Italy is made: global landscapes of the Italian diaspora

Italy is Made explores natural topographies and built environments that give spatial form to cultural ideas and practices of Italianness (Italianità) across the Italian global diaspora. The title challenges the well-known motto that emerged after Italy’s Unification in 1861 to announce the creation of the Italian nation-state before the creation of its imaginary subjects, “Italy is made; now we have to make Italians!” Rather than interpreting the first part of the motto as a matter-of-fact statement, Italy is Made considers the material practices that contribute to ‘making’ this imaginary national space in the diaspora as an ongoing and unfinished project. In this context, “Italy” becomes the cultural and imaginary matrix into which both people of Italian descent and foreign brokers of things Italian translate an abstract cultural and political project of nation building into visible and tangible forms. A close analysis of these Altreitalie reveals the vernacular and improvised nature of their construction in which elements of the imagined nation cross-pollinate in a heterogenous cultural matrix that negotiates the place of Italy in specific contexts.