COMMERCIAL AND SOCIAL SIGNIFICANCE OF GLASS BEADS IN MIGRATION-PERIOD ITALY: THE CEMETERY OF CAMPO MARCHIONE

Migration-period glass beads from Italy are an overlooked source of evidence. This investigation discusses the provenance, economic value and social significance of glass beads from the cemetery of Campo Marchione, northern Italy (c.570 to the end of the seventh century AD). The different chemical compositions and specific forming technologies have identified European, Egyptian, Mesopotamian and Asian specimens. The wider contextualization of the beads in association with other grave goods and the sex and age of the deceased has yielded important insights into the economic, social and cultural significance beads held in Italy, acting as markers of long-distance exchange.     

Imagining the Web: The social construction of the Internet in Italy

The article analyses social discourses about the Internet in Italy from the mid-1990s onwards, taking its examples from advertising. Beyond the individual campaigns and their subjects there have been two distinct trends in Internet advertising. The first has made an effort to build the Internet as a cognitive object, the second has presented the Internet as a 'possible world'. The article aims to account for the ways in which the Web has been thematized in Italy: its fields of reference, and how its possible social and personal uses have been anticipated.     

Italian immigration: the origins,nature and evolution of Italy’s migratory systems

This article reconstructs the historical development of foreign settlement in Italy. It shows how Italy is part of a number of different migratory patterns, some of which are interconnected, while others are quite strongly differentiated. This diversity means that the standard images that link Italian immigration with a high degree of social marginalization do not correspond to the more complex realities, and by focusing on short-term aspects simply conflate highly differentiated patterns of migration into one single type. The article begins by reconstructing the patterns of foreign settlement in Italy since the time of Unification and then goes on to analyze the mechanisms of contemporary migrant flows to demonstrate how these derive from very different sets of motives and expectations. The motivations also explain why different immigrant groups respond to the different forms of regulation adopted by the Italian state. The article concludes by reviewing the data presently available on the numbers of foreigners currently in Italy, which indicate that over the last twenty years those numbers have decreased.     

Resisting and Challenging Neoliberalism: The Development of Italian Social Centers

In the 1970s, Italy experienced a difficult transition from Fordism to a flexible accumulation regime. The resulting changes in production relations led to the disappearance of traditional public spaces and meeting places such as open squares, workplaces, party offices or the premises of groups involved in the antagonistic, ie anti‐capitalist and anti‐fascist, movement. Within this context, in the 1980s and 1990s, these groups managed to create new social and political spaces by setting up Self‐Managed Social Centers (CSAs), ie squatted properties which became the venue of social, political and cultural events. Over 250 Social Centers have been active in Italy over the past 15 years, especially in urban areas. Their organizational modes are examples of successful direct democracy in non‐hierarchical structures and may provide alternative options to the bureaucratic organization of so many aspects of social and political life. Point number one on a Social Center's agenda is a daunting task: it must renovate and refurbish privately or publicly owned empty properties and turn them into public spaces open to the general public. For this task it relies exclusively on collective action, ie cooperative working modes which do not come under the provisions governing regular employment contracts and can thus be used to combat marginalization and exclusion processes which are becoming more and more dramatic in our cities. An analysis of the evolution of this original Italian movement provides the opportunity to address a number of issues associated with alternative practices to neoliberal globalization.     

The cultural construction of Italy in Albania and vice versa: Migration dynamics,strategies of resistance and politics of mutual self-definition across colonialism and post-colonialism

This article analyses the shifting ways in which Italy has been strategically represented in Albania during the different key passages of the latter's relatively recent history as a sovereign independent state. As a parallel narrative, the article also examines the way Albania has been equally strategically represented in Italy before and during the two periods in which Italy has been militarily involved in Albania, and the way this has been consistent with an attempt to elaborate and sustain a politically strategic definition of Italian identity and culture. The history of the asymmetrical relationship between Albania and Italy is deeply embedded in the social, cultural and political environments that are on the two shores of the Adriatic Sea. The cultural construction of Albania in Italy and vice versa of Italy in Albania should be linked to seemingly independent instances of domestic reforms. The dynamics of projective identification or dis-identification stemming from these instances should be seen as intertwined within two parallel processes of mutual definition encompassing both the colonial and the postcolonial relations between and within the two countries.     

‘…but not gagged’: Responding to Covid-19 and its control measures in France,Italy and the USA

The beginning of the Covid-19 pandemic was far from the ‘great equalizer’ sometimes described by the media. This article shares themes emerging from research conducted in 2020 in France, Italy and the USA concerning responses to the pandemic and its social effects. The authors analyze how the pandemic elicited varied reactions within the three countries where they conducted anthropological fieldwork. They propose that narratives of the Covid-19 response can shed light on how individuals navigate social and political relationships in each context.     

Urbanities: Grecanici Migration to the City of Reggio Calabria,South Italy

This paper discusses degrees of urbanity or urbanities using ethnographic data from research conducted among the Grecanici communities in the city of Reggio Calabria, south Italy. Urbanization in south Italy is usually associated with social and territorial mobility, education and natural disasters. It is further discussed in terms of a rural/urban duality that masks rather than reveals possible diversities concerning the social life in the city and the links between rural and urban which in the urban environment follow different trajectories. Following the premise that the effects of urbanization cannot be homogenously felt by the actors, I follow the Grecanici migration to the city of Reggio Calabria in the decade of the 1950s in order to argue that urbanities are directly informed by factors such as kinship, neighbourhood identification, education and socio‐economic status.     

Introduction: Italians Do It Better? The Occupation of Spaces for Radical Struggles in Italy

Italy could be considered a social laboratory in relation to radical theories, practices, struggles and radical political conditions. It is worth exploring what kind of laboratory Italy is and investigating some of the features of current struggles that challenge neoliberalism and the revival of fascism. One way to grasp the specificity of the Italian context is by considering an inherent set of social conflicts that take the form of multidimensional challenges, embracing social, cultural, economic and decision‐making dimensions. Put succinctly, a prefigurative politics is the lens suggested to interpret the experience of squatting and commoning, which are the fundamental attributes of many related struggles over housing and Social Centers and environmental protection.     

The Italian Neolithic: A Synthesis of Research

This paper reviews the distinctive economic and social development of Neolithic Italy and its islands, from ca. 6000 B.C. until the emergence of the Copper Age ca. 3500 B.C. Through a synthesis of traditional interpretations and more recent discussions relating to early farming economies, social and technological developments, settlement, and landscape, the complex regional patterns are described. The development of archaeological studies in Italy, the biases in regional and chronological data collection, the regional patterns of cultures and landscapes, and the emergence of distinctive funerary, artistic and economic activities reveal a wealth of varied and intriguing archaeological information from a wide variety of sources that link parallel developments in the Mediterranean and Europe.     

The public relevance of the church and Catholicism in Italy

Abstract

This article highlights the particular situation of the Catholic religion in Italy which distinguishes itself for its systematic organization, active association-forming and cultural vitality, unrivalled in any other European country either Protestant or Catholic. On the one hand the church in Italy still disposes of such a wealth of clergy and religious figures, dioceses and parishes, educational and social institutions, ecclesiastical groups and associations, and so on, that it can maintain a diffuse presence scattered over the national territory; it deploys numerous forces and resources which form an integral part of normal social relationships that animate civil society. On the other hand, the church and Italian Catholicism today are particularly active at a cultural level, with their contribution of ideas and experience on vital questions arising in social coexistence (ranging from the family to bioethics, from religious freedom to the secular State, from national identity to the multiethnic presence, and so on).     

An end to collective identities? Political culture and voting behaviour in Sesto San Giovanni and Erba

This paper addresses the question of the demise or resilience of political subcultures in Italy today, focusing on two areas, Sesto San Giovanni and Erba, characterized until recently by a socialist/communist subculture and a Catholic/interclassist one. The voting behaviour and political values of key social groups, above all industrial workers, in these two towns provides evidence of the persistence and indeed revival of political subcultures in Italy. The paper argues that their function has changed, though. Whereas in the past a political subculture encompassed the whole spatial community, nowadays it appears to represent the interests and needs of specific groups within a territory, thus becoming one of many political instruments and choices open to social actors and voters.     

Law,ethnicity and taxes in Ostrogothic Italy: a case for continuity,adaptation and departure

This article considers the relationship between the social status of Goths and Romans in Italy and the legal and administrative regime of the Ostrogothic state. It is argued that the distinctions made between Goths and Romans by the Ostrogothic state were based primarily upon economic conditions and circumstances of land tenure in Italy, rather than upon ‘ethnicity’. It is furthermore argued that the social and economic conditions that produced the status landscape of late fifth‐ and early sixth‐century Italy were not innovations of the Amal rulers at Ravenna, but rather they represent adaptation to the previous imperial administration ongoing since the early fifth century. In examining this topic, the article touches upon issues of the legal difference between Goths and Romans, the manner of accommodating and administrating soldiers in Italy, and the fiscal resources available to the Ostrogothic court.     

Journeys to the other spaces of Fascist Italy

In the essay, 'Of Other Spaces', Michel Foucault contends that every society constructs sites which can be defined as effectively enacted utopias (heterotopias), sites where social policies are articulated and where ideals of social ordering are physically performed. The article examines how a number of places in Fascist Italy, which conformed entirely to the principles of the heterotopia that Foucault sets out, were perceived by a selection of prominent writers and journalists. It examines the recorded journeys to the cemeteries of the First World War, to various renovated prisons within Italy and finally to the new towns south of Rome. It explores the kind of mental and physical sensations which the different writers evoked as well as examining the ways in which their written accounts of their imaginative experiences interacted with the myths of identity and social control which were central to Fascist ideology.     

Cape Verdean women on the move: ‘Immigration shopping’ in Italy and Europe

The central theme of this article is the notion that migrants ‘shop’ for opportunities of work, income and social advantages in different countries. Taking the case of Cape Verdean women migrants, the research is based on 25 in‐depth interviews carried out with domestic workers in Rome and Rotterdam. I explore ways in which these women have negotiated mobility, employment and family and household responsibilities within the context of a largely independent female migration which is well established from Cape Verde. Italy has a nodal role in channelling mobility from Cape Verde to various destinations in the global Cape Verdean diaspora. But while opportunities for stable employment as domestic workers in Italy have been a constant factor encouraging Cape Verdean women to migrate to Italy, difficulties over pay, working conditions, welfare and family reunion have led to much onward movement to the Netherlands and elsewhere.     

Trepanation in Italy: A Review

This paper reviews and discusses cases of skull trepanation in ancient Italy on the basis of information provided by the literature. A total of 54 individuals from 43 different Italian archaeological sites were found to have evidence of trepanation. The analysis of evidences of trepanation in Italy has demonstrated that no differences can generally be perceived between the trepanned individual and the social context of the burial, leading to exclude a special role of the former within the group. Trepanation in Italy covers a time span of approximately 7000 years, the most ancient cases dating back to the fifth millennium bc and the most recent to the 18th–19th centuries ad . The geographic distribution appears quite homogeneous, with a prevalence of cases in Central Italy and abundant evidence from prehistoric Sardinia. The majority of individuals show a single trepanation, whereas others present skulls with multiple holes. Trepanation in Italy was reserved to adult individuals, except for some rare cases, and shows a relevant preponderance for the male sex. The most diffused technique is scraping; cutting and drilling are less attested, especially as unique techniques for trepanation, but they were used more frequently in combination with scraping. Trepanation could in some cases be hypothesised as therapeutic intervention for the treatment of a traumatic wound or of other pathologies, whereas in other cases, a number of evidences are attested of trepanation performed as probable ritual intervention or as experimental surgery; in the remaining cases, the reasons for trepanation are unclear or not determinable. A high percentage of long‐term healing associated with trepanation has been evidenced. Copyright © 2017 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Firm-level productivity growth returns of social capital: Evidence from Western Europe

We analyze the firm-level labor productivity growth returns of social capital—defined as a synthetic measure of “generalized trust,” “active participation,” and “social norms”—using a large sample of manufacturing firms in France, Germany, Italy, Portugal, and Spain. We find that firms' labor productivity growth is higher in areas with a better social capital endowment. The positive returns of social capital are, nevertheless, unevenly distributed across firms, with smaller, less productive, less capital-endowed, and low-tech firms benefitting the most from operating in strong social capital ecosystems.     

Italian Jews from Emancipation to the Racial Laws,by Cristina M. Bettin

The recent argument that the notion of ‘transition’ should be set aside in attempting to explain the trajectory of Italian politics in the past two decades is to be welcomed, but does not go far enough in explaining why we, as Italianists, got our case wrong and how exactly we might get our case right today. The transitional ‘myth’ was born and maintained despite growing evidence of its inherently problematic nature, in both conceptual and empirical terms. The concept of ‘transition’ needs more serious conceptual treatment and empirical application, but even with this work it is unlikely to be concluded that Italy is in transition. Freeing Italy and Italianists from this conventional wisdom, while, at the same time, not abandoning the idea that something exceptional happened to Italian politics in the early 1990s will help enrich the debate on the nature of the political change that Italy has experienced in the past 17 years.     

‘These new rights’: social security in the postwar Italian debate

At the end of World War II the Italian welfare system, which had taken shape under Fascism, was in need of a radical overhaul. Nevertheless, the wait for organic, structural reform dragged on for over two decades without arriving, even in the Sixties, at an efficient framework for the welfare state capable of dismantling the corporatist, familist one inherited from Fascism. This article reconstructs the debates on social security and social rights after World War II. Beginning with the interest that was sparked, even in Italy, by the Beveridge Report, I will investigate the meaning given to the expressions “social security” and “social rights” by politicians and technocrats engaged in trying to reform the Italian Welfare State.     

Made in Italy (by the Chinese): migration and the rebirth of textiles and apparel

People around the world are on the move and settling in new, unexpected places. In Prato, Italy, Chinese immigrants now run most of the city's textiles-apparel companies and even subcontract for such leading designers as Giorgio Armani and Dolce & Gabbana. Italian products once made by Italian workers are now increasingly made by the Chinese! I argue that this development resulted from dramatic macro-level policy shifts that created an opportunity for an uncanny synchronicity between the Chinese business approach and the demands of Italy's local, family-based, small-batch production environment. Despite fierce competition, outmoded policies and social friction, the Chinese have adapted to their new home and made significant contributions to an increasingly multiethnic and multicultural Italy.     

Youth as a metaphor: an interview with Carmen Leccardi

Abstract

What are the specificities of youth in Italy as a group? How are they received in civil society and beyond? What kind of approaches have characterized the study of youth in Italy throughout the last decades? In this interview, the editors of this Special Issue open a conversation with Carmen Leccardi, a leading scholar in the field whose work has impacted the study of Italian youth not only in Italy but also internationally. Leccardi investigates these issues diachronically, following and commenting some salient aspects of Italian history that have had an impact on how the lives of young people have unfolded, among them social movements, policies and labour market fluctuations. Revisiting and updating the notion of uncertainty in young people’s lives, the interview concludes that youth can be considered as a metaphor particularly able to capture contemporary social changes.