ABSTRACT
This chapter testifies to the undiminished importance of the "Southern Question" in the civic and institutional life of Italian society and to scholars who study it. It demonstrates it is a many-sided question endowed by its long and important historical lineage with a capacity to generate its own distinctive internal discourse about life and its meanings. The chapter discusses three lines of inquiry as promising paths for commentary and discussion. The first task explores the process of representing the South in the politico-cultural discourses of the past one hundred and fifty years. The second analyses the contributions that studies of the Italian South have made—and continue to make—in the variety of fields of knowledge that touch upon issues of culture and identity. Third, it is important to ask how one might reformulate the "Southern Question" in the light of the some of the insights presented by the preceding authors about life in the contemporary Italian South.
