern Italy in situations of environmental degradation. The objective of this article is to contribute to build bridges between these two lines of research, identifying the most relevant points of connection and divergence, with the purpose of showing possible paths of common research for a postcolonial political ecology of Southern Italy.