{"product_id":"modernity-and-secession-the-social-sciences-and-the-political-discourse-of-the-lega-nord-in-italy-9781845450618","title":"Modernity and Secession: The Social Sciences and the Political Discourse of the Lega Nord in Italy","description":"\u003cp\u003e • Author(s): Michel Huysseune\u003cbr\u003e • Publisher: Berghahn Books\u003cbr\u003e • Publisher Imprint: Berghahn Books\u003cbr\u003e • BISAC: Political Process - Political Parties\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003e The 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 \u003cp\u003e In 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":"Hardcover","offer_id":47780998054039,"sku":"9781845450618","price":9397.0,"currency_code":"INR","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0666\/3471\/1191\/files\/9781845450618.webp?v=1778049787","url":"https:\/\/atlanticbooks.com\/products\/modernity-and-secession-the-social-sciences-and-the-political-discourse-of-the-lega-nord-in-italy-9781845450618","provider":"Atlantic Books","version":"1.0","type":"link"}