Riconfigurazioni dell’urbano: il caso del Delta ferrarese

The territory of the “Delta ferrarese” is not well known in the literature of social sciences. Some have heard of it because of its poverty, given that this territory in the post-war period represented a depressed area, a national problem, the Southern question in Northern Italy. The Agrarian Reform of the Fifties fell on these lands practically devoid of industry favouring the end of that rural world that had characterized them for so long. Even today, after some time, the Delta is described as a territory without past and future, living in an “eternal present”, where the only imaginary that pushes tourists to venture into these places is that of the finis terrae. These keys of interpretation have been used, when not produced, by scholars and artists who have worked and conducted research in this area. In fact, between the 1950s and 1980s, numerous intellectuals were active in Ferrara who turned their attention to this province, and consequently to the d’Este capital. Their works not only represented products of anthropological value, but they created an anthropology question in the city which then found an answer with the creation of the first anthropology chair starting from 2008.

Il “Delta ferrarese” rimane un oggetto sconosciuto nella letteratura delle scienze sociali del Novecento. Nel dopoguerra e’ stato,.per almeno due decenni, sotto i riflettori del nuovo sguardo “neorealista” in quanto area depressa, rappresentando, in sintesi, una vera e propria “questione meridionale” in pieno Nord Italia. Ancora oggi, a distanza di tempo, il Delta ferrarese viene descritto come un territorio senza passato e senza futuro. Tanti, però, sono stati gli artisti che hanno lavorato e condotto ricerche in quest’area tra gli anni Cinquanta e gli anni Ottanta del Novecento. Le loro opere hanno creato una domanda antropologica in città che ha poi trovato risposta con la creazione della prima cattedra di antropologia a partire dal 2008.