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Taranto in Memories: The Industrial Experience and the Future of a Southern City

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Globalization, Supranational Dynamics and Local Experiences

Part of the book series: Europe in a Global Context ((EGC))

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Abstract

“Maria” lives in Taranto, in the Tamburi district, a few meters from Ilva, Europe’s largest steelwork. “Maria” also lives in Açailândia in Brazil in the quarter Piquiá de Baixo, surrounded by blast furnaces working for the Viena Siderúrgica. From Brazil to Puglia it always comes down to the same name: Vale SA, a Brazilian colossus unrivaled in the world for iron production. In 2012 Greenpeace awarded it the Public Eye Award, better known as the Oscar of Shame, for its “70 years long history stained by repeated violations of human rights , inhuman conditions of work, ransacking of public property and ruthless exploitation of nature”.

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Notes

  1. 1.

    http://www.xinguvivo.org.br/votevale/

  2. 2.

    www.justicanostrilhos.org

  3. 3.

    Compare to Carchedi and Pugliese (2007).

  4. 4.

    The expression wage cage refers to a system that emerged, during the postwar period, from an agreement between industrialists and workers’ organizations in consequence of which the wage levels in the South were lower than those in the North, considering the different life costs forgeographical macro areas. This system allowed, in the case of Taranto and other areas where the first major state industries were created, to exploit southern labor. It was an economic convenience item not explicited by politicians and executives of the time which soon turned out to be a subordinating device of the southern workers.

  5. 5.

    Bevilacqua (1997) and La Spina (2003) have denounced the Fund for the South as, over time, it has turned from a means of promoting production initiatives into a tool for subsidies’ supply, useful for establishing business and patronage relationships between political classes and civil society.

  6. 6.

    See also Zurla (2011).

  7. 7.

    The name of the documentary was “Pianeta Acciaio”.

  8. 8.

    See also Vulpio (2009).

  9. 9.

    In local dialect, “eat and shut up and then die and shut up”.

  10. 10.

    These are the words pronounced by Mr. Franco Sebastio, Public Chief Prosecutor of Taranto, when the Prosecutor’s Office appealed to the Constitutional Court on the law decree 207, the so-called “save Ilva” decree of 3 December 2012.

  11. 11.

    See Regione Puglia—Presidenza della Giunta Regionale (2008), a book illustrated by the children of the primary schools of Taranto.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Università del Salento, Lecce, Italy

    Marta Vignola

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  1. Marta Vignola
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Editors and Affiliations

  1. Dipartimento di Sociologia, Università Cattolica del Sacro Cuore, Milano, Italy

    Marco Caselli

  2. ISMU Foundation, Milano, Italy

    Guia Gilardoni

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Vignola, M. (2018). Taranto in Memories: The Industrial Experience and the Future of a Southern City. In: Caselli, M., Gilardoni, G. (eds) Globalization, Supranational Dynamics and Local Experiences . Europe in a Global Context. Palgrave Macmillan, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-64075-4_15

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-64075-4_15

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  • Publisher Name: Palgrave Macmillan, Cham

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  • Online ISBN: 978-3-319-64075-4

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