Family, Culture and Politics in Contemporary Italy

(Dis)connecting Milan(ese): Deterritorialised Urbanism and Disempowering Politics in Globalising Cities

“…According to Balducci (2005), the end of the 1970s was a time when planning and the drafting of the city plan acquired a collective meaning as a way to think about the future of the city, not only by bureaucrats or politicians but also by a more diverse group of social forces. By now, Milan had become nationally an important site in the rise of social movements and urban conflicts of everyday life within the factories, on the peripheral housing estates, and in schools (Ginsborg, 1990;Lumley, 1990). Civil society was also linked to the political process through mass organisations like unions, parties, or neighbourhood committees, and the clientelistic networks around the two major parties that divided national politics: the Christian Democrats and the Italian Communist Party.…”

Workers and Revolutionaries at the Twilight of Fordism: The Breakdown of Industrial Relations in the Automobile Plants of Detroit and Turin, 1967–1973

“…26 From this assessment of the failure of the centre-left derives the idea that the social movements of the late 1960s, the students and then the workers' movement, rose from a deluded expectation of reform even if they eventually put forward demands that were far more progressive. 27 With similar tones, in the American case, a number of historians have interpreted the outburst of black militancy in the urban north as a case of`rising expectations,' meaning that the Civil Rights and Great Society legislation passed under Lyndon B. Johnson had suddenly accelerated the anticipation for improvements in the economic conditions of blacks. However, Johnson's reforms never attacked the key institutions that perpetuated the unequal distribution of power and wealth in American society.…”

Jamaican Dons, Italian Godfathers and the Chances of a ‘Reversible Destiny’

“…Secondly, it would appear that the Italian state had compromised itself because – in the context of the Cold War – the ruling political parties, above all the Christian Democratic party, needed the votes that the Mafia could arrange in order to remain in power and exclude the Communists from the government (Chubb, 1996, pp. 277–8; Ginsborg, 1990). As a consequence, the Italian government became too compromised and enfeebled to enforce the law or protect its own citizens, hence their reliance on alternative orders for security and protection, albeit precarious.…”