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Place and Politics in Modern Italy

How do the places where people live help structure and restructure their sociopolitical identities and interests? In this book, renowned political geographer John A. Agnew presents a theoretical model that addresses the relation of place to politics and applies it to a series of historicogeographical case studies set in modern Italy.

For Agnew, place is not just a static backdrop against which events occur, but a dynamic component of social, economic, and political processes. He shows, for instance, how the lack of a common "landscape ideal" or physical image of Italy delayed the development of a sense of nationhood among Italians after unification. And Agnew uses the post-1992 victory of the Northern League over the Christian Democrats in many parts of northern Italy to explore how parties are replaced geographically during periods of intense political change.

Providing a fresh new approach to studying the role of space and place in social change, Place and Politics in Modern Italy will interest geographers, political scientists, and social theorists.

315 pages | 7 halftones, 25 line drawings, 11 tables | 6 x 9 | © 2002

University of Chicago Geography Research Papers

Geography: Social and Political Geography

Political Science: Political Behavior and Public Opinion

Table of Contents

List of Figures
List of Tables
Acknowledgments
Abbreviations for Names
1. Introduction
2. Mapping Politics Theoretically
3. Landscape Ideals and National Identity in Italy
4. Modernization and Italian Political Development
5. The Geographical Dynamics of Italian Electoral Politics, 1948-87
6. Red, White, and Beyond: Place and Politics in Pisoia and Lucca
7. The Geography of Party Replacement in Northern Italy, 1987-96
8. The Northern League and Political Identity in Northern Italy
9. Reimagining Italy after the Collapse of the Party System in 1992
10. Place and Understanding in Italian Politics
Notes
Bibliography
Index

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