Contemporary History Lm B (advanced Course) 2023/2024

The Material Legacy of Industrialisation

Industrialisation is one of the hallmarks of the contemporary age. Since the end of the 18th century, it has redefined the social morphology and spatial arrangements of increasingly numerous contexts. Since the 1960s, the industrialist paradigm has begun to be challenged. In the West, in particular, it began to be identified with an unwieldy past. This tendency intensified with the processes of deindustrialisation that, since the late 1970s, have once again reshaped the economic geography of the world, igniting dramatic conflicts around the memory of industrialisation and the relationship with its material legacy .

The module will adopt a plural methodological approach - based on analytical trajectories coming from urban history, social history, cultural history and economic history and hinged on environmental history - and will be divided into four parts. The first part will provide an overview of the technological transformations introduced by the industrial revolutions, highlighting their consequences on modes of production and consumption as well as on human and non-human forms of life. We will then focus on the formation of industrial environments, able to profoundly alter the organisation of territories: some of the most important cases will be considered, with particular regard to the Italian case. In a third step, the emergence of a new anti-industrial sensibility will be addressed, focusing on some of the issues raised by it (particularly those of an environmental nature) and on the most relevant experiences of that season. Finally, the scenarios opened up by deindustrialisation will be discussed in terms of their relationship with the legacy of the previous phase.     

Teaching Methods

The module will be conducted partly in seminar mode. At the end of the lectures, students will be able to write  an assignment to be presented in class based on a reading list agreed with the professor. The seminars are optional and constitute partial exemption from the final examination. For all students, the final examination will focus on the content covered in the lectures.

Bibliography

1. J. R. McNeill, Qualcosa di nuovo sotto il sole, Einaudi 2020;
2. Essays and documents provided by the teacher.

Additional material will be provided to non-attending students; please contact the lecturer

Examination: oral test.

Attending students may, as they choose, take half or two-thirds of the examination by preparing and discussing the agreed-upon in-depth studies in class.