Intercultural dialogue and cosmopolitanism are increasingly becoming a public policy focus. Art festivals, concerts, and a variety of public events explicitly promoting such agenda have been... Show moreIntercultural dialogue and cosmopolitanism are increasingly becoming a public policy focus. Art festivals, concerts, and a variety of public events explicitly promoting such agenda have been flourishing in southern European countries of recent immigration. Drawing on the Italian case, the author explores the performing arts’ cosmopolitan potential, asking how hierarchies are challenged and recreated when majorities request minorities to engage in cosmopolitan dialogue, on and off stage. Show less
While Italian pundits and politicians purport a world of cultural-religious friction, systematic monitoring of the Italian mediascape and extensive ethnographic fieldwork illuminate a far more... Show moreWhile Italian pundits and politicians purport a world of cultural-religious friction, systematic monitoring of the Italian mediascape and extensive ethnographic fieldwork illuminate a far more complex picture. Ambiguous everyday encounters coexist with structural inequality and exclusionary discourses. The periodic controversies dominating the popular media—over religious symbols, migration, and “Islam”—chart moral (and even theologically laden) political visions that function to inculcate new mechanisms of social control and boundary making in Italy. Show less