Conspiracy Theories in Contemporary Italy
Product details
- ISBN 9781032704500
- Weight: 420g
- Dimensions: 156 x 234mm
- Publication Date: 21 May 2026
- Publisher: Taylor & Francis Ltd
- Publication City/Country: GB
- Product Form: Paperback
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This volume explores the role played by conspiracy narratives in the contemporary Italian political, cultural, and social context, through a series of case studies.
It begins with a historical and genealogical account of the troubled success of Italian conspiracy thinking from the early 1970s to the present day. Among the issues examined are the unclear division between legitimate/illegitimate forms of knowledge, the use of conspiracy as a confrontational discursive device, the emergence of moral panic, and the stabilization of information outlets against dominant official explanations. The analysis covers the case of a well-known national survey, and a digital platform specializing in conspiracy storytelling. The second axis of the book concerns the pervasive use of conspiracy as a theory or narrative that currently circulates in various Italian cultural fields: multiculturalism, immigration, and racism; Catholic traditionalism; football fandom; small business economics; and cooking and food.
This volume will be of interest to researchers of conspiracy theories, and Italian politics and history.
Gianmarco Navarini is Full Professor of Cultural Sociology at the University of Milano-Bicocca, Italy. He has published widely on political rituals, liminality, social exclusion, sports practices, and wine culture. He is on the board of the journal Ethnography and Qualitative Research. He directed ELCAS (Ethnography of Language: between Conspiracy, Associations and Subcultures), which combines ethnography with discourse analysis.
