I am taking the opportunity created by the recent introduction of a section entitled ‘Contexts and Debates’ to put forward some considerations regarding Bevilacqua's contribution on the southern question, which appeared in the last number of this journal. By doing so, I hope to promote a stimulating debate on the South of Italy today and on the way forward for reversing the current process of de-industrialization in the region and the widening gap between the South and the rest of the country. Ideally, the debate should encourage different points of view and interpretations without reopening old wounds or leading to entrenched positions.

The modern popular cult of the Pope, which originated with the ‘disinherited’ papacy of Pius IX, reached its acme with Pius XII. Phases of intensification of this cult, which was linked to other ‘devotions’, those of the Sacred Heart of Jesus and of the Virgin Mary, served to mobilize the Catholic masses at critical junctures for the Catholic Church and in the face of what were perceived as political threats. Pius XII had to animate ‘movement’ in an age proclaimed to be one of a unique crisis of civilization. The projection of him as a charismatic figure was linked to that of Rome as a sacred centre and as the very fulcrum of world history. The Catholic activist ethos of ‘movement’ and also the presentation of the interchange between Pius XII and the Crowd had features in common with Fascist rhetorics, but ultimately the cult of the ‘victim-Pope’ represented an inversion of the crasser forms of power-imagery.

Following the collapse of the ‘First Republic’, political leadership has become both more technocratic and more charismatic. Constitutional reform of a presidential type, which would reinforce this dual trend, has come near to being effected. This paper argues that organizational changes in the main political parties bring them close to being able to participate in such a system. It also argues that a plebiscitary form of constitutional democracy, namely some form of presidentialism, could reinforce the consolidation of the nascent two-bloc party system. Finally, it argues that a political system based on two competitive party blocs could be of great benefit to the Italian polity.

The prison system under Fascism was used to house both common and political prisoners. After 25 July 1943, the prisons were opened, only to be closed once again in occupied Italy as the Nazis took over the system. San Vittore prison in Milan was theatre to a series of changes over the period from 1943 to 1946, culminating in the famous riots of April 1946. This article analyses the changes in the prison system, the mix of prisoners inside the institution and the continuation of the civil war inside San Vittore after liberation. This micro-focus allows reflections on a number of key issues regarding the post-war state: legitimacy, legality, repression and amnesty. The post-liberation regime's failure to keep order both inside and outside of the prison system was a key test of its legitimacy among those who had gone along with Fascism and were worried about what was to come: The article centres on the extraordinary and contested events surrounding the ‘revolt’ of 1946 in San Vittore and argues that accounts thus far provided are neither accurate nor particularly insightful about this key post-war moment. The amnesty of 1946, so long attributed to Togliatti's personal sense of responsibility was, in reality, forced upon the justice minister by the chaos in the prisons right across the peninsula.

In Italy, living close to or even within a place of business is not in and of itself unusual. Forms of housing in Italy are similar to many other European countries in that people primarily live in mixed-use spaces. It is common to have an apartment above cafés, bars, and bakeries. In this article, I examine how this form of mixed-use residence shapes market practices, decision-making, and labour relations among owners and workers. I argue that the spaces in which employees participate in the market economy also mirror their commitments to family. By examining workspaces across two food certifications in Milan, Italy – a Made in Italy certification (Food Italy) and a halal certification (Halal Italia) – I argue that Italian kinship networks structure how workers in each business operate. This intervention contributes to a larger literature on the cultural dimensions of capitalism.

This article presents the results of some empirical research on extortion in Palermo. The project is based on the administration of a structured questionnaire with traders in various districts within Palermo and villages in the provincial interior, in two phases, the first in 2007 and second in 2012. The objective was to explore traders’ opinions on the various aspects of the phenomenon of extortion: its characteristics, causes, possible solutions, and the responsibilities of every actor in the battle against this illegal enterprise. In the period in which the research was undertaken, there was a wave of strong anti-mafia and anti-racketeering activism, particularly stimulated by the emergence in 2004 of the Comitato Addiopizzo and culminating in the establishment of the first ‘antiracket’ association in Palermo.

During the Age of Mass Migration more than four million Italians reached the United States. The experience of Italians in US cities has been widely explored: however, the study of how migrants adjusted in relation to nature and food production is a relatively recent concern. Due to a mixture of racism and fear of political radicalism, Italians were deemed to be undesirable immigrants in East Coast cities and American authorities had long perceived Italian immigrants as unclean, unhealthy and carriers of diseases. As a flipside to this narrative, Italians were also believed to possess a ‘natural’ talent for agriculture, which encouraged Italian diplomats and politicians to propose the establishment of agricultural colonies in the southern United States. In rural areas Italians could profit from their agricultural skills and finally turn into ‘desirable immigrants’. The aim of this paper is to explore this ‘emigrant colonialism’ through the lens of environmental history, comparing the Italian and US diplomatic and public discourses on the potential and limits of Italians’ agricultural skills.

Based on Roberto Saviano's book Gomorra (2006), production of the TV series Gomorra – La serie (2014) was met with scepticism as many feared it would glamorise organised crime and, consequently, attract young people toward Camorra affiliation. The series' bleak portrayal of criminals and criminality was offered as a response to such concerns. Despite the preoccupations, Gomorra – La serie was hugely successful and, because of its quality, was sold to other countries. In Italy, the series' success can be measured by the popularity of its Twitter hashtag #GomorraLaSerie. Engaged with Henry Jenkins' theories of media convergence and based on a corpus of tweets bearing this official hashtag, this article proposes a quantitative analysis and advances conclusions regarding the Italian TV audience and second-screen viewing practices. Additionally, through a qualitative study of Saviano's tweets about the series, it examines the writer's use of the social media platform as a tool of narrative continuity. Finally, the article highlights a few examples of fan-generated media and concludes with remarks regarding Saviano's problematic position at the centre of a transmedia object.

This paper examines a series of documentaries produced in the period between 1956 and 1964 that document the activities of Italian migrants around the world (a corpus of more than 100 films and programmes altogether). These films, which record the dedicated and laborious nature of Italians around the globe, play a double role. On the one hand, they serve as a necessary adjunct to the establishment of a ‘labour culture’ in Italy, a central aspect of the compromise between labour unrest and the demands of capital in which the figure of the worker is continually praised. At the same time, they serve to obscure and rewrite the Italian collective memory concerning the legacy of Fascist imperialism and Italian involvement in colonial expansion, in the process recasting the Italian coloniser as the ‘good worker’.

Following consideration of the most common representations of migrants in Italian cinema, where they are often portrayed as victimised and minor subjects, this article analyses a film by Davide Sordella and Pablo Benedetti, Corazones de Mujer (2008) as a ‘post-migration alternative’. This film considers a different way of depicting ‘foreigners’, and addresses the complex issues of gender and sexuality as they emerge at the interface between Western and Arab cultures. Within the conceptual framework of Judith Butler's ‘gender performativity’ and Rosi Braidotti's ‘nomadic subject’, this article aims to suggest an alternative way of representing migrants in Italian cinema as agents of social and gender transgressions.

In 2011, Edoardo Nesi – a former industrialist in the Prato textile district – won the most prestigious Italian literary prize for his autobiographical novel Storia della mia gente, a book centered on the contrast between Prato’s past industrial success and present decline. Nesi has since become a regular contributor to Corriere della Sera, among other newspapers, and with his following book, Le nostre vite senza ieri, he has further emphasised his role as a public intellectual. In Nesi’s view, Italy’s participation in the global economy has exposed Italian manufacturers to a level of competition that they were not ready to meet. This disadvantage, Nesi contends, was exacerbated by the adoption of the euro, which put an end to the former practice of using monetary policy to offset trade deficits. As a result, many firms lost market shares, and the Prato textile district ended up being largely taken over by Chinese businesses. This paper criticises Nesi’s account of the Italian industrial decline. In particular, it argues that his sympathetic view of the former political-industrial system is mostly an expression of self-complacency and does not positively contribute to the current debates on the Italian economic crisis.

This article focuses on the experience of a group of traceurs (people practising parkour) in the urban context of Genoa. It describes a public area of the town – the ‘spot' most frequently used for training – from the specific point of view of the traceurs. Genoa is made up of different and relatively autonomous public spaces with specific and cultural characters, but parkour originates from the attempt to disrupt and reconfigure the city's institutional framework. Genoese traceurs share some of their orientation with other parkour groups in Europe and North America: they are attempting to define new ways of moving and new meanings for urban spaces and to expand the standard definition of a citizen. However, in the urban environment of Genoa, traceurs have to face diverse forms of opposition to their attempts to define their own pathways through the everyday flow of people, and in the disciplinary gaze of other citizens.

This article has two related aims. First, it examines the most up-to-date studies relative to Italian military justice during the First World War, and seeks to set them in the context of the historical debate since the late 1960s. Secondly, and more specifically, it focuses on recently uncovered evidence regarding staggeringly high numbers of previously unknown summary executions in the Italian army. It explores the significance of these findings for understanding the character of the Italian military justice system as well as that of the war conducted by Italy's ruling élites between 1915 and 1918.

The attempt to halt the remorseless spread of organised crime in the Italian South should not just be an issue for the judges, investigating magistrates and forces of order; every citizen should feel that they are an integral part of a wind of change, coming from below, that can have a decisive impact on local society. Starting from this premise, art and culture, adopting an approach of participation and involvement, can play a primary role in processes of renewal. In various areas within the provinces of Naples and Caserta, carefully researched works of street art, with the direct involvement of the local population, have provided the means for intervention in decaying and marginal environments where organised crime seemed to be so well entrenched as to be ineradicable. This article presents four case studies, analysing their assumptions, methodology and objectives.

Italian neorealism is conventionally read as the authoritative cinematic chronicle of Italy’s experience of the Second World War and the Resistance. However, this article argues that viewing this period of Italian cinema solely through the lens of neorealism has obscured the importance of the affective charge of melodrama in constituting an alternative ethics of representation in the late 1940s and early 1950s in Italy, one that worked via an appeal to the emotions. It posits that the traumas of Fascism, war, occupation, and Resistance were worked through by Italian cinema after the war in a range of genres and modes, principally melodrama.

By focusing on the figure of the returning soldier or reduce, and the films’ representation of a return to domestic disruption, the article examines how this domestic or romantic disruption stands in for what cannot be narrated, which is the ideological chaos of the Fascist and post-Fascist period. The article argues that the disturbance caused by the reduce to familial relations speaks to the Italian struggle to come to terms with aspects of its repressed war experience, particularly that of the Italian soldiers imprisoned abroad.

This article reports the main findings of a paper first presented in May 1996 at a study conference organized by the Reform Commission of the Higher Council for the Judiciary (Consiglio Superiore della Magistratura, CSM). That presentation was published in full in Quaderni del Consiglio Superiore della Magistratura, 1, 99, 1998, pp. 1–84. For reasons of space, most of the evidential materials are omitted here.

In Western countries children's identities have been constructed through their bodies and the different meanings attached to them. Children's bodies are central to defining their social and spatial position in the city. They are in fact, more than any other group, subjected to a set of spatial bans and prohibitions that confine them within places specifically targeted at them during their free time (i.e. recreational, ludic and sports organisations). One of the recreational activities most commonly engaged in by Italian children is sport. However, little is known about children's approach to sporting activities. What is proposed here is that the site of children's involvement in sport is a valuable key for the observation of the ambiguous construction of children's citizenship through spatial borders and body training. Based on a long-term ethnographic study of the Cagliari football club academy for children, and informed by the new sociology of childhood approach, this article investigates the role of organised sport contexts in the urban generational order. The conclusions stress the contradiction detectable in a structured football club academy as a site that, on the one hand, promotes children's rights to play and, on the other, restricts their substantive citizenship within the public space.