BOOKS - Building a Civil Society: Associations, Public Life, and the Origins of Moder...
Building a Civil Society: Associations, Public Life, and the Origins of Modern Italy (Toronto Italian Studies) - Steven C. Soper May 28, 2013 PDF  BOOKS
US $5.80

Views
250757
Building a Civil Society: Associations, Public Life, and the Origins of Modern Italy (Toronto Italian Studies)
Author: Steven C. Soper
Year: May 28, 2013
Format: PDF
File size: PDF 1.3 MB
Language: English

The most passionate advocates of Italy's unification in the nineteenth century possessed an almost limitless faith in the benefits of civic association. They also shared a common once Italian unification was achieved and various freedoms were established, would ordinary Italians naturally become responsible, progressive citizens - especially after centuries of foreign rule, regional division, and economic decline? Most unification advocates doubted that their fellow citizens could form a modern, progressive civil society on their own, or that a vibrant association life would develop from the ground up. Building a Civil Society is the first book-length English-language study of associational life in nineteenth-century Italy. Drawing on extensive research in published and unpublished documents - including associational records, newspapers, periodicals, government documents, guidebooks, exhibition catalogues, memoirs, and private letters - Steven C. Soper provides a complex account of Italian liberalism during Europe's age of association. His study also raises important questions about the role that associations play in emerging democracies.

You may also be interested in: