Time into space - The myth of 'backward' Italy in modern Europe

The understanding of the social character of time and space has suffered from the tendency to express one in terms of the other. Time has thus lost its dynamism when reduced to such twofold categorizations of space as 'backward' and 'modern'. As a result, space is oversimplified into homogeneous blocks that have ideal-type temporal characteristics. This paper offers one view of how this has happened historically. The pervasiveness of the expression of time into space is then illustrated through an examination of some representations of Italy in contemporary historical and anthropological scholarship. A particular metaphor - that of backward Italy in modern Europe - has acquired mythic status in explaining the 'nature' of Italy.