{"product_id":"modernity-and-secession","title":"Modernity and Secession","description":"\u003cp\u003e\n\tThe northern Italian, ‘Padanian’ identity, fostered by the \u003ci\u003eLega Nord\u003c\/i\u003e, is rooted in the long-standing tradition, in political and scholarly discourse, of casting regional differences within Italy in terms of a North-South geographic divide. Trying to come to terms, in the late 1980s and 1990s, with Italy’s (real or presumed) inadequacies – such as inefficient government, corruption, and organized crime – this imagined geography acquired political centrality in that the North became associated with the virtues of modernity and the South with the vices of un-modernity. It was not only politicians but also social scientists, who fostered and perpetuated this conceptualization of the North-South divide, thus imposing a normative hierarchy between the two parts of the country.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\n\tIn response to this discourse many scholars, both in Italy and abroad, have started to question this perception of the South as a “backward” and implicitly inferior society. Starting from this critical tradition, Michel Huysseune provides a new, systematic, and interdisciplinary approach that re-interprets the premises behind Italy’s imagined geography of modernity. He moves beyond an understanding of the South as a “backward” and implicitly inferior society and problematizes normative notions of modernity, thus offering a new perspective on the North-South divide, which has a significance well beyond the case of Italy.\u003c\/p\u003e","brand":"Berghahn Books","offers":[{"title":"Default Title","offer_id":54233606062424,"sku":"9781845450618","price":116.99,"currency_code":"EUR","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0278\/1295\/4195\/files\/9781845450618_f7fc3d90-6cc1-4a8b-8471-a619edc91af3.jpg?v=1777234522","url":"https:\/\/agendabookshop.com\/products\/modernity-and-secession","provider":"Agenda Bookshop","version":"1.0","type":"link"}