Una „razza mediterranea"?: Il dibattito antropologico sulla questione meridionale (1897–1907).

This article reconstructs the anthropological debate on the Southern question, focusing on the decade between 1897 and 1907 and on three protagonists: the statistician and criminologist Alfredo Niceforo, the economist and politician Napoleone Colajanni and the anthropologist and psychologist Giuseppe Sergi. Sergi's theories on the Mediterranean „race", its African origin and role in the population and above all in the process of civilization of the European continent were used to support opposing positions: Niceforo referred to them to affirm the backwardness of the population of Southern Italy; Colajanni, by contrast, employed them to defend the dignity of the inhabitants of the South, against the advocates of the superiority and inferiority of different „races". The analysis of these discussions shows how anthropologists and ethnologists, playing on the delicate balance between „race" and „environment", contributed – in often contradictory ways – to the socio-political project of defining Italian national identity in the early decades after Unification. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]