Suchergebnisse

The Bounded Field -- Contents -- List Of Illustrations -- Note On Language -- Preface And Acknowledgements -- Chapter 1 - Introducing Localism -- Chapter 2 - The Setting And Its Historical Background -- Chapter 3 - A Private Space : The Present- Day Organisation Of Village Life -- Chapter 4 - Knowing One's Land : Hunters And Poachers -- Chapter 5 - The View From Below : Constructions Of Otherness -- Chapter 6 - Natural Time, Political Times : Representations Of History -- Chapter 7 - Local Politics In Theory And Practise -- Chapter 8 - Conclusions : Localism Revisited -- Appendix I : Population Of Caoria And Ronco, 1996 -- Appendix II : Population In The Vanoi Valley, 1826- 1996 -- Appendix III : 1996 Voting Patterns In The Comune Of Canal San Bovo -- Appendix IV : Educational Level Of The Population Of Caoria And Ronco, 1996 -- Appendix V : Land Use In The Comune Of Canal San Bovo (15 April 1996) -- Appendix VI : Occupations In Caoria And Ronco, 1996 (%) -- References -- Index

Regionalism is one of the most debated issues in contemporary western Europe. Yet why the region, rather than the nation state, can have such a strong appeal for the construction of social and political identity remains largely unexplored. Drawing on data collected in the mountainous Trentino region of northern Italy, the author investigates how ideas about village boundaries and private property form the background against which regionalist ideologies are understood. In suggesting that ideas about regionalism largely reflect views about private property, he provides an alternative to theories of nationalism that overlook the articulation between official ideologies and discourses at the local level

This article explores the role of the deep, long-term fieldwork, pioneered by Bronisław Malinowski, and raises the issue of how far his fieldwork style remains a valuable tool at a time when people, goods, money, and knowledge travel with a speed and frequency that were unthinkable until very recently. Drawing upon reflections on the author's own fieldwork in the Italian Alps, as well as on his experience as a university lecturer, it analyzes some of the changes that ethnographic fieldwork has undergone in the last few years in order to assess its value in the face of the pervasiveness of audit culture in the academia and of the emergence of an increasingly individualized society. The article pursues the argument that Malinowski's research methods remain valuable not just as a heuristic device, but particularly as a practice promoting encounters with difference in the public sphere, and fostering participatory models of civic and political life.

This article explores the ways the Italian state was represented as a spatial entity when the ascendancy of political forces with a neoliberal agenda challenged its role as the dominant framework for organizing the economy. Drawing upon ethnographic information collected in the Alps of Trentino, I discuss the role played by a mayor in "translating" between the world of officialdom and that of the local community, and particularly in affecting local perceptions of the state at a time of significant political transformations. The article draws parallels between the discursive practices of this mayor and those of media tycoon Silvio Berlusconi, who was Italy's Prime Minister for eight years. It highlights the contradictions that inform these politicians' constructions of the Italian state. When they want to present themselves as the leaders close to the people, they represent the state as an entity protecting its citizens. In contrast, when they get into legal troubles or when state laws work against their economic interests as businessmen, they avail themselves of the language of business, and cast the state as a distant and bureaucratic entity that needs to be modernized and rationalized. The spatial dimension of the state figures prominently in such constructions. Yet, while state officials often use spatial discourse to "encompass" people and link them to a particular territory, the mayor casts the state as a space "outside" of the people he represents. In suggesting that representing the state as a spatial entity may also serve to cast it as the "Other," especially at the local level, this article pursues the argument that examining the spatiality of different forms of government also entails understanding the localized social processes through which state "spatialization" takes shape.

At a time when European cities redefine themselves through 'culture' in an attempt to attract tourists, investors and potential residents, policymakers have to negotiate different notions of 'local culture' defined by state governments on the one hand and by the EU on the other. Drawing upon research conducted in the Polish city of Gdańsk in the context of the redevelopment of its urban landscape, the article illustrates how 'local culture' is redefined as 'culture of freedom' by municipal and state institutions in order to establish a relationship of historical continuity between the time when Gdańsk was a thriving multicultural city and the post-socialist present. The article puts forward the argument that while the reformulation of local culture as 'culture of freedom' involves reconciling notions of national identity with new norms of local, regional and European integration, it does not necessarily entail the supersession of nationalism.

This article explores the ways in which a post‐peasant society in the Trentino region of northern Italy reworked its past history at a time of political turmoil when the rise of regionalist parties with an Italian version of Thatcherism in their agenda challenged the legitimacy of the Italian state. It illustrates how making a regional, local history entails representing the past as a period characterized by the repetitiveness of events. It is argued that everyday accounts of the past, because they centre on the ideas of social and political order and private property, form the background against which 'official' politics is understood. In this sense, everyday local‐level discourses about the past are as political as the 'official' ones of party leaders. In making this argument, the article shows that 'repetitive time' also represents a device through which social actors place themselves outside 'national history' and cast the encompassing nation‐state as the outsider.

The article analyzes students' engagement in the neoliberal academy. It points to a paradox: while academic institutions set out to produce engaged and motivated students and instil in them a quest for knowledge, their increasingly high tuition fees are creating instead a disengaged student population whose main goal is to pay off accumulated debts.

Since 1989 neo-nationalism has grown as a volatile political force in almost all European societies in tandem with the formation of a neoliberal European Union and wider capitalist globalizations. Focusing on working classes situated in long-run localized processes of social change, including processes of dispossession and disenfranchisement, this volume investigates how the experiences, histories, and relationships of social class are a necessary ingredient for explaining the re-emergence and dynamics of populist nationalism in both Eastern and Western Europe. Featuring in-depth urban and regional case studies from Romania, Hungary, Serbia, Italy and Scotland this volume reclaims class for anthropological research and lays out a new interdisciplinary agenda for studying identity politics in the intensifying neoliberal conjuncture