The Failure of Italian Nationhood: The Geopolitics of a Troubled Identity

by M. Graziano

Overview

This book explains Italy s endless political instability and its historical, cultural and economic roots. It also illustrates why, even after the creation of the Italian state, Italy was never really unified. Piero Gobetti described fascism once as the "autobiography" of the Italian nation. This book explains why today it is possible to describe "berlusconism" - a cultural, political and social phenomenon in Italy- as the most recent version of this country s autobiography.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780230104136
Publisher:	Palgrave Macmillan US
Publication date:	10/18/2010
Series:	Italian and Italian American Studies
Edition description:	2010
Pages:	264
Product dimensions:	6.20(w) x 9.30(h) x 0.80(d)

About the Author

Manlio Graziano teaches Geopolitics of Religions at Paris IV La Sorbonne, France. His previously published books include Identité catholique et identité italienne and Il secolo cattolico.

Table of Contents

Preface to the English Edition vii

Introduction to the English Edition ix

Introduction 1

Foreword: The "Original Sin" 13

Part I The Original Characteristics

1 How Premature Development Became a Factor of Backwardness 27

2 The Phantom Nation 35

3 The Northern Question 43

4 Inventing Ancestors 49

5 The Unhappy Consciousness of Italian Development 55

6 A Culture without a Nation 61

7 The Difficult Italianization of the Piedmont 69

8 The Difficult Piedmontization of Italy 75

9 The Moderate Social Bloc 81

Part II The Permanencies

10 Transformism 91

11 Internationalization Crises and Transformism 99

12 Emerging Sectors and Transformism 105

13 The Southern Question 111

Part III Identity and Sovereignty

14 A Counter-Reformist Identity 121

15 A Civil "Guelph" Religion 129

16 The Quest for a Civil Italian Religion 137

17 A Petit-Bourgeois Fatherland 145

18 A Country of Limited Sovereignty 153

19 Identity and Development 161

20 The Failure of "Democratic Nationalization" 167

21 Italian Metamorphoses 177

22 Between Europe and the Mediterranean 183

23 The Internationalization Crisis of the 1990s 191

Conclusion 199

Biographies 203

Notes 217

References 249

Index 259

Editorial Reviews

"Graziano adopts an interdisciplinary approach and opens various windows on the political, economic, sociological, and cultural history of Italy since its unification. He weaves a thick and rich cloth on which he also presents various shiny pearls in the form insights, images, and references. It is a rich and erudite book that makes an important contribution to the recent debate on 'the absence of an Italian nation' - a debate on which Grazian builds but which he also carries forward." - Forum Italicum

"Manlio Graziano's ambitious The Failure of Italian Nationhood seeks to get to the heart of the problem, examining crisis after crisis in the past century and a half in search of some recurrent behavior pattern that might explain Italy's troubles." - The New Yorker

"[One of] the two most serious attempts to grapple with Italy's first 150 years." - The Economist

"Silvio Berlusconi's Italy is heir to a long and convoluted history. Manlio Graziano navigates nimbly through this labyrinth and suggests why the country has again fallen easy victim to weak government and feeble institutions." - David Willey, BBC Rome Correspondent

"This is a rich and erudite book. It makes an important and interdisciplinary contribution to the debate on 'the absence of an Italian nation' on which it builds and carries forward. Manlio Graziano has managed to weave a thick and rich cloth on which he has also set various shiny pearls." - Osvaldo Croci, Professor,Department of Political Science, Memorial University, Canada

"A very informative and enlightening study about a country often discussed, rarely understood." - Sergio Romano, historian, columnist, and author of Vademecum di storia dell'Italia unita

"Manlio Graziano lucidly diagnoses the problem of Italian national identity as both anomalous and inextricably rooted in its European context. His fluent and richly informed book has important implications for our broader understanding of nationhood in a globalized world." - Francis X. Rocca, Vatican Correspondent, Religion News Service

"Here you learn how a failed State may last at least 150 years." - Lucio Caracciolo, Editor of Limes: Italian Review of Geopolitics and Heartland: Eurasian Review of Geopolitics

From the Publisher