Abstract
Christian Democracy (Democrazia Cristiana, DC) stood at the center of Italy’s political system from the end of World War II until the early 1990s. The party collapsed between 1992 and 1994 for a series of interrelated reasons, such as the long-term transformation in Italian society, the systemic change in Italian politics after the end of the Cold War, the eruption of the Clean Hand investigation into political corruption. This project examines the end of Christian Democracy from a historical and anthropological perspective. It explores the lived experiences of militants and local elites, unveiling their changing perspectives on politics, society, culture, as well as on their participation to the public sphere. Its main argument is that the collapse of Christian Democracy was not simply a critical juncture of political history, but the collapse of a political dream generating a constellation of meanings, symbolisms, and memories that remained alive in large sector of the Italian body politic. Whereas there is a substantial literature on the end of the Italian Communist Party and how it was experienced at the grass-root level, a similar literature on the end of Christian Democracy is virtually negligible. Scholars have focused instead on systemic, structural, and institutional issues, placed at the intersection of international and national politics. Conversely, this project wants to restore the complexity and depth of membership in Christian Democracy. What did the disappearing of the party mean for militants at the grass-root level? How did they make sense of the end and the collapse of their political dream? What was the legacy of their previous political engagement and how such legacy influenced their subsequent political ideas and experiences? To address such questions, this project explores three historical and geographical cases: Campania (more specifically the provinces of Naples, Salerno, and Avellino), Veneto (Vicenza and Padova), Marche (Pesaro-Urbino and Ancona), each representative of a specific way in which Christian Democracy engaged with Italian society. The project has three interrelated aims: empirically, it wants to collect and examine new knowledge, creating a set of data (interviews) which will be helpful for future research and exploring new sources from local archives in the regions considered; historically, it wants to examine Italy’s passage from the “First” to the “Second” Republic from a political as well as existential and experiential perspective, thus allowing for a deeper understanding of Christian Democracy not only as a party but also as a political and cultural figuration that influenced the worldview of massive segments within Italian society; theoretically, it wants to reflect on how a political process end, and suggest that an engagement with “endings” can serve to throw critical light on the wider process of the political.
Project details
Unibo Team Leader: Michele Marchi
Unibo involved Department/s:
Dipartimento di Beni Culturali
Coordinator:
LUISS- Libera Università Internazionale degli studi sociali Guido Carli(Italy)
Total Unibo Contribution: Euro (EUR) 59.150,00
Project Duration in months: 24
Start Date:
30/11/2023
End Date:
29/11/2025
