2016/10/14 by Gianni Piazza · 1 citation
Social Sciences · #Italian Fascism and Post-war Society #Italian Social Issues and Migration #Historical and Environmental Studies
paper · doi:10.1111/anti.12286
openalex publication_date 2016/10/14 · openalex created_date 2025/10/10 · openalex updated_date 2026/05/21
Abstract The Social Centres in Italy are simultaneously “liberated spaces”, empty and unused large buildings squatted by groups of radical left/antagonist activists to self‐manage social and countercultural activities, and “political contentious places”. They are indeed urban but not only local protest actors, denouncing the scarcity of spaces of sociability outside of commercial circuits, campaigning against market‐oriented urban renewal, property speculation, and on other anti‐capitalistic issues addressed outside the occupied spaces. The long history of Social Centres in Catania, the second largest city of Sicily, is reconstructed and explained through the choices and actions made by the squatters/activists, depending on their political‐ideological orientation, on the one hand; and by the opportunities and constraints of the specific political and socio‐spatial structure, which they had to face, on the other. The Social Centres, CPO Experia , CSOA Guernica , CSA Auro , and more recently CSO Liotru , are the main analysed empirical cases.