This thesis examines how and why the southern Italian city of Matera came to be seen as a national shame and symbol of the southern question in the post-war period. Moreover, it traces the impact that these narratives had on the city’s social and urban history from 1945 to 1960. It draws on methods from the history of nationalism, the history of emotions, the new southern history, and urban history to achieve these aims. A range of primary and secondary sources are examined including documents from the Italian State Archives in Rome and Matera, the US National Archive in Maryland, Italian newspapers and magazines, parliamentary documents and debates, and official newsreel and documentary footage. The first chapter analyses the image of Matera as Other and a symbol of southern Italy’s civiltà contadina featured in Carlo Levi’s post-war bestseller Cristo si è fermato a Eboli. It also assesses the book’s impact in shaping ideas of Matera amongst Italy’s post-war public sphere. The second chapter looks at how and why Matera came to be seen as a national shame in the immediate post-war period. It examines the distinct catholic and communist moral worlds which shaped this notion in a Cold War context. The third chapter investigates the implementation of the first special law for Matera. It assesses the project’s limitations and critiques the existing secondary literature on this topic. Finally, the fourth chapter is a case study of the purpose-built rural village La Martella. It examines how and why Matera and La Martella were used in government propaganda to promote official reforms in southern Italy. The thesis concludes that narratives of national shame and the southern question directly shaped Matera’s urban and social topography post-1945.

The thesis examines the representation of Silvio Berlusconi’s language in the British press through the reverberations of linguistic taboos when translated from Italian into English. The analysis is set within the overarching premise that ‘Linguistic relations are always relations of symbolic power’ (Bourdieu 1992: 142). In order to navigate through the analyses, the trajectory of Berlusconi and his language is first set against the Italian sociolinguistic and historico-political backdrop. Then, through a triangulation of methodological approaches, the study attempts to understand some of the underlying mechanisms that influence the ways in which news producers shape knowledge on cultural difference. Critical Discourse Analysis methods are used to reveal the implicit propositions and evaluative translational choices in three datasets of online news texts drawn from British quality and tabloid newspapers. The first dataset examines news narratives on Berlusconi’s sexist and taboo language and the translational decisions of these ‘critical points’ (Munday 2012). Textual framing and cultural stereotyping are the focus of the second dataset that analyse a meta-debate across Italian and British newspapers on national image. The third dataset examines ‘anti-gay’, ‘sexist’ ‘racist’ narratives on Italy, as portrayed in British news discourse. Semi-structured interviews with the journalists who were among the active agents in these framing practices provide data on the habitus of the ‘journalator’ (van Doorslaer 2012) and the role of the journalist/translator as cultural mediator. A tentative approach to sample the ways in which readers respond to the framed discourses was made in order to gauge the impact of these news narratives on the image of Italy in the eyes of the audiences.

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The thesis analyses the development of social movements in Italy in the period from 1968 to the end of the following decade, with particular reference to the Milanese experience and a focus on the 1968-9 years. It argues that the late ‘60's represent a transitional moment; whilst industrial class conflicts dominated oppositional politics in 1968-9, the student movement anticipated the radical redefinitions of politics brought about by the social movements of the 1970's. The changing relationship between social movements and the conceptualisation of social conflicts is the central theme. The thesis is divided into five parts. Part 1 outlines approaches to the analysis of social protest which are considered especially useful because of their concern with agency and the specific dynamics of social movements; Part 2 gives a historical introduction to the origins of the crisis of 1968-9; Part 3 is a case study of the student movement, and Part 4 of the workers' movement, both concentrating on the 1968-9 developments in Milan. Part 5 outlines their consequences for the formation of oppositional politics in the 1970's. It returns to the theme of 'old' and 'new' political forms, taking the cases of red terrorism, feminism and youth protest. It is argued that the emergence of new social movements has provoked a fundamental questioning of categories of social analysis with important consequences for both political theory and practice.