Pierluca Birindelli, sociologist in residence at the International Studies Institute, has just published an article titled “The Italian particularity” in SocietàMutamentoPolitica (2011), a prestigious Italian sociology journal. Here he uses Edward Banfield’s controversial work, The Moral Basis of a Backward Society (1958) to analyze Italian social reality both experienced first-hand and glimpsed through the media, offering a way out from a half-century of theoretical confusion.

Pierluca Birindelli, Ph.D.
Professor of Sociology at ISI Florence