Italy

Description

During the first half of the 1990s, it seemed that Italy was in danger of disintegration. But if we assume that modern Italy is essentially fraudulent, we will not understand why Italy remains intact at the end of the 20th century, nor will we understand the unique kind of nation which Italians have created for themselves. This work proceeds with the working assumption that Italy is indeed a nation, albeit it of a particular kind, and offers a detailed discussion of its historical development. It argues that the exigencies of state-formation were more important in the founding of the kingdom of Italy than nationalism, and then argues that early failures to engineer an Italian national consciousness were due to the state's refusal to integrate local cultures into a consolidated national culture. Rather, a nation was gradually developed from within society, through the construction of a public sphere, through mass communications, migration movements, and mass consumerism. This account discusses civic culture, state and society, and nationalism itself.

Nicholas Doumanis is Senior Lecturer in History at the University of New South Wales, Australia

Italy deserves to enhance the author's growing scholarly reputation. Doumanis suceeds in weaving considerable narrative detail into what is essentially a synthesis-and endorsement-of recent revisionist literature on modern Italian history. History Although the book aims mainly at an undergraduate readership, it provides for a comprehensive and yet concise account of the process to nation and nation-state formation in Italy with a significant level of historical detail, useful for the graduate readership and the interested scholar. The level of historical detail does not obscure the main line of argument, which is to elucidate the particular path of Italy to nation formation aswell as to suggest how nations and national identities are 'historical, mutable and contestable' and 'constantly in the making'. Doumanis casts light on the different societal, political, economic and cultural factors that combined, often in opposition to one another, in the formation of modern nations and nation-states in 19th and 20th century Europe, contesting earlier views on the historical inevitability of nations. This book offers a clear, concise, well-structured and critical account of the Italian path to nation formation that can s Nations and Nationalism Volume 8 number 4 Doumanis gives us two excellent books that challenge much writing on the subject of 'the nation'. Taylor & Francis 10: 399-407 2003