The Grecanici Of Southern Italy

In this groundbreaking ethnography of "fearless governance", Stavroula Pipyrou shows how Grecanici—the Greek linguistic minority of Calabria, Southern Italy—have crafted the means to invert hegemonic culture and participate in the power games of minority politics on local and national scales.

A study of how violence and language affect women in Italy. Can the way a word is used give legitimacy to a political movement? Feminism, Violence, and Representation in Modern Italy traces the use of the word “femminicidio” (or “femicide”) as a tool to mobilize Italian feminists, particularly the Union of Women in Italy (UDI). Based on nearly two years of fieldwork among feminist activists, Giovanna Parmigiani takes a broad look at the many ways in which violence inflects the lives of women in Italy. From unchallenged gendered grammar rules to the representation of women as victims, Parmigiani examines the devaluing of women’s contribution to their communities through the words and experiences of the women she interviews. She describes the first uses of the word “femminicidio” as a political term used by and within feminist circles and traces its spread to ultimate legitimization and national relevance. The word redefined women as a political subject by building an imagined community of potentially violated women. In doing so, it challenged Italians to consider the status of women in Italian society, and to make this status a matter of public debate. It also problematized the connection between women and tropes of women as objects of suffering and victimhood. Parmigiani considers this exchange within the context of Italian Catholic heritage, a precarious economy, and long-held notions of honor and shame. Parmigiani provides a careful and searing consideration of the ways in which representations of violence and the politics of this representation are shaping the future of women in Italy and beyond.

Some of the worst effects of the global economic downturn that commenced in 2008 have been felt in Europe, and specifically in the Eurozone’s so-called PIIGS (Portugal, Italy, Ireland, Greece, and Spain) and Cyprus. This edited volume is the first collection to bring together ethnographies of living with austerity inside the Eurozone, and explore how people across Southern Europe have come to understand their experiences of increased social suffering, insecurity, and material poverty. The contributors focus on how crises stimulate temporal thought (temporality), whether tilted in the direction of historicizing, presentifying, futural thought, or some combination of these possibilities. One of the themes linking diverse crisis experiences across national boundaries is how people contemplate their present conditions and potential futures in terms of the past. The studies in this collection thus supply ethnographies that journey to the source of historical production by identifying the ways in which the past may be activated, lived, embodied, and refashioned under contracting economic horizons. In times of crisis modern linear historicism is often overridden (and overwritten) by other historicities showing that in crises not only time, but history itself as an organizing structure and set of expectations, is up for grabs and can be refashioned according to new rules. This book was originally published as a special issue of History and Anthropology.

‘Freedom’ is one of the most fiercely contested words in contemporary global experience. This book provides an up-to-date overview from an anthropological perspective of the diverse ways in which freedom is understood and practised in everyday life, including the emergent relationships between governance, autonomy and liberty. The contributors offer a wealth of ethnographic insight from a variety of geographic, cultural and political contexts. Taken together the essays constitute a radical challenge to assumptions about what freedom means in today’s world.

Anthropologists working in Italy are at the forefront of scholarship on several topics including migration, far-right populism, organised crime and heritage. This book heralds an exciting new frontier by bringing together some of the leading ethnographers of Italy and placing together their contributions into the broader realm of anthropological history, culture and new perspectives in Europe.

In 2009, after seismic tremors struck the Italian mountain town of L'Aquila, survivors were subjected to a "second earthquake"—invasive media attention and a relief effort that left them in a state of suspended citizenship as they were forcibly resettled and had to envision a new future. In Citizens without a City, Jan-Jonathan Bock reveals how a disproportionate government response exacerbated survivors' sense of crisis, divided the local population, and induced new types of political action. Italy's disenfranchising emergency reaction relocated citizens to camps and sites across a ruined townscape, without a plan for restoration or return. Through grassroots politics, arts and culture, commemoration rituals, architectural projects, and legal avenues, local people now sought to shape their hometown's recovery. Bock combines an analysis of the catastrophe's impact with insights into post-disaster civic life, urban heritage, the politics of mourning, and community fragmentation. A fascinating read for anyone interested in urban culture, disaster, and politics, Citizens without a City illustrates how survivors battled to retain a sense of purpose and community after the L'Aquila earthquake.