Could go into a really detailed socio-political analysis stretching back to ancient Rome; southern Italy is quite interesting that way.
Times I know I have issues: when the phrase "really detailed socio-political analysis stretching back to ancient Rome," sounds tantalizing and intriguing.
I shouldn't have even mentioned it, now I'll spend a few hours trying to put things together. Basically has to do with southern Italy's somewhat unique political history as a perpetual backwater combined with its strong historical connections to Greece and the eastern Mediterranean. In really vague terms, southern Italy had never been ruled by anything but autocrats until the Italian republic was declared, which had strongly diluted any sense of community in the region (not just regionally, but at the town level as well). There were brief flowerings of communality at times, such as the short-lived Republic of Amalfi, but by and large such things passed the area by.
While your average person might question the government's motives, for example, and try to fix them if corrupt, the southern Italian assumes the government is corrupt and goes about trying to get as big of a cut from that corruption as possible. There are other places in the world like this, but southern Italy is most studied.
