Ghost Towns’, Alternative Futures for Abandoned Italian Villages Kristen Elisabeth Sloan University of Wollongong
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University of Wollongong Research Online University of Wollongong Thesis Collection 2017+ University of Wollongong Thesis Collections 2018 Re-awakening ‘Ghost Towns’, Alternative Futures for Abandoned Italian Villages Kristen Elisabeth Sloan University of Wollongong Unless otherwise indicated, the views expressed in this thesis are those of the author and do not necessarily represent the views of the University of Wollongong. Recommended Citation Sloan, Kristen Elisabeth, Re-awakening ‘Ghost Towns’, Alternative Futures for Abandoned Italian Villages, Doctor of Philosophy thesis, School of Humanities and Social Inquiry, University of Wollongong, 2018. https://ro.uow.edu.au/theses1/437 Research Online is the open access institutional repository for the University of Wollongong. For further information contact the UOW Library: [email protected] Re-awakening ‘Ghost Towns’, Alternative Futures for Abandoned Italian Villages Kristen Elisabeth Sloan Principal Supervisor Dr Stephen Brown Co-Supervisor Dr Glenn Mitchell This thesis is presented as part of the requirement for the conferral of the degree: Doctor of Philosophy (Arts) This research has been conducted with the support of the Australian Government Research Training Program Scholarship The University of Wollongong School of Humanities and Social Inquiry Faculty of Law, Humanities and The Arts March 2018 Abstract Italy is a country with an enormous number of historical hamlets, rural villages and medieval walled towns affected by population decline, many of which were abandoned in the 1900s and today have become ‘ghost towns’. While neglected, and even shunned for the greater part of the twentieth century, a new wave of political and popular interest in Italy’s ghost towns, coupled with an increasing number of initiatives to resuscitate them, suggest that the presumed destinies of Italy’s small historic villages (of decline, ruin and oblivion), may be overturned. Contemporary interest in Italy’s emptying towns is not an isolated phenomenon, but is related to a recent explosion of interest and action in abandoned sites throughout the world characterised by new ways of describing, perceiving and interacting with abandoned places; no longer as rubbish but as resources. The spread of ghost towns in Italy and the practice of re-awakening them have attracted the attention of popular spheres, yet have remained relatively unexplored in academia. Only a small number of studies in the architectural and anthropological disciplines prevail. The present thesis provides insight into these relatively unexplored phenomena and can contribute to a better understanding of the unique way that people are perceiving and interacting with abandoned places in the twenty-first century. The first part of the thesis investigates the phenomenon of abandonment in Italy and includes a new census of Italian ghost towns. The census documents 267 deserted villages - including their names, locations, and the dates and reasons for abandonment. The second part of the thesis investigates examples of new political and popular interest in Italy’s ghost towns and analyses cases of their re-awakening. A database of fifty-one re-awakening projects and ten exploratory case studies reveal the principal actors, locations and historical development of the phenomenon of resurrecting derelict towns in Italy. By comparing the historical reasons for their abandonment with the contemporary motives for their reuse, it was possible to generate causal hypotheses regarding the questions – ‘why now?’ and ‘what has permitted contemporary investors and new inhabitants of previously abandoned towns to overcome the reasons that drove their original inhabitants away?’ The detailed examples reveal that new technologies, the twenty-first century’s heightened ecological consciousness and a recent positive rediscovery of sites marginalised by modernity and unscathed by ‘supermodernity’, mean that the historical reasons for abandoning small rural and mountainous villages (isolation, lack of employment opportunities, natural disasters and being excluded from modernity), are no longer such powerful obstacles to prevent their reawakening. While the number of villages at risk of abandonment in Italy is still growing, recent, more decisive attention from the Italian government, the increasing number of associations and networks that seek to prevent the abandonment of small historic towns, and the remarkable rise in the number of re-awakening projects after the turn of the current century, gives reason to believe that the practice of reviving ghost towns will increase. 1 A comparison of the different approaches to re-awakening (for tourism, for new communities, for new business or for social or cultural purposes), reveals that tourism is the preferred vehicle for bringing abandoned villages back to life in Italy although its implementation is not without controversy. Changing the form, ownership and function of historic towns for a fluctuating tourist market can encourage a tendency to promulgate nostalgic or aesthetic visions of Italy’s complex and valuable cultural patrimony and risks transforming authentic expressions of cultural heritage into simplistic commodities. Another issue that arises is that the decontextualised nature of ruins can encourage contemporary spectators to interpret their alterity as permission to create exclusive worlds. Re-awakening projects which embrace this vision remove towns from their historical and territorial context and irreversibly sever the link between the town and its original inhabitants – the true custodians of site-specific knowledge and culture. Converting historical communities into exclusive commodities undermines their potential to inspire genuine reflection and connection and risks robbing them of the very values that we find attractive; authenticity, historicity, inimitability, complexity and a sense of community. What emerges from the study is that community-led projects, which seek to revive semi-abandoned villages are more effective at maintaining an authentic link between past and present than those led by ‘outsiders’ which resurrect long- neglected ruins. Locally-led projects express a more honest assessment of the strengths and shadows of historic villages and do not celebrate ghost towns for their alterity but for their value as authentic places - understood as dynamic and flexible rather than bounded or static. This finding suggests that traditions and culture must be continually reproduced and re-invented for historical villages to maintain their relevance in the contemporary globalising world, and to retain their value as sites of genuine community and authentic (living), culture. 2 Acknowledgments Firstly I would like to acknowledge and thank Stephen Brown for being a talented, caring and reliable supervisor and to Glenn Mitchell for his kindness and good humour. A sincere thank you also goes to my Australian and Italian families for their steadfast support, especially my husband Ludovico Renna and my mother Marilyn Sloan. Numerous associations, institutions and individuals have contributed to providing inspiration for this thesis and the data presented within. I would like to particularly acknowledge the Torri Superiore Association, the Nuto Revelli Association, the work of Città Futura in Riace and the pioneering scholars in this field of research; Vito Teti and Antonella Tarpino. I also owe my deepest gratitude to the Australasian Centre for Italian Studies who generously provided me with the Cassamarca Scholarship, and the European University Institute of Florence who funded a Visiting Scholar Scholarship, both awards which made it possible for me to conduct onsite research in Italy. Finally, I would like to acknowledge and kindly thank the University of Wollongong for their constant high quality academic and practical support, and the Australian Government, whose generously funded Research Training Program has made full-time study possible for me and many other Australian researchers. 3 Certification I, Kristen Elisabeth Sloan, declare that this thesis submitted in fulfilment of the requirements for the conferral of the degree Doctor of Philosophy from the University of Wollongong is wholly my own work unless otherwise referenced or acknowledged. This document has not been submitted for qualification at any other academic institution. Kristen Elisabeth Sloan 28th March 2018 4 Table of Contents Abstract ............................................................................................................................................................................ p.1 Acknowledgments ....................................................................................................................................................... p.3 Certification .................................................................................................................................................................... p.4 Table of Contents .......................................................................................................................................................... p.5 Introduction .......................................................................................................................................................... p.7 Literature Review ............................................................................................................................................ p.15 Research Design and Method ......................................................................................................................