Luca Scholz

European University Institute

Space and Place.

A Discussion of Angelo Torre's Luoghi
in the Light of Michel de Certeau, Martina Löw and Siegfried Kracauer

1 Microstoria today: Angelo Torre's Luoghi

The Italian early-modernist Angelo Torre recently published an intriguing and extensive
monograph on the production of locality in Piedmont, which follows in the footsteps of Italian
microhistory and applies the anthropologist Arjun Appadurai's theory of the 'production of
locality' (see below) to early modern Piedmont. 1 Following Appadurai, Torre understands locality
as “a context generated through techniques that strengthen the intrinsically fragile relations
between neighbours”, and, at the same time, as “a generator of context that puts neighbourhoods
into reciprocal relation with one another” 2. The aim of producing locality is to produce “subjects
who know how to belong to a specific locality in a qualified manner” 3.
These contexts, techniques, relations and neighbourhoods are illustrated by twelve case
studies. While the subject matter of the book's chapters is strikingly varied, all of Torre's case
studies are situated in the Piedmont region in Northern Italy. The following paragraphs will briefly
outline the four main parts of the book (each part consisting of three chapters, dealing respectively
with “matrices”, “practices of fragmentation”, the passage “from rights to culture”, and an epilogue)
and outline its basic method.

1. The “Matrices” (or “origins”) of the first part of the book denote widespread practices
through which social, jurisdictional and material spaces are generated. These practices are explored
through three examples. First, a brotherhood (confraria) in the alpine Valsesia, which constructed
jurisdictional micro-spaces (bodies, corpi) through annual redistribution of food and prayers for the
needy. Second, a miracle that occurred to a young priest in the city of Asti in the 17 th century (he
consecrated a broken host which then began to bleed), and which then brought various
ecclesiastical and lay officials into opposition over the immunity of sacred space. Finally, the
widespread existence of “separated lands” that enjoyed particular immunities, often devised as a
means to settle disputes over taxation.
The second part of the book presents three case-studies investigating the “practices of

1 Torre, Angelo (2011), Luoghi – La produzione di località in età moderna e contemporanea (Roma: Donzelli, 2011)
and Torre, Angelo (2007), 'Faire communauté. Confréries et localité dans une vallée du Piémont ( XVIIe – XVIIIe
siècle)', Annales. Histoire, Sciences Sociales Vol. 62, No. 1, pp. 101–135.
2 Torre, Luoghi, p. 14.
3 Ibidem.

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fragmentation” that characterized the villages of the region: the transit of people and goods is
envisaged as a matter of jurisdiction, and thus a way of producing locality; the local credit system
of the Valsesia, which was based on the seasonal emigration of the valley's bricklayers to different
European countries, along with the judicial system that supported it, created locality, but had also
to be defended against the judicial reforms enforced by royal emissaries; and, finally, different
forms of production, such as the production of wool, required space to be divided, a process that
peaked in the region's industrialization, and which can still be observed today.
In the third part of his monograph, Torre describes the gradual transformation of local
communities from legal and responsible bodies into mere repositories of cultural specificity and
folklore. His first example draws on the conflicts that occurred between, on the one hand, the
activities that produced medieval and Renaissance communes (here, again: lay brotherhoods), and,
on the other hand, the kind of commune that the early-modern state tried to establish. A second
example explores a case in which an ancient peasant rite (the nightly cutting of wood by local
bachelors) conflicted with the introduction of new forms of freehold property as a basis for
taxation. Finally, a third example shows how the historiography of the 18 th and early 19th centuries
became gradually less able and less willing to describe the interwoven but public nature of local
jurisdictions, and instead tended to describe them in terms of private law.
At the end of the book, there is an epilogue with three more case-studies that show how the
production of locality in Piedmont did not end with the early-modern period. Using the letters of a
primary school teacher from the middle of the 19 th century, the first case study reveals how school
teaching could or could not produce locality. The second case study deals with a failure to produce
locality that occurred in the area of Biella, where, in the middle of the 20 th century, a rich family
bought the common land formerly used for pasture. Finally, the last example tells of the small
locality of Mappano in the outskirts of Turin, whose inhabitants are trying to gain administrative
independence from the five surrounding municipalities (for the last thirty years, the attempt has
been in vain, but it has given birth to a set of institutions that recall medieval and early-modern
ways of producing locality).

2. These twelve case studies are based on a vast and varied corpus of sources, mostly archival
(court records with testimonies, correspondences, ego documents, family journals). Most of these
case studies raise more questions than they answer, and Torre does not fail to point them out. The
variety of places, contexts and themes of these case-studies bears witness to the author's
considerable erudition in very different fields, whose historiography he introduces at the beginning
of every chapter.
From a methodological point of view, Torre denies the possibility of reading the actions and
practices he studies through the sociological notion of field, because the interweaving of jurisdiction
and culture of possession 4 would make it impossible to immediately identify the field to which they
refer, be it economic, political, legal, religious etc. 5 Instead, he uses a 'spatialised' notion of field, a
4 Ibidem, p. 7
5 A critique already present in Torre, Angelo (1995), 'Percorsi della pratica, 1966-1995', Quaderni Storici, Vol. 90, pp.

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topographical scale of analysis, namely, the site. 6 Through such a “topographical-institutional
approach”7 he tries to avoid prematurely situating actions in a field, and instead seeks to define,
through induction, the field that the actions themselves create.
In this sense, Torre emphasizes that many of the ancien régime documents he uses are
'transcriptions', i.e. the acknowledgement of a status quo by the institution that produces the
document, which is then used as a means of legitimation both by the actor being transcribed and
the institution that is transcribing. Torre thus suggests reconsidering the very notion of historical
'fact', and assuming that historical documentation is itself a result of constructions, artificial
architectures set up by multiple actors whose aims and objectives must be uncovered by the
historian8.

2 Spaces, scales and cases

In seeking to apply a theory about the constitution of space originally developed in another field,
Torre is not an exception in his field. Amongst the mass of literature produced in the course of
what some – drawing on an inflationally abused metaphor – called the 'spatial turn', I would
therefore like to briefly discuss the way in which three theories of space conceptualize the
dichotomy of space and place. The first is Arjun Appadurai's 'production' of locality, while the
other two have been formulated by Michel de Certeau and Martina Löw respectively. In the light
of these theories, I would then like to discuss the use that Torre makes of scales and cases. 9

1. Until now, the theory of the production of locality that Arjun Appadurai developed in the
1990s has received considerable attention from anthropologists and scholars in other fields, such as
geography and linguistics.10 The most comprehensive definition that Appadurai gives of the concept
of locality is that of “a complex phenomenological quality, constituted by a series of links between
the sense of social immediacy, the technologies of interactivity and the relativity of contexts” 11.
More palpably, he says that locality is what, in various forms, we can observe in neighbourhoods, a
“property of social life” and a “structure of feeling” 12. To him, locality conceptualizes the local scale
in “relational and contextual”13 terms, rather than as a mere spatial category.
Appadurais’ emphasis on the 'production' of locality stems from an assumption that “locality

191-221
6 Torre, Luoghi, p. 10-11
7 Ibidem, p. 57
8 Ibidem, p. 9.
9 For further distinctions drawn by anthropologists, see Lovell, Nadia (1998), 'Introduction: Belonging in Need of
Emplacement?', in Nadia Lovell (ed.), Locality and Belonging, (London, New York: Routledge), pp. 1–24.
10 Appadurai, Arjun (1995), 'The Production of Locality', in Fardon, Richard, ed., Counterworks : Managing the
Diversity of Knowledge (London, New York: Routledge), pp. 208-229. Arjun Appadurai currently teaches at New
York University. For the reception of his theory, see for example Escobar, Arturo (2001), 'Culture Sits in Places:
Reflections on Globalism and Subaltern Strategies of Localization', Political Geography, Vol. 20, No. 2, pp. 139–174.
11 Appadurai, Locality, p. 208.
12 Ibidem, pp. 208, 212.
13 Ibidem, p. 208.

3
is an inherently fragile social achievement” 14, and that it must therefore constantly be maintained
and protected against all sorts of challenges. These challenges can take multiple forms: they could
relate to boundaries, which are dangerous zones in many societies, and are therefore carefully
maintained, or to the inherently fissive nature of social relations in other societies, or equally to
ecological and technological constraints. 15 The production of locality occurs in different forms, e.g.
through rituals, the arrangement of space, and the organisation of time. Rites of passage are a
classic means of producing 'local subjects', of inscribing locality into bodies, for instance through
circumcision, tonsure, and so on. The construction of houses, the organization of paths and
passages, and the cultivation of fields are also spatial means of producing locality. And the
marking of seasonal change and agricultural rhythms can be seen as means of producing locality in
a temporal dimension.16 To the last category, one could add constructions of historical continuity,
for instance through genealogies.17
In the form of a neighbourhood, locality is always grounded in a context. Neighbourhoods are
what they are, “because they are opposed to something else and derive from other, already
produced neighbourhoods”18. Frequently this other is conceptualised in ecological terms, for
instance, as a forest, a swamp, a river, an ocean, or the desert, and represented as the realm of
non-human forces such as barbarians or demonic forces. The production of locality always involves
a moment in which this ‘other’ is colonized through deliberate, risky and sometimes violent acts
upon land, forests, animals or other human beings. 19 With regard to contexts, Appadurai stress the
fact that neighbourhoods do not only require but also produce contexts, in the sense that a
neighbourhood is itself a context “within which meaningful social action can be both generated and
interpreted”20.

2. In his Invention of Everyday Life, Michel de Certeau introduced a distinction between

space and place which identified place with stability, and space with movement and
directionality21. For Certeau, place is an “order according to which elements are distributed in a
relation of coexistence”22. It is therefore not possible for two objects to be in the same place. Space,
on the contrary, is understood as an “intertwining of moving bodies […] animated by the
movements occurring within it”23. A road is therefore a place, when it is geographically defined by

14 Ibidem, p. 209.
15 Ibidem.
16 Ibidem, p. 209-210.
17 There is a striking affinity between Appadurai's concept of locality and the theory of institutionalised relations
elaborated by the cross disciplinary research group “Institutionalität und Geschichtlichkeit” at the University of
Dresden between 1997 and 2008. Rehberg, Karl-Siegbert (2001), 'Weltrepräsentanz und Verkörperung. Institutionelle
Analyse und Symboltheorien - Eine Einführung in systematischer Absicht', in Gert Melville (ed.), Institutionalität
und Symbolisierung: Verstetigungen kultureller Ordnungsmuster in Vergangenheit und Gegenwart (Cologne, Weimar:
Böhlau), pp. 3–49.
18 Appadurai, Locality, p. 212.
19 Ibidem, p. 212-213.
20 Ibidem, p. 213.
21 Certeau, Michel de (1990), L’invention du quotidien, (Paris: Gallimard), pp. 208-210
22 "Un lieu est l'ordre selon lequel des éléments sont distribués dans des rapports de coexistence". Ibidem p. 208.
23 "Espace est croisement de mobiles [...] animé par l'ensemble des mouvements qui s'y déploient", Ibidem.

4
an urban planner, but pedestrians turn it into a space. In sum, “space is practised place” 24. Certeau
then acknowledges that, in stories, there can be transition between the two, for example, when a
hero who transgresses the boundaries and laws of a place is put to death, or when lifeless objects,
like a forest, awake and transform the place in which they were situated into a space now external
to them25.

3. In recent years, the sociologist Martina Löw has proposed a different distinction between
space and place, which she believes to be an “essential conceptual determination” 26. She developed
this distinction within the framework of her theory of the dual constitution of space, which draws
on structural-theoretical (Henry Lefèbvre, David Harvey, Edward Soja) and action-theoretical
(Anthony Giddens) perspectives on space.27
Löw argues that we construct spaces through two basic processes: spacing and synthesis.
Spacing describes the processes of situating social goods, people and symbolic markings. Through
synthesis, we connect goods and people and form space through processes of perception, ideation or
recall. For the most part, these processes take place simultaneously 28. This dualistic conception of
space allows her to conceive of both the static, structural order created by spaces, and their
processual ordering through action 29. Löw stresses that the synthesis of space takes place not so
much through active reflection, but rather through perceptive processes peculiar to day-to-day
activities.
Place, then, is the aim and effect of spacing: places are “marked through occupation by social
goods or people, but do not disappear with the objects” 30. A place appears as an area, a site, with a
specific name, which can be geographically marked 31. Moreover, places encompass the elements
situated within them: “Objects and people blend with their localization in concrete places to
become single elements that are the stored in the memory and which […] [then] influence the
everyday constitution of space”32.

4. It seems to me that the 'static' character of place in Löw and Certeau's theories conflicts
with Appadurai's understanding of locality, which is described as fragile, productive, and actively
contested. It may be precisely the dynamic nature of Appadurai's 'production of locality' which
makes it appealing to Torre. The ever-shifting locality in Torre's Piedmont cannot be
appropriated, for its actors have multiple, context-bound identities. Torre's aversion to investing
the local with ideas of identity and belonging may not only rooted in the experiences of Italian

24 "L'espace est un lieu pratiqué" Ibidem.

25 Ibidem, pp. 209-210.
26 Löw Martina (2008), 'The constitution of space. The structuration of spaces through the simultaneity of effect and
perception' European Journal of Social Theory, Vol. 11, No. 1, p. 42.
27 Löw, Martina (2001), Raumsoziologie (Frankfurt am Main: Suhrkamp, 2001), Löw, Constitution of space.
28 Löw, Constitution of space, pp. 34-35.
29 Ibidem, p. 38.
30 Ibidem, p. 42.
31 Ibidem.
32 Ibidem.

5
historiography, but also in recent political uses made of local identity. 33 The emphasis that
Appadurai's theory puts on the relational nature of space and its constant negotiation makes it
equally appealing to a microhistorian. Moreover, the reappraisal of a local scale of analysis is in
harmony with more recent debates among Italian geographers, archaeologists and historians
centring on the concept of 'natural resources'34.
In sum, Torre's history of locality does not understand place in simple terms. On the local
scale, where others presume the 'dead end of space' the production of locality opens a new world of
negotiation, production and ambiguity. One is therefore reminded of the opinion which Siegfried
Kracauer once expressed on behalf of Lewis Namier's prosopo-biographical approach to political
history: “This allegedly smallest historical unity is itself an inexhaustible macrocosm” 35. However, it
seems that the advantage of bringing place back into history lies not in the absolutization of one
scale among others, but in their variation 36.

3. Moreover, in the conclusion of his monograph, Torre questions the validity of the
distinction between public and private in ancien régime societies, for instance in relation to the
'bodies' (corpi) that produce locality. He argues that a private, singular case could easily become a
way of affirming generalities, and therefore public in nature 37. In the same way, he then questions
the opposition of generality and singularity in the writing of history: a historical fact, he says, is
neither the “smallest observable element […] [nor] objectifiable” 38, for it is “soaked in purpose.”39 He
believes that this truth was ignored by the “scientistic conception of empirical research” 40 of Max
Weber and the functionalist theories of Talcott Parsons and Frederik Barth, which interpreted
individual behaviour through categories extrinsic to the actors' culture. 41
In contrast, Torre proposes two ways to approach singularities on the actors' own terms. One
leads through the logic of cases as applied in casuistry 42. But Torre complains that this way is

33 Torre, Luoghi, p. 383 and Avanza, Martina 'Une histoire pour la Padanie', Annales. Histoire, Sciences Sociales, Vol.
58, No. 1, pp. 85–107.
34 Cevasco, Roberta and Tigrino, Vittorio (2008), 'Lo spazio geografico: una discussione tra storia politico-sociale ed
ecologia storica', Quaderni Storici, Vol. 43, No. 1, pp. 207–242. For earlier initiatives to revive analysis on local
scales, see Grendi, Edoardo (1995), 'Storia di una storia locale: perché in Liguria (e in Italia) non abbiamo avuto una
local history?', Quaderni Storici, Vol. 90, pp. 141–197.
35 "Es wäre schließlich zu fragen ob er [Namier] wirklich auf den Grund stöß, wenn er die psychologische Verfassung
des Individuums untersucht. Diese vorgeblich kleinste historische Einheit ist selbst ein unerschöpflicher
Makrokosmos.", Kracauer, Siegfried (1971), Geschichte - Vor den letzten Dingen (Frankfurt am Main: Suhrkamp),
p. 138.
36 The question, then, is how the 'space of reasoning' in which we construct these scales is structured. Revel, Jacques
(1996), 'Micro-analyse et construction du social', in Jacques Revel, Jeux d’échelles: la micro-analyse à l’expérience
(Paris: Gallimard), pp. 15-36. Kracauer, Geschichte, pp. 125-169 developed interesting insights in the variation of
scales in history, too.
37 Torre, Luoghi, p. 386-387.
38 Torre, Luoghi, p. 388.
39 "L'accaduto è intriso di progettualità", Ibidem.
40 Ibidem.
41 Ibidem.
42 Among others, Revel, Jacques and Passeron, Jean-Claude (2005), 'Penser par cas. Raisonner à partir de singularités',
in Jean-Claude Passeron Jacques Revel and Yan Thomas, eds., Penser par cas. (Paris: Éditions de l’École des
Hautes Études en Sciences Sociales), pp. 9-44.

6
merely logical, and that it is the observer (for example the psychologist), not the actor who
negotiates singularity and generality. The other way leads through the observation of practices. Be
it in a discussion, or in the process of classification in the social sciences, Torre holds that actions,
if considered in their specific context, always contain an element of legitimation. Actors try to de-
singularize concrete situations through different techniques of justification, changes of scale and
argumentative models43. The historian's task, then, would be to recognize these techniques and to
listen to them empathetically, and not to make an external diagnosis 44. Torre says that once we
accept that a phenomenon is not a fact, but a construction by its actors, the singularity of a case
becomes a means of asserting its generality – for the actor and for the historian.
Needless to say, that this is exactly what Torre does in his monograph: he writes a world of
singularities. Without launching into a discussion of his critique – his nuanced and multi-
perspectival conception of place seems more than fair to me, yet full of methodological
implications – I would like to point out the narrative challenges posed by a history of this sort. In
fact, the multiplication of perspectives and frequent key changes (citation of sources, specialist
contexts, reflections on method and theory) sometimes make the reader of Torre's Luoghi feel as if
he has embarked upon a promenade through a hall of mirrors and perspectives. However, drawing
on Jacques Revel and Jean-Claude Passeron discussion of cases, one can certainly say that within
the historians' space of reasoning, Torre's places make a compelling case.

43 Here, Torre draws on Boltanski, Luc and Thévenot, Laurent (1991), De la justification : les économies de la
grandeur (Paris: Gallimard).
44 Torre, Luoghi, p. 390.

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References

Appadurai, Arjun (1995), 'The Production of Locality', in Fardon, Richard, ed., Counterworks :
managing the diversity of knowledge (London, New York: Routledge), pp. 208-229.
Avanza, Martina 'Une histoire pour la Padanie', Annales. Histoire, Sciences Sociales, Vol. 58, No.
1, pp. 85–107.
Boltanski, Luc and Thévenot, Laurent (1991), De la justification : les économies de la grandeur
(Paris: Gallimard).
Certeau, Michel de (1990), L’invention du quotidien, (Paris: Gallimard), pp. 208-210.
Cevasco, Roberta and Tigrino, Vittorio (2008), 'Lo spazio geografico: una discussione tra storia
politico-sociale ed ecologia storica', Quaderni Storici, Vol. 43, No. 1, pp. 207–242.
Delano-Smith, Catherine (2006), 'Milieus of Mobility. Itineraries, Route Maps, and Road Maps', in
James Akerman ed., Cartographies of travel and navigation (Chicago: University of Chicago
Press).
Escobar, Arturo (2001), 'Culture Sits in Places: Reflections on Globalism and Subaltern Strategies
of Localization', Political Geography, Vol. 20, No. 2, pp. 139–174.
Grendi, Edoardo (1995), 'Storia di una storia locale: perché in Liguria (e in Italia) non abbiamo
avuto una local history?', Quaderni Storici, Vol. 90, pp. 141–197.
Kracauer, Siegfried (1971), Geschichte - Vor den letzten Dingen (Frankfurt am Main: Suhrkamp).
Löw Martina (2008), 'The constitution of space. The structuration of spaces through the
simultaneity of effect and perception' European Journal of Social Theory, Vol. 11, No. 1,
pp. 25-49.
Löw, Martina (2001), Raumsoziologie (Frankfurt am Main: Suhrkamp), 2001.
Rehberg, Karl-Siegbert (2001), 'Weltrepräsentanz und Verkörperung. Institutionelle Analyse und
Symboltheorien - Eine Einführung in systematischer Absicht', in Gert Melville, ed.,
Institutionalität und Symbolisierung: Verstetigungen kultureller Ordnungsmuster in
Vergangenheit und Gegenwart (Cologne, Weimar: Böhlau), pp. 3–49.
Revel, Jacques and Passeron, Jean-Claude (2005), 'Penser par cas. Raisonner à partir de
singularités', in Jean-Claude Passeron Jacques Revel and Yan Thomas, eds., Penser par cas.
(Paris: Éditions de l’École des Hautes Études en Sciences Sociales), pp. 9-44.
Revel, Jacques (1996), 'Micro-analyse et construction du social', in Jacques Revel, Jeux d’échelles:
la micro-analyse à l’expérience (Paris: Gallimard), pp. 15-36.
Torre, Angelo (2011), Luoghi - La Produzione Di Località in Età Moderna e Contemporanea
(Roma: Donzelli, 2011).
Torre, Angelo (2007), 'Faire communauté. Confréries et localité dans une vallée du Piémont
(XVIIe – XVIIIe siècle)', Annales. Histoire, Sciences Sociales Vol. 62, No. 1, pp. 101–135.
Torre, Angelo (1995), 'Percorsi della pratica, 1966-1995', Quaderni Storici, Vol. 90, pp. 191-221.