Ricerc@Sapienza

The contributors deal with several ‘facets’ of the Italian seventies. Simona Colarizi provides an overview of the decade, analysing in particular the categories of movements, reforms, democracy, and transition. The article by Eugenio Capozzi focuses on the growing sentiment of hostility towards professional politicians, taking into account its origins and causes.

A large part of the existing historical research on the seventies in Italy takes the category of crisis to define the country’s situation in that decade. During the seventies Italy experienced a multifaceted systemic crisis: institutional, economic, political, cultural, social, and religious. This interpretation is convincing, however, only if the term-concept ‘crisis’ is not solely adopted in its negative connotations and the seventies are not exclusively understood as an age of darkness (and violence).