Volume 17 // The Structures and the Classes of the United Italy

This volume is dedicated to the systematic reconstruction  of deep processes that, from the birth of a unitary state (1860-1861) to our days, have been characterizing the economic and social development of Italy. The  tool of a global historical reconstruction emerging in different essays offers the interpretation of the transformation of the Italian Unity economic structure from those times to now in a slow and irregular passage from a predominantly agricultural to the industrial type with a highly developed service industry, characterized by success but also by limits and delays. This passage is being analyzed with a particular attention paid to a progressive creation of civil infrastructures in different fields – from public transport to hygiene and health care – together with their complexed political and cultural meaning and deep transformations of territories and urban areas. At the same time, a large space is given to the reconstruction and to the impact of structural phenomena that gave origin to the most original shapes and stages of the development of the Italian trade union and cooperative movement and that determined unceasing and complexed processes of transformation of the classes being involved in the evolution of the Italian history of the Twentieth century. In such a context, the innovative elaborations offered in the essays can be recommended by the authors for the special attention paid to particular but important aspects of material and everyday life changes. Thus, the volume determines the history of the Italian popular food in the beginning of the industrial epoch and the history of such a typical social mass phenomenon as sports.

<strongSUMMARY

An economic development
Giovanni Federico, Marco Chesi

Transformations of areas and of infrastructures after the Unification of the country
Eduardo Grottanelli de’ Santi

Railways from their origin to the nationalization
Elvira Cantarella

Health care (1860-1980)
Marco Soresina

Psychiatry and society
Maristella Miglioli, Maurizio Bergomi, Marzio Dall’Acqua

Popular food in Italy during the industrialization
Paolo Sorcinelli

Transformations of the social classes from the Unification to the year 1980
Valerio Evangelistsi

Trade Union from 1880 to 1940
Adolfo Pepe

Cooperation from the origin to the World War II
Maurizio Degl’Innocenti

Historical and social foundations for sports in Italy
Roberto Ronchini, Giorgio Triani