Search

The author addresses the public use of history starting with a preliminary reflection on audiovisual media. The case of the television series Briganti, produced by Netflix, is then proposed. The author analyses the narrative model adopted and the debate triggered by the launch of the series. The scriptwriters' choice to use the format of the Italian western is proposed as a counter-narrative of the war on brigandage. Fiction stages the reversed perspective of the history of the "vanquished" following in the wake of neo-Bourbon publications. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article recollects the political and social impact of the Covid-19 crisis in the city of Messina. Here, the general manifestations of the pandemic crisis intertwined with a local fabric characterized by economic depression and «dependency». In order to survive, vast portions of the local social classes depend on the political power of a given moment. Such local power -- in this case the Mayor -- presented «populist» traits that found in the health crisis the ideal condition to extend reputation and importance. While opposition to this authoritarian project was one trait present in the community, ambivalence and instrumentalism appeared as the most relevant sentiments and reasons. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The image of a backward, archaic South whose barbarian population had remained at a low tier of civilization was a child of Italian unification. Not unlike the Orientalist East, the South that meridionalist discourse brought forth was a "chronotopos"—that is, a time‐space that had supposedly remained in the past. The war against brigandage in the Mezzogiorno demonstrates the workings of the "politics of historicism." This article first sheds some light on the grande brigantaggio and on the descriptions of the South that it generated among both contemporaries and later historians, such as Eric Hobsbawm. With the help of Pierre Clastres's and James C. Scott's political anthropology, it then attempts to uncover the structure beneath the "denial of coevalness." It argues that the dichotomy between the "backward" and the "modern" was based on the political distinction between friend and enemy, which, in the age of historicism, was temporalized; that is, the temporal dichotomy of the savage and the civilized can be understood as the historicist variant of those "asymmetric counterconcepts" that have always served the state and its representatives to demarcate the corpus politicum from other political entities, to justify the state, and to praise the advantages of being governed. In conclusion, the article addresses the close interweaving of state and history, progress and civilization, in the historicist worldview and argues that it was this nexus of state and history that drove the mechanics of time‐power. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Photography has played an important role in framing popular perceptions of Matera. Scholarship has focused on its representation following 1945. Yet the fact that a photographic portrait of Matera existed before this time is often overlooked. Photographs of the city pre-dating 1920 were mostly published as postcards by local entrepreneurs. This article analyzes a selection of these in the context of evolving representations of Matera and Basilicata in the early twentieth century. Providing insight into the aesthetic and socio-cultural construction of this important aspect of the city's early photographic portrait, it emphasises that postcards issued by local enterprises offered a perspective on Matera and Basilicata from the publisher's point of view. They complemented a less prejudiced and sometimes positive portrayal of the region – emerging in a variety of texts, photographs, and public events – that modified narratives often narrowly focused on describing it as impoverished, backward, and isolated. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

L’articolo indaga il ruolo rivestito dal notariato nella Puglia centro-meridionale del XV secolo, con particolare riguardo per l’area compresa nei confini dell’antica provincia di Terra d’Otranto. L’attenzione sarà rivolta alla formazione, agli sbocchi professionali e alla fisionomia sociale dell’uomo di legge, col fine di cogliere le modalità di reclutamento e la parte avuta dal ceto notarile nell’apparato burocratico-amministrativo del principato di Taranto al tempo di Giovanni Antonio Orsini del Balzo (1420-1463). Grazie, soprattutto, alle fonti contabili si ricostruiranno alcune carriere notarili e le possibilità d’impiego che il titolo consentiva in vari ambiti e settori per i quali le competenze tecniche dei notai risultavano essere imprescindibili (attività cancelleresche, amministrazione dei diritti signorili, controllo del territorio, amministrazione della giustizia e altro ancora).

El profesor Vincenzo M. Spera es un admirado demoantropólogo italiano con una amplia trayectoria en el estudio de antiguos ritos carnavalescos con máscara de algunas regiones del Mezzogiorno. Su autoridad en este campo, como en otros del amplio espectro cultural que ofrece la tradición —fiestas patronales, peregrinaciones, Semana Santa, etnomedicina, cultura pastoril, panificación, etc.—, queda ratificada con dos números monográficos editados en su honor en la revista Nuovo meridionalismo editada por la Università degli Studi del Molise en 2016 y 2018 al que se sumaron prestigiosos colegas. Conversamos en esta entrevista con él centrándonos en las formas de las máscaradas campesinas de Basilicata, Apulia y Molise en el pasado y su representación simbólica en el presente.

Copyright of Mediterranea - Ricerche Storiche is the property of Mediterranea-Ricerche Storiche and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites or posted to a listserv without the copyright holder's express written permission. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use. This abstract may be abridged. No warranty is given about the accuracy of the copy. Users should refer to the original published version of the material for the full abstract. (Copyright applies to all Abstracts.)

Based on a regional case, this contribution aims to highlight a modality of collective protest, regicidal iconoclasm, which, despite its recurrence in the revolutions of the nineteenth century, was not necessarily recognized by contemporaries in its political dimension. During the revolution of 1848, when the entry of the southern masses into politics accelerated, the destruction of images representing the monarchy took on a considerable scale, which the policial and judicial documentation allows us to analyse. This study focuses on the repertoires of action in which the iconoclastic acts were carried out (destructive gestures, staging the death of the king, regicidal insults), in order to grasp their political significance. Although they were not always accompanied by a coherent political project, they testify to local popular demands with regard to a centralized national government considered distant and unsuitable.

Copyright of Studia Historica. Historia Medieval is the property of Ediciones Universidad de Salamanca and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites or posted to a listserv without the copyright holder's express written permission. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use. This abstract may be abridged. No warranty is given about the accuracy of the copy. Users should refer to the original published version of the material for the full abstract. (Copyright applies to all Abstracts.)

Il contributo intende analizzare le forme emergenti di partecipazione ai processi di transizione energetica in relazione alle trasformazioni sui territori che a queste si accompagnano. In sostanza, si vuole comprendere come sta cambiando la visione e la fisionomia reale dei territori più diversi in relazione al diffondersi di queste nuove pratiche e configurazioni sociotecniche a carattere partecipative di gestione dell’energia da fonti rinnovabili. Il quadro teorico-metodologico utilizzato per sviluppare tale analisi è quello fornito dall’approccio della STS (Science Technology Society) relazionale che considera i fenomeni di partecipazione alla transizione ecologica in una prospettiva di co-costruzione con il contesto sociale, economico, politico e culturale di riferimento. Sulla base di tale framework teorico e alla luce dei grandi trend trasformativi che negli ultimi decenni hanno interessato il mercato e il sistema dell’energia, l’analisi si focalizza su alcune dei processi di co-costruzione tra partecipazione alla transizione energetica e mutamento dei territori emergenti in Europa e, soprattutto, in Italia, proponendone un’ampia e aperta classificazione in azioni strategiche e azioni tattiche. Questa polarità così definita consente, poi, di porre l’accento su un caso di studio di comunità energetica solidale e trasformazione urbana in corso di dispiegamento in un quartiere marginale di Messina. Questo caso è considerato come uno degli esempi di processi simili, in parte già avviati, che nei prossimi anni avranno un potenziale di sviluppo nelle aree vulnerabili del Mezzogiorno. Queste ultime, infatti, sono anche oggetto di interesse da parte delle politiche pubbliche, proprio in funzione dell’arresto dei fenomeni di spopolamento dei centri interni oppure della rigenerazione urbana dei quartieri marginali, per l’avvio un possibile sviluppo centrato sul ruolo della comunità locale e della sostenibilità economica, ambientale e sociale.

The forgotten Italian territories have almost always been understood as compact physical and conceptual spaces. While changing its terms, borders, and issues from time to time, the forgotten regions have been described through a homogeneous image: Mezzogiorno, peripheries and Inner Areas. Such a representation has effects both in conceptualization and efforts taken to recompose the gaps between the forgotten territories and the most active parts. Yet, in recent years, the numerous crises of the 21st century have shattered this compact representation and brought out new geography of forgotten Italy, the Italia di mezzo. The new geography is no longer linked only to the North-South dichotomy and does not concern only the metropolitan suburbs or inland areas. The new geography highlights how to be forgotten now is also a piece on the margins of public policies, underestimated by scientific research but at the center of the twentieth-century urbanization process and the recent crisis.

This paper estimates the multipliers of different types of government spending in the 20 Italian administrative regions throughout 1994–2016. We derive region‐specific multipliers through a Bayesian random effect panel vector autoregressive model. We find that the EU structural funds, compared to the other types of government spending, provide the largest and most pervasively significant GDP multipliers, whereas the effectiveness of nationally funded government investment and, especially, government consumption shocks is more limited. An exploratory analysis of the regional multipliers suggests that they are positively associated with the amount of unused resources and the size of the regional economy. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article presents the main evidence of a recent research carried out on six regions on the gap in the number of managers and executives within Southern Italian companies, along with the lack of managerial culture in the South of the country. In fact, the role of managers in the process of economic and social development is particularly relevant, although less explored by socio-economic literature which, in turn, draws greater attention to entrepreneurs as well as to economic and political élites. Instead, managers and executives represent a privileged bench for analysis in order to deeper understand the dynamics within firms, the elements of backwardness and innovation, the strengths and weaknesses related to the development of modern enterprises. In a context such as the Italian Mezzogiorno which seems to be refractory to innovation, the presence and diffusion of management may represent a significant element of modernization and confer, where present, an added value to the company, improving productivity and performance, also triggering virtuous processes of economic and social growth and development for the territory. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Copyright of Studies of the Industrial Geography Commission of the Polish Geographical Society / Prace Komisji Geografii Przemyslu Polskiego Towarzystwa Geograficznego is the property of Press of Pedagogical University of Cracow and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites or posted to a listserv without the copyright holder's express written permission. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use. This abstract may be abridged. No warranty is given about the accuracy of the copy. Users should refer to the original published version of the material for the full abstract. (Copyright applies to all Abstracts.)

The article deals with the importance of the Italian state intervention in the 20th century in selected sectors of the economy (in regional terms) on the subsequent socio-economic situation of the regions. Due to the observed today very large differentiation of the regions, the question is whether and to what extent the central policy of the Italian state of the post-unification period influenced the disproportions occurring today? The article consists of three main parts: the first outlines the contemporary socio-economic differentiation of the regions, the second presents the economic condition of the regions after the unification of the country, and the position of the state, and the measures it has taken, including repair programs used to improve the socio-economic conditions of the regions, the third part assesses the relevance and legitimacy of the implementation of these measures in the context of the current situation of the country. The aim of the article is to indicate the importance of the role of state policy, and the decisions taken in the past on the contemporary economic condition of Italian regions. Thus, the author attempts to explain the permanent, and in some areas still deepening, differences in the socio-economic development of Italian regions.

Nel secolo VIII, l’ordinamento giuridico del ducato longobardo di Benevento, per la risoluzione delle dispute legali, fece ricorso ad istituti giuridici diversi: il processo, la legge scritta, l’aequitas, la consuetudine, la transazione. La documentazione processuale superstite ha dimostrato che l’ordinamento longobardo lungi dall’essere “primitivo” o “rudimentale” fu molto complesso e presupponeva la coesistenza – in un’unica compagine statuale – di sottoinsiemi giuridici diversi, distinti per istituti e autorità preposte alla loro applicazione. La presente indagine mira, inoltre, a ricostruire l’organizzazione del sistema giudiziario del ducato longobardo, cercando di individuare gli organi preposti alla funzione giurisdizionale, la loro struttura interna, le sfere di competenza per materia e territorio e, infine, l’esistenza di un’eventuale gerarchia tra gli stessi.

At the beginning of the 18th century, there was a new interest in the knowledge and representation of the territory of Southern Italy, with many iconographies of some previously unknown urban centers being produced, where local contexts and landscapes were very much emphasized. In the second half of the century, on the one hand, with significant progress in the fields of surveying and mapping, only the description of urban details remained as a role for the traditional “views”; on the other hand, there was an increasing focus on anthropological and social aspects, on natural phenomena and on archaeological findings., This was also recorded in the iconography of Southern Italy with the first representations of many undeveloped parts of the Neapolitan Kingdom. In this way, a largely unexplored horizon had just opened for the abbot Saint-Non. Yet is was in the capital of that Kingdom that the French traveler, impressed by the charm of a city suspended between myth and nature, best approached the theme of urban landscape, interpreting it for the first time according to the idea of “picturesque”, that is of a primordial synthesis between man and natural environment. Indeed, while Saint-Non did not fail to consider the pristine nature of the southern landscapes compared to the advances of industrial civilization, in the Bourbon capital he grasped, more than anywhere else, several “mythical” signs throughout the urban territory and its suburbs.

Copyright of Chronica Mundi is the property of Chronica Mundi and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites or posted to a listserv without the copyright holder's express written permission. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use. This abstract may be abridged. No warranty is given about the accuracy of the copy. Users should refer to the original published version of the material for the full abstract. (Copyright applies to all Abstracts.)

Copyright of Thiasos Monografie is the property of Edizioni Quasar di Severino Tognon s.r.l. and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites or posted to a listserv without the copyright holder's express written permission. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use. This abstract may be abridged. No warranty is given about the accuracy of the copy. Users should refer to the original published version of the material for the full abstract. (Copyright applies to all Abstracts.)

Il presente saggio indaga le manifestazioni locali di quello che viene chiamato populismo urbano. Ossia di quel processo che consiste nell’adattamento al contesto locale di temi e tecniche nazionali di costituzione dell’opinione pubblica. Il caso di Messina e del suo sindaco Cateno De Luca sono al centro di questo studio. Per mezzo dell’analisi del dibattito pubblico sollevato dal politico, la ricostruzione della sua “fenomenologia” e la descrizione delle forme di opposizione discorsiva che incontrano le sue azioni, lo studio mostra come questo esempio locale di populismo miri a identificare nemici interni anziché esterni. Tale discorso, inoltre, è caratterizzato dall’ossessione per la “modernità”. Invece di rappresentare la società locale come se fosse esposta all’assedio di un nemico esterno, questo esempio cittadino di populismo mira a perseguire un “progetto di civilizzazione” urbano che è collocato dentro il lascito della Questione meridionale e il correlato complesso di “arretratezza”.

“The decline of the commons”. The case of civic uses and common properties in Southern Italy during the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. According to the most recent contributions of Italian Contemporary Historiography about the commons, this paper intends to retrace the main phases of the so-called process of the decline of the commons in Southern Italy, from the 1800s until the beginning of the 1900s, conducted in the context of a most wide program of socio-economic transformation based on the consideration of civic uses and common properties as weights to be removed in favor of the full right to own property. In the present essay, the attention is focused on the case of the ancient province of Terra d’Otranto – now including the provinces of Lecce, Brindisi and Taranto – in order to retrace the several social conflicts triggered by the dismantlement of the civic uses and commons properties.

Rosario Villari's contributions to the economic history of the pre-Unification Mezzogiorno have over time been eclipsed by the author's longer-running fascination with the seventeenth century and by the success of his later textbooks. However, the essays on the economic and social history of the final century of the Regno borbonico written in the 1950s and early 1960s were major contributions to the post-war renaissance in the historical writing on the pre-Unification south. Villari's approaches and findings have stood the test of time, while his formulation of the origins of the questione meridionale remain highly relevant to current debates on the south in the century before Unification. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Alongside Pasquale Villani and Giuseppe Galasso, Rosario Villari was one of the great post- War Italian historians, characterized by his cultural background and strong commitment to Southern Italian studies, or Meridionalism. Active in the Pci as a leader of the peasant struggles in Calabria, he played important roles in the southern periodicals inspired by the Pci in the 1950s. In particular, in the journal «Cronache meridionali», of which he was editor, he published, between 1954 and 1959, the original essays on the Meridionalists and the questione meridionale, which in 1961 were included in the great Laterza anthology Il Sud nella storia d'Italia. The interpretative key of the questione meridionale, indicated in 1963 and reaffirmed in 1977 in the journal «Studi Storici», was established in the «interdependence between North and South» and in the «renunciation of the use of potential human, economic and political resources in the process of modernizing the country and intellectuals of the South». [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Some papers kept in the Foggia State Archive reveal a little-known crosssection 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. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper analyzes the effects of cohesion policies on the gross domestic product (GDP) per capita of the 20 Italian administrative regions for the period 1994–2013. The analysis includes both European Union and national funds. It estimates average partial effects through a control-function approach based on the funds' allocation rules, and allows for the role of the regional environment on the impact of regional policies. A positive impact of European Union funds is found, as well as a less significant impact of (nationally financed) subsidies to firms. Quality of government has no relevance for European Union funds, but it enhances the impact of subsidies to firms. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Questo articolo discute le ragioni della fragilità dell'economia del Mezzogiorno prima della grande crisi e l'aggravamento del divario negli anni 2008-14. Si dimostra che l'ulteriore divaricazione tra aree del paese non è un destino ineluttabile. Una strategia di politica industriale semplice e mirata alla minimizzazione delle intermediazioni clientelari ha dato risultati positivi nel triennio 2015-7. Per il futuro tuttavia una significativa convergenza si potrà concretizzare solo a fronte di una ripresa di investimenti pubblici e privati in capitale fisico ed umano per i quali si esaminano alcune ipotesi concrete.

L’articolo si occupa di uno scrittore dalla peculiare indole odeporica come Franco Arminio (Bisaccia, 1960), e in particolare del suo Viaggio nel cratere, un libro importante nel quale prende forma la nuova disciplina fondata dall’autore, la paesologia. Pubblicata nel 2003, ma fortemente radicata nell’ultimo Novecento e in quel trauma di lunga durata che è stato il terremoto del 1980, l’opera segna un nuovo modo di viaggiare e di guardare al Mezzogiorno con uno sguardo letterario – certamente memore dell’esperienza fondamentale di Celati – e insieme antropologico. La paesologia, intesa come una forma di attenzione e di clemenza nei confronti dei piccoli paesi, dei loro abitanti e delle cose apparentemente marginali che vi si trovano, in realtà sa dirci molto sul mondo in cui viviamo.

Copyright of Societa e Storia is the property of FrancoAngeli srl and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites or posted to a listserv without the copyright holder's express written permission. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use. This abstract may be abridged. No warranty is given about the accuracy of the copy. Users should refer to the original published version of the material for the full abstract. (Copyright applies to all Abstracts.)

The southern question is still the biggest unresolved problem in the history of the Italian state. It constitutes the most accentuated and pervasive case of economic dualism of the entire industrialized West, where there is no state other than Italy in which 40.8% of its territory (the South) and 34.2% of the national population have per capita income of only 56% of that of the remaining part of the country (the Centre-North). This dualism already existed in 1861 when the Kingdom of Italy was born. Since then, despite the great development of the Italian economy as a whole, and therefore also of the South, the economic and social difference between North and South has progressively increased, except in the period 1962–73, when the Italian state made a great effort to reduce the gap. Starting from the 1970s, the weak performance of the South has been a powerful factor in slowing the economic and social development of Italy and weakening, both in the North and in the South of Italy, the sense of belonging to a single national community. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Copyright of Reti Medievali is the property of Firenze University Press and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites or posted to a listserv without the copyright holder's express written permission. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use. This abstract may be abridged. No warranty is given about the accuracy of the copy. Users should refer to the original published version of the material for the full abstract. (Copyright applies to all Abstracts.)

The article provides a review of Sylos Labini’s memories, collected here on occasion of the tenth anniversary of his passing away. The author reports on the proceedings of two conferences in memory of Sylos Labini held in Rome, on 18 November 2015 at the Lincean Academy and on 4 December 2015 at Sapienza University. Sylos Labini stipulated that the goal of economic development is not just to satisfy human needs, but to cater civil development itself, in accordance with Adam Smith’s fundamental lesson. In his view, economic development and civil development interact in a circular manner in the long run. Considering the developmental issues of Italy’s Mezzogiorno, Sylos Labini highlights that the nature of the problem is not only economic, but rather many issues arise from unreasonable links between politics, economy, and society. Accordingly, he provided policy suggestions that are not limited to the economic and industrial fields (such as water supply projects, irrigation infrastructures, and investments for the creation of modern industries), but he also identified three priority areas of social policy: measures to contrast the mafias, crime in public procurement, and corruption; a reform of the public administration; and investments in education, universities, and research. JEL: B31; A11; N14; A12

A partire dalla rielaborazione del tema della 'invasione aliena', l'articolo sviluppa un'analisi critica del rapporto tra modernità industriale e Mezzogiorno e della sua rappresentazione dominante nei termini di mutua estraneità ed esclusione.

La théorie de l’influence du climat sur la culture, soutenue surtout au XVIIIe siècle, est à l’origine de l’opposition des cultures du nord et du sud de l’Europe. Giacomo Leopardi (1798-1837) se considère comme partisan du sud (mezzogiorno) en ce qui concerne la civilisation et la vie sociale tout en admettant que, du point de vue des progrès techniques et sprituels, le Nord a triomphé à l’époque moderne. Quant à l’opposition des points cardinaux ouest et est, c’est l’Amérique qui stimule l’imagination des auteurs européens. Herder, Chateaubriand et Leopardi, par exemple, regardent la Californie comme un paradis terrestre, région offrant une vie simple et proche de la nature. À la même époque, Heinrich von Kleist (1777-1811) voit comme Leopardi dans la grâce naturelle (disinvoltura ou Anmut) le trait caractéristique du paradis, sans pourtant, lui, penser à la Californie.