Three Concurrent Modernities. The Italian (De)Stabilisation of the 1970s

This paper investigates the Seventies as a time-span in which Italy underwent multiple concurrent modernisations; that entails shifting the accent from the over-worked category of «crisis» to a less clear-cut category of change. In particular, no less than three forms of modernity overlapped in Italy during the Seventies: the exhaustion of agrarian civilization, which triggered a long-term anthropological change; the controversial Fordist nationalization process, which Fascism had failed to accomplish; the short-term Euro-Americanisation cultural turn, namely the completion of Americanisation in Western European style. All these strands contribute to placing Italy in a fully global perspective; the supposed «anomaly» of the Italian case is explored in terms of what forms of «(de)stabilisation» and modernity emerged from the Seventies.