1st Edition
Cultural Sociology of Cultural Representations Visions of Italy and the Italians in England and Britain from the Renaissance to the Present Day
This book provides a historical cultural sociological analysis of cultural representations of Italy in England and later Britain, from the period of the Italian Renaissance to the present day. Rooted in a critical account of orthodox social scientific approaches to thinking and theorising cultural representation, the study combines analytical frames and conceptual apparatus from Bourdieu’s Field theory and Yale School cultural sociology. Drawing from a wide range of empirical data and studies, the book demonstrates the significance of representations of the Italian peninsula and its people for exploring a range of cultural sociological phenomena, from the ‘classing’ and ‘commodification’ of Italy to the role of Italian symbolism for negotiating cultural trauma, identify formation, and expressions of cultural edification, veneration, and emulation. As such, it will be of interest to scholars of (cultural) sociology, history, anthropology, Italian studies as well as scholars in international studies interested in intercultural exchange and representations of other nations, national cultures, and otherness.
Introduction: Cultural Sociology of Cultural Representations of Italy
1. Methods, Theory, Data
2. Italy as Paradise and Hell
3. Republican Rome and Imperial Britain
4. Italy as Re-enchantment and Refuge
5. Italy as Salvation and Liberation
6. Multiple Italys Past; Multiple Italys Present
7. Italy as Illusion and Paradox
Conclusion
Biography
Christopher Thorpe is Senior Lecturer in Sociology at the University of Exeter. He is a historically oriented sociologist of culture and cultural sociologist. He has written in the areas of classical and modern social theory, cultural representations, food, and cultural translation. His specialist research interests focus on Anglo-Italian cultural representations relations, and interchange.
‘This book is a signal achievement of cultural sociology, reconstructing and interpreting the collective representation of "nations" and "civilizations" at a macro level and over shifting historical time. Thorpe shows, not only how British thinkers understood "Italy" in terms of the binary code of good and evil, but how that signification inverted in the wake of the English Reformation. An original and compelling work.’ - Jeffrey C. Alexander, Lillian Chavenson Saden Professor of Sociology, Yale University, USA.
‘Just as Marx turned Hegel on his head, so too does Christopher Thorpe comprehensively upend 40 years' worth of conventional thinking in the post-Saidian interdisciplinary study of cultural representations. He thereby provides a radically new interpretation of how the British have understood Italy and the Italians over hundreds of years. The book should appeal to sociologists who want their predictable paradigms shaken, and to historians, of Anglo-Italian relations and much else, who want their field cleared of idealising bourgeois obfuscation.’ – David Inglis, Professor of Sociology, University of Helsinki, Finland
