The specific availability for this course is not currently known. If you would like to know if this course will be offered during your session, please contact us.
This course will examine the Italian Mezzogiorno starting with this paradox – the reality of a society often engaged in rapid social change but one where change itself often appears impossible. We will look at the modern history of the region briefly, moving on to major themes and questions concerning how the Italian South has developed since the Unification of Italy and especially in recent decades. Issues to be studied include underdevelopment, modernization, social capital and civic spirit or the lack of it, the argument that the South is characterized by “amoral community”, the whys and hows of the great emigration of the last century, the land reforms after World War II, the attempt to overcome the region’s underdevelopment with the Fund for the Mezzogiorno, the issue of clientelist and corrupt politics, organized crime including the Sicilian Mafia, the Neapolitan Camorra, and the Calabrian ‘Ndrangheta, the anti-Mafia movement, the current crisis of waste removal in Naples and its causes, the changing role of women in Southern society and others.
