Chapter IV

Technosouth
The Territory of Naples

Introduction

The Territory of Naples

● Mediterraneus
● Terraferma
● Cloud Territories
● Quistione Meridionale
● The Industrial Union and Fondazione politecnica per il Mezzogiorno: 1939

Genealogy
● On Protoindustry
● Paolo Soleri’s Ideal Factory
● Fare Casa e Puteca: On Naples’ domesticity

Writing about production in a southern Italian city such as Naples is not easy, at
best. With all its layered contradictions, dimensions, levels, problems, shadows
and ambiguities, is a real challenge. Understanding the exact picture of
production in this city is even more complicated when I realize the impact of
 extreme ecologies, such as off-the-book economies, which radically shape the
emergence of new ones. Furthermore, Gramsci's perspective on Quistione
Meridionale (Southern Question), puts my research in the position to reject any
standard form of Naples’ class subdivision, consequence of both hegemony of
the North over the South - as colonial exploitation -1 and understand how the
Modern State had protected the forms of feudal exploitation of southern territories
- this would have consequently determined forms of resistance by farmers closer
to jacquerie than to class struggle.2
In Quaderni del Carcere’s 19th Notebook, Gramsci gives an account on how in
the South - intended as an enormous and homogeneous countryside - urban
centers had no economic nor political centrality. Urban centers were de facto
subordinated to the countryside as there were no spaces of production,
especially in Naples.3

To draw a trajectory of Naples development, a new interdisciplinary

understanding of material production of its territory is therefore necessary.
Grasping from Naples’ Technoculture Research Unit4 as countercultural
phenomena and recent administration policies of commoning - within a radical
municipalist framework - such as Department of the Commons,5 I intend to map
the opportunities of technological input-output within material production.
As such, The chapter is an exploration of human-machine interactions in Naples
– how workers co-exist with technology in often intimate ways and the systems
they co-produce. Within this interaction, I investigate an important contradiction in
this productive system: the coercive, dehumanising and alienating effect of
technological mediation is inextricable from its transformative and emancipatory
potential.

To clarify this paradigm, I identify with Naples' Fabbrichetta few spatial fields of
exploration, looking at processes and possibilities of productive cooperation
between humans and the machine.

To examine the dimensions of this distinctly Neapolitan way of acting-with

technology, the research is applied to a genealogy of manufacturing in Naples,
from the production of pottery and crib figurines to the various forms of
craftsmanship scattered throughout the whole territory. Here is where Naples
subjectivity becomes a potential tool to re-think production and its spatial
relations, identified within a post-fordist question: the domestic environment.

As we saw in the previous chapters - but especially the chinese fabrichetta where
the factory and the domestic environment becomes one physical entity - ,

1 Gramsci, Antonio. Operai e contadini, L’Ordine Nuovo, 3 January 1920.

2 Gramsci, Antonio. Operai e contadini, L’Ordine Nuovo, 2 August 1919.
3Gramsci, Antonio. Prison Notebook. (Rome: Einaudi, 2014), Città e campagna in 19th Notebook
Risorgimento, pp 133-140-141.
4Technoculture, Università degli Studi di Napoli ‘L’Orientale’, accessed 22 December, 2018, http://
www.technoculture.it/en/about/
5Beni comuni (Commons), Delibera 458 del 10 August, 2017, http://www.comune.napoli.it/flex/cm/
pages/ServeBLOB.php/L/IT/IDPagina/16783
 production absorbed every social dimension by becoming domestic. However,
feminist operaismo defined this paradigm as “The Arcane of Reproduction”, which
meant that capitalist concealment consisted in the exploitation of the reproductive
and affective work necessary for the formation of the working class6. In short,
inside society as a factory, there are not only (male) workers but, as Leopoldina
Fortunati wrote, also housewives and prostitutes whose work has been hidden
and exploited for centuries inside that formidable bourgeois invention that is the
house as a "private refuge", as a place of non-work. As such, this phenomena of
alienation and exploitation existed not only in developed territories - such as
North European ones -, where there was a clearer separation between production
and reproduction, but also in the mediterranean ones, where production always
coexisted with forms of living7.
To observe the relationship between alienation and autonomy in producing-with
the machine, I focus on High-tech production of miniaturized objects, mostly - and
formally - situated in Domestic Spaces and Industrial clusters in open
countrysides, where, in Bagnasco’s view8, the urban space is commensurable to
Veneto and Prato.
These fields of exploration will allow me to understand the ways in which the
machine becomes familiar in our living-with technology, materially exploring the
everyday negotiations within this relation.

The aim of this contribution is not to provide a precise reconstruction of the

historical evolution of industry in the South. It is more simply to offer a general
overview of what have been the main stages - and the corresponding "tensions",
resolved or unresolved - that have marked the spread of industrial activities in the
South in order to understand those contemporary theories on production that will
consecutively lead us to understand the relationship between man and machine.
To this end, I have drawn on the vast and qualified historical analysis available.
The choice of periodisation used in the analysis took into account both the
economic evolution and the political phases in the South, and in particular the
resulting spatial action.

6 Fortunati, Leopoldina. The Arcane of Reproduction: Housework, Prostitution, Labor and Capital.
(Autonomedia: New York, 1995).
7Goddard, Victoria. Domestic Industry in Naples. REVIEW Vol. 3, Issue 9-10 (January 1, 1978), pp
139-150, https://doi.org/10.1177/0308275X7800300907
8Bagnasco, Arnaldo. Tre Italie: la problematica territoriale dello sviluppo italiano, (Bologna: Il Mulino,
1977)
 Territory

Mediterraneus

“Wherever the river of traffic slows down, it tends to deposit its load: so it would be
usually near the gates that the storehouses would be built, and the inns and taverns
congregate, and in the adjoining streets the craftsmen and merchants would set up
their shops[...] Thus the gate produced[...] the economic quarters of the city[...] The
original meaning of ’port’ derives from this portal.”

Lewis Mumford9

The term Mediterranean derives from the Latin mediterraneum, a term that can
be linked to medius - middle - and terra - earth. To Romans, the term
mediterraneum - or Mare Nostrum - seems to address the possession of an
“inland” space enclosed by their territorial colonies. We could argue that since
Romans, the sea is acknowledged as another form of “territory” and therefore as
political space10, under which a sovereign institution - the Empire - defines its
network of juridical, cultural and material power.

The political, contentious space of the Mediterranean Sea is increasingly

determined by what Carl Schmitt calls spacial revolutions.11 This happens
because the very essence of every great historical transformation is the change
in the images and concepts of space that embrace all aspects of human
existence.12

In The Nomos of the Earth in the International Law of Jus Publicum Europaeum,
Carl Schmitt offers a vast history of Western geopolitical architectures. The work
aims at how Roman, British, and Germanic empires projected the geometry of
territory—starting from the mediterranean to Europe in general— into a matrix of
political geographical orders from which spacial sovereignty over land, sea and
air was derived. Schmitt specified Nomos as “the Greek word for the first

9Lewis, Mumford. The City in History: Its Origins, Its Transformations and Its Prospects. (New York:
Harcourt Brace & World, 1961), pp. 305.

10 Galli, Carlo. Spazi politici. L’età moderna e l’età globale, (Bologna: Il Mulino, 2001)
11 Shmitt, Carl. Land und Meer, eine weltgeschichtliche Betrachtung, (Leipzig: P. Reclam, 1942)
12Ibidem, trans. It. Terra e Mare: Una Riflessione sulla Storia del Mondo, (Milano: Adelphi, 2002) pp.
59
 measure of all subsequent measures, for the first land appropriation understood
as the first partite and classification of space, for the primeval division and
distribution, is nomos.”13

And such an imaginary change has immediate practical implications.

Colonialism extended this influence from land to sea, making the latter the
geopolitical paradigm of modernity par excellence.

In Hegel’s Lineaments for a Philosophy of Law, history of European civilization is

read as a conflict between land and sea, i.e. a conflict between the family and
the city and the open-uncertain field of maritime trade.14 Hegel recognizes this
tension as the specific element of the old European civilization, whose structure
(economic, political, cultural) is all outstretched and projected towards the sea,
to the point that the land itself becomes a hinterland of the aquatic landscape.
The ethos of the sea represents “the” industry in the original meaning of the
term, i.e. dexterity, solicitude, innovation, capacity to cope with adverse and
uncertain situations.

According to Fernand Braudel, the pioneering innovative role of the

Mediterranean economies in spearheading the development of capitalism is
explicitly emphasized in a distinction made along the European North-South axis:

“It cannot be denied, I would suggest, that Reformation Europe as a whole

overtook the Mediterranean economy, brilliant as this was and already long-
experienced in the ways of capitalism, (I am thinking of Italy in particular) ... in
about 1590, the centre of gravity of Europe swung over to the Protestant
North...Until then, and perhaps even until 1610-1620, the word capitalism
applies primarily to the South...Amsterdam was only beginning to be important
at this time. We might also note that the North had made no discoveries...Nor
did the North invent any of the instruments of capitalism.”15

Although Industrial capitalism was born in England - as the first nation to make
the sea its imperialist expansion territory - the Mediterranean first challenged
capitalism to expand its trading logic, in other words, maritime trade acted as a
driving force to rapid accumulation and reproduction of capital.

For these reasons, colonialism has thus been a laboratory of appropriation

techniques which has spilled over to the territory of the colonizers. The so-called
"industrial revolution" was no more than a process of “internal colonization” of
the European continent, a colonization that in order to function had to - from the
beginning - put not only the workers but the whole society to work.

In A Contribution to the Critique of Political Economy, Marx gives an account on

how distribution logics determine modes of production among some societies,
which I identify in the mediterranean ones:

“distribution seems to antedate and to determine production in another

way...as a pre-economic fact... A conquering people divides the land among

13Shmitt, Carl. Land und Meer, eine weltgeschichtliche Betrachtung. Quoted in Benjamin, H. Bratton.
The Stack: On Software and Sovereignty, (Cambridge: MIT Press, 2015), pp. 105.
14 G. W. F. Hegel, Lineamenti di Filosofia del Diritto, (Bari: Laterza, 1999)
15Braudel, Fernand. Civilization and capitalism, 15th-18th century: The wheels of commerce,
(California: University of California Press, 1992)
 the conquerors establishing thereby a certain division and form of landed
property and determining the character of production; or, it turns the
conquered people into slaves and thus makes slave labor the basis of
production. Or, a nation, by revolution, breaks up large estates into small
parcels of land and by this new distribution imparts to production a new
character. Or, legislation perpetuates land ownership in large families or
distributes labor as an hereditary privilege and thus fixes it in castes.

In all of these cases, and they are all historic, it is not distribution that seems to
be organized and determined by production, but on the contrary, production
by distribution.”

Starting from Marx, we see the evolution of capitalism where the physical
conditions of exchange - as in the predominantly urban and urbanizing world -
are increasingly crucial for production.
Between the sixteenth and eighteenth century, throughout Italy, the slow progress
of science and agricultural techniques was tied basically to the progressive
penetration of mercantile capitalistic relationships into the economy of seigneurial
estates.
For instance, In the early modern Kingdom of Naples, prices for agricultural
products were set between producers and merchants long before the products
were harvested16.
The fonticum, commonly known as fondaco, was the architectural space in which
circulation of commodities took place. In medieval-Italian language, the word
fondaco might refer to a private store or warehouse, a public warehouse, a
merchant stock, a storage tax, a residential facility or a board of trustees who
regulated, measured and stored supplies17. These people had the power and
resources to adapt or create the institutional equipment to suit their specific
needs, including warehouses’ networks, lodging-houses, laboratories and offices
in the city.

Within this perspective, history of mediterranean territories leads us to an

antithetical approach to industrialization and therefore to “modernity”. We could
argue that the Italian Fabbrichetta is de-facto a mediterranean paradigm, through
which the process of “internal colonization” is mainly fostered by new forms of
protoindustrial cultures, everlasting trade logics and agricultural land
management.18
The Industrial Revolution pushed the Mediterranean down from epicentral to
peripheral status in the global economy in a slow process of decline from the
17th to the 20th century. These cities were marginalised and surpassed by
Northern ports in Belgium and Holland (Bruges, Antwerp, Amsterdam), and then

16Marino, John A. "Economic Idylls and Pastoral Realities: The "Trickster Economy" in the Kingdom of
Naples." Comparative Studies in Society and History 24, no. 2 (1982): pp. 224. Accessed June 29,
2020. www.jstor.org/stable/178583.
17Constable, Olivia Remie. “The Fondaco in Mediterranean Europe.” Chapter. In Housing the
Stranger in the Mediterranean World: Lodging, Trade, and Travel in Late Antiquity and the Middle
Ages, 306–54. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2004. doi:10.1017/CBO9780511496264.010.
18 Sereni, Emilio. Capitalismo e Mercato Nazionale in Italia. (Rome: Editori Riuniti, 1966), pp. 78.
 London19. Capitalist economy, seen as the factory and its various logistic
infrastructures, did not take root in the South - Gramsci eventually explored as a
Quistione Meridionale (Southern Question) seen through a city-countryside’
conflict20. Capitalist development in Mediterranean history has been different
from that of Western Europe in many respects and the various processes of
urbanisation were not triggered by industrialisation21.

Among Mediterranean territories, the one of Naples is the historical objectification

of this paradigm: a highly contested site ever since, interweaved in the imaginary
and the praxis of power and territorial domination. As for other Mediterranean city
ports, Naples is a territory of exchange, where trade becomes itself an
institutional asset. There is no need for institutions to regulate exchanges, but
rather the trades themselves play the role of institutions.
If we analyze contemporary literature of the Fabbrichetta22 in a Mediterranean
context - especially the Naples one, a twofold and contradictory character
emerge. On the one hand there is the claim for local development and a return of
resilient modes of production against globalization, on the other its the logic of
trade networks and global chain to anticipate production. For these reasons, I will
later explore the genealogy of Naples’ production, starting from a historical
investigation on various logistic assets, such as the waterfront, the fondaci as
well as the small laboratories near Royal Sites, the various attempts of big
Industrial developments and ultimately, today’s small-medium High-tech
laboratories.
Given that much of the architecture that makes up the city of Naples articulates a
capitalist model based on property and exchange of goods, it is therefore worth
starting from a general analysis of the network production in the Neapolitan
Territory, to explore the main infrastructures which gave birth to the
“mediterranean” Fabbrichetta.

The importance of mercantilism is displayed in the popular-living neighbours near

the port from the post-classical eras, becoming not only a Medieval city-port
metropolis, but also the capital of the Southern Kingdom in 128223. Historical
maps outlining the construction of Naples up until the late 15th century portraits
the urban development of a city towards the sea. As such, the construction of the
historical waterfront coincided with the development of a new commercial town,

19
See Mumford, Louis. The city in history, (Harmondsworth: Pelican, 1961-1966) and Jones Emrys.
Metropolis: The world’s great cities, (Oxford: Oxford UP, 1990).
20Gramsci, Antonio. Prison Notebook. (Rome: Einaudi, 2014), Città e campagna in 19th Notebook
Risorgimento
21 Leontidou, Lila. Beyond the Borders of Mediterranean Cities: The Mediterranean City in Transition.
ISIG Journal Vol. XVIII n. 3-4 (2009), pp.132.
22See Bàculo L., Gaudino S., Impresa, Territorio, Sviluppo economico Verso i distretti industriali in
Campania?, (Napoli: Edizioni Scientifiche Italiane, 2000). Viesti Gianfranco, I Mezzogiorni: tipologie
economiche di Sistemi locali al Sud, Sviluppo locale, VI, November 1999, pp 5-32.
23Peter Rietbergen, Porto e città,o città-porto? Qualche riflessione, in A A.VV, I porti come impresa
economica, Istituto di Storia economica, Firenze F., Dantini, (1988) pp. 615-24
 the Città Bassa , which was the core of Naples’ city-port24. At the end of the 15th
century, the surface area of the city-port of Naples was 230 hectares with a
population of between 70.000-100.000, becoming a complex Mediterranean city-
port inserted in a context of Mediterranean routes and traffics. In the Modern Age,
new military propositions and transformations of the mercantile spaces radically
shaped the urban fabric. Firstly with the construction of perimetral city walls and
urban gates. The transformations that followed during the Spanish vice-royal
period, when Naples increased its urban dimension by about 400 hectares and
its inhabitants by about 300.000, consisted mainly in military dockyard
constructions. However at this time, the vice-royal capital could be considered a
large city with a harbour, but not yet a city-port.25
Under the Spanish Empire (XVI century), the strategic position in the
Mediterranean “territory” led Naples to radical changes, almost all of them for
military purposes, transforming it into an European Capital.26
The becoming of Naples as Capital27 is strictly connected to the evolution of the
waterfront as a mercantilist and military space, to the point of becoming an urban
space constantly in motion. For these reasons the continuous commercial piers’
expansion towards east under the Bourbon Kingdom - XVIII century -, will
massively impact the State industrial policies of the XX century.
Understanding the ecological complexities of Naples’ waterfront will allow us to
comprehend the nature of production networks of the territory.
Since 1980, the relevant city-ports have experienced an urban crisis and the
relationship between the port and the city has become more complex28. The 15
km harbour of Naples increased its naval traffic, especially cruise passenger and
containers traffic, with the aim of “transforming cruise passenger tourism into an
abundance of economic opportunities for the town”29.

The focus of the mediterranean Fabbrichetta here is not on the relation

between the infrastructures - such as the port - and a social group, or
between a particular space and its ‘users’, but on the ways in which these are
one and the same. The Naples waterfront embedded an ecological system in
which the nature of labour is both casual (off the book) and regulated. In other
words, the port generated conditions for different ecologies to emerge and
affirm themselves.

24Teresa, Colletta, The Historical Naples’ Waterfront and the Reconversion of the Military Locations:
The Acton Dock, the Bourbon Dockyard and the San Vincenzo Pier, Méditerranée 111 (2008), pp. 122,
DOI: 10.4000/mediterranee.2848.
25 Ibidem pp.123.
26 Teresa, Colletta. Piazzeforti di Napoli e Sicilia, (Napoli: Le carte Montemar, 1981).
27As Braudel records at the end of the 16th century, Naples, one of the largest cities in the
Mediterranean area, housed twice the population of Venice, three times that of Rome and four times
that of Florence, see Fernand, Braudel. La Méditerranée et le Monde Méditerranéen à l’époque de
Philippe II, (Paris: Armand Colin, 1966)
28Teresa, Colletta, The Historical Naples’ Waterfront and the Reconversion of the Military Locations:
The Acton Dock, the Bourbon Dockyard and the San Vincenzo Pier, Méditerranée 111 (2008), pp. 122,
DOI: 10.4000/mediterranee.2848
29 Ibidem, pp. 125
 As such, informalities in port cities are commensurable to the casual nature of
labour in ports and to tentative, faltering industrialisation. In comparison with
industrial cities, seaports are less regulated and characterised by a “masculine
culture of individualism and resistance to rules, which is fertile ground for informal
economic and social relations”30. Casual employment, such as day laborer, has
also shaped local identity, by forcing dockers and others in allied trades to stick
together during long periods of unemployment and precarious work or strikes.
This has boosted solidarity among workers and their families. This process paved
the way for a specific subjectivities - that we will explore later in the chapter -,
occasionally identified in mediterranean cities playing a crucial role for the
emergence of the southern Fabbrichetta: Lazzarone and Zantraglia, two specific
subjects strictly related to the genealogy of the port territories, which Marx and
Engels would call Lumpenproletariat31.

Some argue that ecologies such as underground economies are not a

circumscribable ‘thing’ that simply imposes its rule upon everyday life corrupting
everything it encounters. Rather, it needs to be comprehended as a system that
often has material consequences upon economies and politics but which also, as
Jason Pine states, “crucially generates affective and aesthetic atmospheres that
register themselves in the social relations of its ‘territorialized residents”32.

This aspect of resiliency is visible in the myriad of casual street trades and
professions, almost unique to Naples, which are often characterised by recycling
and repair – the mullecaro, for example, who used to collect cake crumbs from
patisseries and sell them in paper cones (known as cuppetielle) to children in the
street; the saponaro, small-scale rag and bone merchants who used to exchange
home-made soap for old clothes; the mpagliasegge or woven rush upholsterers;
and trades linked to fortune-telling, tarot, soothsaying and numerology. Although
many of these trades are disappearing, some still survive, particularly in the
Spanish Quarters of the city centre33.

In this city, port trade before containerisation offered ample opportunities for
pilfering goods, which were then sold in semi-legal street markets, pubs or
private houses. This built on a long tradition of smuggling. The trade in
contraband and stolen goods was tolerated to a large extent both by citizens and
the authorities because it was seen as a way of supplementing the precarious
income of working class families, and thus countered potential outbreaks of
protest and social instability.

The port as infrastructure has always represented a physical entity where two
divergent realities can merge together: the global scale of the trade network and
the local scale of the urbanized areas. This trans-scalar merge has always
produced the cultural energy of Naples and enhanced its capacity to operate on

30Franco Bianchini, Jude Bloomfield, Porous cities: On four European ports, Eurozine, July
2012.https://www.eurozine.com/porous-cities/.
31 Karl Marx, Friedrich Engels, The Communist Manifesto (London: Penguin Books, 1967) pp. 17.
32 Dines, Nick. Tuff City, Urban Change and Contested Space in Central Naples. (New York: Berghahn, 2012)
33Franco Bianchini, Jude Bloomfield, Porous cities: On four European ports, Eurozine, July
2012.https://www.eurozine.com/porous-cities/.
 an international network of commerce, much before the digital revolution had
done so. In this context, the port infrastructure played a crucial role34: absorbed
global network flows and exchanged them with the local dynamics of the city,
acting as an intermediary between global and local scale.
The development of trade technologies in maritime transportation, at least until
the Industrial era, has been characterised by the coexistence of various urban
values within the public space of the port. According to Meyer:

“the new dimension of modern times [...] allowed public space to fulfil [...]
various functions simultaneously: new public space was the place where
business could be transacted while the latest news was being discussed, where
public administration buildings were located alongside cultural facilities, while
traffic flowed through on the way to every conceivable destination”.35

The privileged condition of embodying different aspects of modern public life

started to fade when technology improvements in transportation led to a
structural metamorphosis of the port itself. Between the late XVIII and the mid
XIX century, the port was a requisite necessary for the Industrial economic
system, as exchange hub of raw or semi-finished materials within the production
chain.
On an economic level, the application of industrial premises to the city turned out
to progressively evict the port centrality in the city. It is generally argued that, up
to the mid XIX century, a spatial continuity within the city and the port is
commensurable. Following the capitalist specialization of port-related economies,
the “osmotic relationship between port and city is fractured by the raising of
physical and administrative barriers”36. This physical segregation progressively
eliminated that positive tension that had been characterizing the port-city
compound in history. This urban phenomena represented exactly what CIAM’s
Athens Charter37 envisioned for the city of the XX century. This followed a series
of many Industrialization attempts - promoted by the Marshall Plan -, such as the
Industrial Union of Naples and Fondazione Politecnica per il Mezzogiorno, key
figures in the construction of the 1939 never-completed Urban Plan of Naples, or
the formation of the ASI - Aree di sviluppo Industriale (Industrial Development

34Han, Meyer. City and port. Urban planning as a Cultural Venture in London, Barcelona, New York,
and Rotterdam: changing relations between public urban space and large-scale infrastructure,
(Rotterdam: International Books, 1999)
35 Ibidem
36Daniele, Blasi, Carlo, Gerundo. Mediterranean waterscapes. identifying challenges and visions for
the future of campania coastal port-cities. Journal of Urban Planning, Landscape & environmental
Design, Vol 2-(3) (2017), pp. 157, DOI:https://doi.org/10.6092/2531-9906/5413.
37 The Athens Charter provided the division of functions - circulation, work, housing, leisure, etc. - but
this separation was instrumental to a greater and more efficient integration of these moments towards
an urban system in which all aspects of urban life became the same process of social reproduction.
For Le Corbusier, as for Cerdà, the urban organism could no longer be conceived in the traditional
forms of the city, understood as a centre opposed to its surroundings - the countryside or the
periphery - but was seen as a new organism, that is, as an urban territory.
 Areas) founded by Cassa per il Mezzogiorno38 (Fund for the South). The
industrial plants built between 1950 and 1980 - most of which were built on the
Naples waterfront - were part of a territorial infrastructure resulting from
technocratic policies for industrial development.
However, what is particularly striking about these major investments is both a
centralised control of production growth and the construction of an urban
economy that takes insufficient account of the specific aspects of the southern
city's labour market39.

Terraferma

By tracing containers trajectories since the arrival in the Port of Naples, we can
eventually understand the impact of the value chain throughout the whole south
of Italy - I will limit the research in Naples' territory only. According to Marx,
capital circulates in the form of money and commodities flows. Cerdà,
approximately in the same years when “Das Kapital” was written, theorised
urbanization as the system in which the movement of goods and people took
over any other aspect of the inhabited space. Theories like Cerdà's postulated
that the city, as an entity differentiated from the territory, should cease to exist,
replaced by a dislocated system, potentially extendible to infinity, whose function
is no longer to produce a form, but to be a process, a functioning machine that
binds, within the same apparatus, circulation and dwelling.

In the 1980s, following an ever-growing need to decentralize industrial activities,

economic and demographic processes involving circulation of capital had a
significant influence on Naples's development. The tertiary sector experienced a
coherent transformation, undergoing moderate decentralization. The
suburbanisation processes that followed, however, shifted beyond peripheral
edges and connecting the urban expansion of Naples with those of the nearby
provincial capitals such as Salerno, Caserta and the coastal Tyrrhenian
agglomeration that moves towards Rome40. This process was mainly driven by
off-the-book housing speculations. According to Belfiore and Gravagnuolo, local
authorities’ decision making were often embedded into an entropic system driven

38 Cassa per il Mezzogiorno was a public effort by the government of Italy to stimulate economic
growth and development in the less developed Southern Italy (also known as the Mezzogiorno). It was
established in 1950 primarily to encourage the development of public works and infrastructure (roads,
bridges, hydroelectric and irrigation) projects, and to provide credit subsidies and tax advantages to
promote investments. It was dissolved in 1984, although its mandate was maintained by successive,
less centralized institutions.
39Enrico Cardillo, Napoli, l'occasione post-industriale: da Nitti al piano strategico, (Napoli: Alfredo
Guida, 2006) pp. 36.
40Simona De Rosa, Luca Salvati. Beyond a ‘side street story’? Naples from spontaneous centrality to
entropic polycentricism, towards a ‘crisis city’. Cities, vol 51, January 2016, pp.76.
 by individuality, institutional laissez-faire and, of course, logic for personal profit41.
Such a pattern prevented the creation of urban sub-centres and Naples remained
the principal urban actor of the region, while other municipalities grew in
population. The city sprawled beyond the administrative borders of the
metropolitan area consolidated newly-emerging suburbs into a truly polycentric
network of residential towns42. This is in relation to a highly entropic urban
landscape surrounded by a distinct margin of mixed land use, dominated by
discontinuous settlements (high and low density), isolated agricultural fields and
fragmented woodlands.

This tendency can be seen in the demographic data analysis provided by the
Italian Institute of Statistics (ISTAT), on population distribution (1861-2011) and
on the number of economic activities and the number of workers in local
industrial and service units (1951-2011). Population data from 1861 to 2011
clearly shows a seamless growth over several cities around Naples as Torre del
Greco and Portici, all of which have experienced a more-or-less rapid population
decline. Naples’ population declined from 1.23 million inhabitants in 1971 to 0.93
million residents in 2011, which indicates suburbanization and the decline of the
hyper-dense city model. Naples’ urban economic datas and workers indicate a
decrease of enterprises in sectors such as manufacturing and commerce.
Sectors such as transport and construction grew slowly, while public services
experienced the only positive trend43. However, we will explore later the
emergence of high-tech districts in the early 2000s - in the wake of municipal
policies and private initiatives - as disruptive forces that, I argue, will require a
radical rethinking of the post-metropolitan territory, as well as investigating
electronically-mediated labour from a process-relational perspective. This will
allow me to look at high-tech districts as a relational mode of production, and to
consider the dynamics of alienation, exploitation and value capturing in light of
this distinct mode of supervision at play within the socio-technical assemblage in
which the worker is integrated.

Since the 90s the Neapolitan territory has developed an interest to standardize
local systems of manufacturing (Sistemi Locali di Lavoro). With the law 144/99
the SLLs were officially recognised as territorial units for the implementation and
control of territorial development policies. Also the Economic and Financial
Planning Document (1999) has in fact identified the guidelines of the New
Economic Policy for Southern Italy providing for an intervention based on local
development. In this sense, a central role is attributed to enterprises, to territorial
pacts, and, consequently, to the growth of industrial districts. However, some
argue that a series of contradictions emerge in understanding and interpreting
the development of productive models of this territory. Del Colle has defined the
productive structure of the territory as “schizophrenic”44, while Viesti argues that

41Ibidem, pp. 76. See also Pasquale Belfiore, Benedetto Gravagnuolo, Napoli: architettura e
urbanistica del novecento, (Bari: Laterza, 1994).
42 Ibidem.
43 Ibidem, pp 77.
44Coppola, Gianluigi. 2001. Studio di una provincia meridionale attraverso un’analisi dei Sistemi
Locali del Lavoro. Il caso di Salerno. Dipartimenti e Centri di ricerca UniSA. Pubblicazioni scientifiche
111 (3): pp.6. http://dx.doi.org/10.14273/unisa-540.
 Campania is confirmed as a very complex region, not easily classifiable, since it
is made up of a variety of development situations which require a detailed
territorial analysis45.
The problem related to the algorithm to be used for the identification of local
systems of manufacturing is quite complex. What I want to highlight is that
according to the parameters established by this algorithm, only a few industrial
districts are located in southern Italy. Of the 141 identified on the basis of 2011
census data, only 17 are located in Mezzogiorno (the south), while 6 of these are
in Campania. One of them is highly specialised in the leather and footwear
sectors (Solofra) while the other five (Buccino, San Marco dei Cavoti, Bttipaglia,
Montesarchio and Ariano Irpino) seem today territories of mixed productions that
varies between chemical to mechanical, as well as agricultural-food production.
The low index of industrialization of Southern Italy compared to the average of
the country, suggests that some territorial areas that have significant productive
localization ratios, even if lower than the national average, do not emerge during
the implementation of an algorithm46 for the whole of Italy. The problem therefore
arises of how to identify those areas of productive specialization present in
Southern Italy that can be configured as pre-districts or proto-districts.

According to Sebastiano Brusco and Sergio Paba it is likely that in the

Mezzogiorno, local systems in which large agglomerations of small businesses
operate are more numerous than the procedure adopted reveals. This may be
due to a higher tertiarisation of southern cities, both to the high share of
underground economy that characterises southern small and medium-sized
enterprises47.
Numerous researches on whether the emergence of Southern Industrial Districts
would be the solution for the Mezzogiorno, have considered analytical
approaches valorising only contexts and subjects already displaying clear signs
of dynamism48. By doing so, traditionally “underdeveloped” regions - i.e. lacking
sufficient and competitive production capacity - such as southern ones have been
inevitably penalized. The prevailing, in terms of analysis and proposals, of a
districtualist viewpoint - i. e. to use the logic of the Marshallian industrial district
even where the conditions for its emergence do not exist - is therefore in strong

45Viesti Gianfranco., I Mezzogiorni: tipologie economiche di Sistemi locali al Sud, Sviluppo locale, VI,
November 1999, pp 5-32.
46 In addition to the index of specialisation in manufacturing industry, other parameters are taken into
account. For example, the Istat algorithm considers 4 indicators: 1. the share of manufacturing
industry workforce in overall employment of non-agricultural sectors. This percentage must be higher
than the Italian average (alternatively, it can be said that the relative manufacturing specialisation
index of the area must be higher than 1); 2. the share of manufacturing industry workforce in
enterprises with no more than 250 persons employed. This percentage must also be higher than the
Italian average; 3. the share of employees in at least one sector of manufacturing industry must be
higher than the national average; 4. the share of persons employed in at least one sector referred to in
the previous point, in enterprises with no more than 250 persons employed, must be higher than the
Italian average; ISTAT.
47Brusco Sebastiano, Paba Sergio. Per una storia dei distretti industriali italiani dal secondo
dopoguerra agli anni Novanta in Storia del Capitalismo italiano dal dopoguerra ad oggi, (Roma:
Donzelli Editore, 1997)
48Becattini, Giacomo. “Industrializzazione e Risanamento Civile Nel Mezzogiorno.” Il Ponte XL VI, no.
6 (1990).
 contradiction with the very essence of the district as Fabbrichetta: the rejection of
any economic imposition from above49. Here is the emergence of the ubiquitous
character of the Quistione Meridionale as embedded in paternalistic policies, by
asserting efficient and successful economic models from other countries, thus
overlooking the emerging ecologies of these territories.
As such, Giacomo Becattini encouraged Mezzogiorno’s self-propulsive
development by replicating the NEC (North-East-Center) model - such as both
Veneto and Prato’s Industrial Districts.50 Allegedly, the State must address these
policies as far as there are both clear signs of industrial development and
promising global-wide entrepreneurship51. Within these premises, southern
markets appear already excluded.

Allegedly, the Neapolitan economy is mainly based on agriculture and services,

with a significant share of services that cannot be sold52. However, following the
neapolitan sprawling, literature on the structure of the city and its urban
development has begun to underline the "rediscovery" of the city and the
emergence of new urban centralities. Naples started to be identified as a platform
of a global network53 as well as a fundamental economic drive. The foundation of
this approach is that cities are intended to be “the key command and control
centres within the interlocking globalizing dynamics of financial markets, high-
level producer services industries, corporate headquarters and other associated
service industries”.54 Telecommunications, information technologies and higher
economic functions are now considered important in defining the higher
specialization levels of a city.55

As such, in container transportation and logistics networks, the interport is a

common infrastructure located strategically in the hinterland of one or several
seaports where services are available to carriers and shippers such as trans-
shipping, customs clearance and inspections, temporary storage, tagging, and
sorting. Interports pose opportunities and challenges for operators involved in
freight transport and trade. As previously seen, the main region’s seaports are
Naples and Salerno. In particular, the privately-owned terminal, warehousing and

49 It is important to notice that the very first ideal of the Italian Fabbrichetta is to distrust any form of
state support.
50 Ibidem.
51 Ibidem.
52Coppola, Gianluigi. 2001. Studio di una provincia meridionale attraverso un’analisi dei Sistemi
Locali del Lavoro. Il caso di Salerno. Dipartimenti e Centri di ricerca UniSA. Pubblicazioni scientifiche
111 (3): pp.6. http://dx.doi.org/10.14273/unisa-540.
53Allen J. Scott, Globalisation and the rise of city-regions. European Planning Studies, Vol 9(7), pp.
813–826, https://doi.org/10.1080/09654310120079788
54Ash Amin, Stephen Graham. The ordinary city. Transactions of the Institute of British Geographers,
Vol 22(4), February 2017, pp.411–429, in Simona De Rosa, Luca Salvati. Beyond a ‘side street story’?
Naples from spontaneous centrality to entropic polycentricism, towards a ‘crisis city’. Cities, vol 51,
January 2016, pp.78.
55Peter Hall. (1997b). The future of the metropolis and its form. Regional Studies, Vol. 31(3), August
2010, pp. 137–146.
 processing facilities at Nola and Marcianise are recognized as interports.
In this respect, the Neapolitan hinterland already suited well to this type of
logistical infrastructure, as the 20th century Statal-Industrialization process laid
the groundwork for such logistics performances. Considering that the
morphological structure of many municipalities of the Neapolitan hinterland has
always been directly connected to the urban development of the Neapolitan city, I
think it is useful to deepen the dynamics of some episodes of industrial
decentralization that from 1939 deeply affected the relations between the eastern
area of Naples and the surrounding territory, until reaching the monopolizing
colossus of Nola.
Since ancient times, the eastern Naples converged to Via Adrianea or Nolana -
wanted by the Emperor Adriano - and that it was the main route of internal
penetration towards the renowned Etruscan centre of Nola. Situated along this
artery, the pseudo-urban nucleus of Pomilianum seems to have originated in the
imperial age, when the systematic colonization of the ager campanus began56.
Moreover, from the map Rizzi-Zannoni, representing L’Agro Napoletano con le le
sue Adjacenze in 1793, it can be seen that from Naples, the route stretches
towards inland villages on the extension of Via Poggioreale leading to Nola,
which ends in Puglia - Apulian road. The importance of this artery as an axis of
commercial and urban development, at least for the municipalities between the
capital and Nola, is reflected in the need, manifested several times in those
years, to strengthen this route through a direct connection on rails.

The turning point for a territorial-urban development as well as for most of the
settlements along Nola, came at the end of the 1930s, with the construction of
the Alfa Romeo industrial-aeronautical complex.
The decision to locate in Pomigliano d'Arco, which should have been the largest
and most modern production complex in Europe, was taken by the Institute for
Industrial Reconstruction (IRI), characterized by the dualism that counteracted
the “hegemonial” industrialization of the North against the lack of productive take-
off in the Neapolitan area. This pharaonic structure, which began on April 1, 1939
and already partially active in 1940, deeply affected the morphology of the
existing territory. For these reasons, Nola has always been a strategic point from
which capital has benefited immensely.

From a neoliberal perspective, the construction of the Nola interport is a

Shumpeterian example of innovation, dramatically changing the layout and flow
of shipments of imported and exported goods into/from a country, aiming at
relieving congestion at the seaports. It involves huge investments in
infrastructure, installing high-tech equipment like automated stacking and storage
equipment and advanced logistic control systems. Such a logistic infrastructure
has a massive impact on the ecology of Neapolitan territory, so much that proves
what has been previously explored through Marx: capital circulation anticipates
production. However the privately-owned Port facilities as well as the Nola
Interport creates a trend toward ever greater control of the logistic chain through
various forms of cooperation (strategic alliances, mergers, etc.).
Numerous theorists argue that these forms of cooperation,

56Roberto, Parisi. Lo Spazio della Produzione Napoli: la Periferia Orientale, (Napoli: Athena Edizioni,
1998).
 “include both vertical agreements along the logistics chain and horizontal
agreements among suppliers of similar services, particularly shipping
companies. These developments bring with them a danger of preferential
treatment, conflicts of interests and market dominance.”57

As such, freight transportation infrastructure occupies the curious position of

serving as a vehicle for economic activity at large and as a means of production
for a particular industrial sector. Freight movement is commensurable to the
production process, transportation supports virtually all economic activity and
thus serves the public interest. Insofar as private firms de facto own this service,
transportation infrastructure operates as a means of production for those firms,
like a factory machine.
The interport model is a “multi-commodity, multi-modal linear programming
model”58 of a container logistic system that includes ports, interports, and inland
locations. The seaports at Naples and Salerno are connected by truck to all the
inland locations of the network. While Naples is connected by railway to the
interports and to some final destinations with a railway terminal, Salerno is
connected by rail to the Nola interport and to the Bari city/terminal.59
The reason why it is essential to consider containerization and interport logistics
is that it highlights the complexity of local, regional, national, and even
international political and economic factors in shaping the dynamics of
competition, shifting territorial power toward shipping companies and away from
ports, labor and local administrations - perhaps the reason why China is investing
hundreds of millions acquiring the port of Athens60 as well as bargaining to buy
Nola Interport61.
Containerization’s economic benefits primarily derived from reduced labor costs,
led eventually to explosive growth that may be tapering off today. As such, an
overwhelming ratio of international trade travels by container ships.

“At today’s most advanced terminals, the longshoremen and checkers who
swarmed the docks are now invisible inside buildings behind computerized
control panels, and chassis drive themselves down the pier to accept one of the
standardized crenellated boxes being hoisted from the ship every two minutes
and lowered onto the chassis by cranes over 50 meters high. The containers
are then immediately transferred to trucks or trains and hauled directly through

57 Heaver, T. D., H. Meersman, and E. V. de Voorde. Co-operation and competition in international

container transport: Strategies for ports. In H. Leggate, J. McConville, and A. Morvillo (Eds.),
International Maritime Transport: Perspectives, Routledge Advances in Maritime Studies, (New York:
Routledge, 2005) pp. 145–159.
58Sten, Thore. The Interport: A Logistics Model and an Application to the Distribution of Maritime
Containers, International Journal of Information Systems and Supply Chain Management, Vol
5(4):23-45, October 2014, DOI: 10.4018/jisscm.2012100102.
59Ibidem, pp. 25.
60Helena, Smith, The Guardian, https://www.theguardian.com/world/2015/feb/09/greece-syriza-stops-
china-extending-hold-piraeus (June, 1, 2020)
61Marco Morino, Capitali cinesi sull’Interporto di Nola, Il Sole 24 Ore, 8 July 2017, accessed 1 June
2020, https://www.ilsole24ore.com/art/capitali-cinesi-sull-interporto-nola-AEkzpltB.
 the suburbs to inland, regional distribution centers, which serve as hubs for
collecting and distributing goods, much like ports in the previous era.”62

As of today, containerization has grown rapidly, though it is unclear how the

recent economic crisis will impact its long term prospects63. Rapid growth was
fostered by the increase in global trade facilitated by containerization as well as a
perverse pressure to compete through economies of scale. More expensive
ships with greater capacity was the preferred method of reducing shipping costs
and competing in an overloaded market64. This contradiction between
overcapacity and constant growth produced financial stress on corporations that
soon led to mergers, acquisitions, and alliances that concentrated ownership,
capital, and control in the shipping industry over small and medium economies.
In other words, interport containerization reshaped Campania logistic network to
achieve territorial monopoly.

But how does this logistic environment really affect the emergence of the
fabbrichetta?
In Campania Region's economic system, the aerospace, agri-food and, in a
smaller part, the textile production chain, plays a very important role,
representing an element of development of the territory both in terms of industrial
presence and for the high content of technological knowledge required by
production processes. Large operators are flanked by a fabric of small and
medium-sized subcontractors able to use technology, implement production
processes, and guarantee the technical standards of quality and precision
required by large scale shipping corporations. The study carried out by Studi e
Ricerche per il Mezzogiorno65 (Studies and Researches for the South) in 2011
shows that Campania is the second region of Italy behind Lombardy (this year a
turnover volume of 1.6 billion is estimated) and the first in terms of number of
employees: 8,404 employees compared to 8,217 in Lombardy. Campania alone
has a market share of 22%, just two percentage points lower than the Lombardy
Region.
Benefitting from the Nola Interport, Yamamay-Carpisa textile corporation (which
not surprisingly, owns the freight infrastructure) unravelled an "imaginary thread"
between North and South moving on international routes. Presenting the
advertising campaign with Penelope Cruz, CEO Gianluigi Cimino says he wants
to focus strongly on the Middle East and strengthen our presence in Spain.66
Following the same path is Harmont & Blaine, which aims to satisfy the needs
and tastes of young consumers, overwhelmed by the capitalist schizophrenia of
recent decades. The group has made a quantum leap in terms of communication
and is experimenting with a production model that leaves in the Neapolitan area
the conception and style but frequently relies on overseas production.

62Cuz Potter, Boxed In: How Intermodalism Enabled Destructive Interport Competition, Phd
dissertation, Columbia University, 2010.
63 Ibidem
64 Ibidem
65 See https://www.sr-m.it/home/
66 Paolo Frascani, Napoli: Viaggio nella Città Reale, (Roma: Laterza, 2017), pp. 82.
 Such phenomena are observed by new local, neoliberal scholars. Raffaele
Cercola traces out a real model: "one focuses on an idea and then one chooses
the producers, for example in China. We keep the planning in a variegated
way"67. A set of initiatives, enhanced by a substantial investment in
communication, which gives body to the picture of a region that is very strong on
the textile and clothing front, but not enough to produce value through its labour
power - to commonly redistribute wealth.
It therefore appears that the territory as a space of jurisdiction only functions
economically insofar as it becomes a platform for the global logistics market.

According to Graham and Healey68, there is an inherent tension between network

flows and territorial spaces. Network flows try to cross any border, while territorial
spaces work to control and regulate these flows69. This distinction gains political
meaning from its extension from flows and territories respectively to
Harvey’s70capitalistic and territorial logics of power. According to David Harvey,
the capitalist logic of power focuses on the ways in which economic power flows
through continuous space, towards or away from territorial entities, supported by
flows of capital - in all its daily practices e.g. production, trade, circulation and so
on - and labour. The territorial logic of power includes the political, diplomatic and
military strategies invoked and used by an entity territorially defined as a state
struggling to establish its own interests and accumulate power in its own right71.
These two logics, while conceptually dichotomous, are deeply intertwined and
often commensurable.

To our aims, territory is oriented to monopolise (or at least to contain) flows of

capital and to increase its impetus in a given concrete space, i.e. it is oriented to
accumulate capital within a delineated concrete space. This could be achieved in
three ways. First, a territorial body - a sovereign institution - can boost its amount
of capital by preventing it from exceeding its territorial boundaries. For instance,
import substitution72 keeps capital that would leave an administrative territory for
processing elsewhere from leaving the territory. This, in effect, boosts the circuit
of capital within that territory as we experienced with our Italian Fabbrichetta.
Secondly, a territorial body may augment capital volume by hijacking it from the
outside to the inside of its territory. An obvious example of this would be to
persuade a new factory to locate itself within the territorial jurisdiction, perhaps
with tax benefits as demonstrated by the recent Neapolitan Silicon Valley-like

67 Ibidem, pp 84.
68Stephen Graham, Patsy. Healey. Relational concepts of space and place: Issues for planning
theory and practice. European Planning Studies 7 (5), 11 Apr 2007, pp 623–646.
69 Peter, J. Taylor, World City Network: A Global Urban Analysis (New York: Routledge, 2004).
70David, Harvey. Spaces of global capitalism: Towards a theory of uneven geographical development
(New York: Verso, 2006)
71 Ibidem, pp. 107
72 Import substitution involves a trade and economic policy which advocates replacing foreign imports
with domestic production. ISI is based on the assumption that a country should seek to reduce its
foreign dependency through the local production of industrialized products.
 urban projects73. Finally, by increasing capital velocity, mainly through improved
efficiency, a larger portion of capital is retained within the territory. For example,
an improvement in the process will at least for some time enhance company
profits that would otherwise have drifted offshore with the product.
The first example above embodies all the contradictions that “global-local” still
carries with it. The second one is the most popular today: any regional and local
policymaking are now focusing on luring corporations and industries of various
kinds through incentives and low taxation zones.
These “special” zones, such as San Giovanni a Teduccio, express the result of
the most conspicuous and obvious phenomena of our times, that is gentrification.
The first company to invest in the Neapolitan territory was Apple - although was
obliged to do that due to its tax evasion issues in Italy74. Since then, a wide range
of big enterprises75, known as Cisco, Tim Accelerator, Deloitte have followed one
another. The obvious consequence of such a gentrification process was the
proliferation of about a thousand76 small industrial-manufacturing start-ups
spread across the whole Neapolitan territory. To name a few - that we will
specifically explore later - is Sòphia, E-Lisa and MegaRide, all of them operating
within the famous Industry 4.0.

Cloud Territories

The bourgeois ideology of the social sciences has impregnated urbanism so

much that history of the city has mostly been read as inexorable technological
progress, an inevitable expansion of the urban, a natural outcome of the
development of productive forces. To understand the biopolitical power relations
within Naples’ territory and to tackle the relationship between capital and the
urban form is therefore necessary to explore the Cloud as an urban field of study,
embedded in the process of manufacturing.

As data collection, storage, and analysis have become increasingly cheaper,

more and more traditional manufacturing industries have attempted to invest on
platforms into their field. It is called the industrial internet of things, or simply the
industrial internet. Essentially, it characterises the proceeding digitised
connection of industrial manufacturing. Correspondent to its official definition, the

73 Viola, Vera. Dopo Apple in arrivo a Napoli altri big dell’hi-tech. Il Sole 24 Ore, 18 October 2019,
https://www.ilsole24ore.com/art/dopo-apple-arrivo-napoli-altri-big-dell-hi-tech-ACXIJns
74Stephanie, Kirchgaessner. Silicon Valley comes to Naples: Apple prepares to open Italian academy.
The Guardian, 5 October 2016, https://www.theguardian.com/world/2016/oct/05/apple-academy-
naples-italy-san-giovanni-tim-cook
75Anna, Capuano. Napoli tech: una scia di startup dietro apple & co, Affari Italiani, 19 November
2018, https://www.affaritaliani.it/blog/sguardo-rosa/napoli-tech-unasciadistartup-dietroapple-
co-572913.html?refresh_ce
76Ministero dello Sviluppo Economico, Cruscotto di Indicatori Statistici - Dati nazionali: Report con
dati strutturali e Startup innovative, 1° trimestre 2020, Roma: UnionCamere, 1 April 2020, https://
www.mise.gov.it/index.php/it/per-i-media/notizie/2041017-startup-innovative-tutti-i-dati-al-31-
marzo-2020
 industrial internet of things (IIoT) is “constituted by the real-time capable,
intelligent, horizontal, and vertical connection of people, machines, objects, and
information and communication technology (ICT) systems to dynamically
manage complex systems”77. According to Nick Srniceck, the “industrial internet
involves the embedding of sensors and computer chips into the production
process and of trackers into the logistics process, all linked together through
connections over the internet.”78
As we mentioned above, this process is heralded as “Industry 4.0”, where each
component in the production process - what Marx called constant Capital79 -
communicates with assembly of machines and other components, with no need
of control by workers or managers. Although this process will be elaborated later
in the chapter, what is at stake is its terrain performance, characterised by a
network of actors, which disrupt the ethos of the contemporary Fabbrichetta.
Following Shmitt’s Nomos of The Earth, Benjamin Bratton identifies a new
territorial Nomos formed by land, sea, air and information, namely The Stack.
The Stack contributes to a new geopolitical order where information becomes the
quintessential spatial sovereignty accomplished by a “radicalization of the aerial
into even more vaporous information space”.80
In the contemporary networked post-metropolis, technological networks are
connected into a “machinic complex” of speed, light, and power81. Information
and communication technologies (ICTs) have coexisted with cities, triggering
ever more seamless integration and ubiquity in the urban fabric.82
To examine the socio-environmental impacts of digital labour, it is therefore
necessary to question how digital work lands in space. Firstly, by considering
what has been explored already in the first chapter within a Post-Fordist
discourse, such as flexible accumulation, and flexible specialisation. Secondly, by
tackling concepts of cognitive-capitalism to stress the dialectic relationship in the
manufacturing processes between capital and labour amidst structural changes
to suggest a new form of subsumption83 (of social reproduction, culture,
knowledge).
As such, calculation, communication and information are stored and performed

77Christian, Arnold. Daniel, Kiel. Kai-Ingo, Voigt. “How the industrial internet of things changes
business models in different manufacturing industries”, International Journal of Innovation
Management, Vol. 20, No. 8 (December 2016), DOI: 10.1142/S1363919616400156.
78 Nick, Srniceck. Platform Capitalism, (Cambridge: Polity Press, 2017), pp. 80
79 According to Marx, Constant capital refers to one of the forms of capital invested in production. It
includes the sum of money on fixed assets, i.e. plant, machinery, land and buildings. It also includes
raw materials and various operating expenses, such as external services purchased. Constant capital
ultimately includes certain incidental operating expenses. See Karl, Marx. Capital Vol 1, (London:
Penguin Books, New Left Review, 1976), pp. 307
80Benjamin, H. Bratton. The Stack: On Software and Sovereignty, (Cambridge: MIT Press, 2015), pp.
114.
81 Amin, Ash. Nigel, Thrift. Cities: Reimagining the Urban. (Cambridge: Polity, 2002)
82
Steve, Graham. Simon, Marvin. Splintering Urbanism: Networked Infrastructures, Technological
Mobilities and the Urban Condition. (London: Routledge, 2001).
83Dillon, Mahmoudi. Anthony, Levenda. “Beyond the Screen: Uneven Geographies, Digital Labour,
and the City of Cognitive-Cultural Capitalism”, tripleC n 14, (February 2016): pp. 99-120. DOI:
10.31269/vol14iss1pp99-120
 using digital methods. Digital methods reduce transportation and storage costs
as well as reducing time necessary for communication. To the capitalist, this
produces significant impacts on leading and controlling operations, changing the
nature of production and organization. Today, the temporal, spatial and
technological complexity of industrial production and small manufacturing has
only increased and the Fabbrichetta play a crucial role. Mass production and
mass consumption have widely proliferated and developed. Technologically
advanced mass labor is constantly engaged in detailed production coordination,
high-tech distribution centers - such as interports -, targeted sales and
increasingly individualized advertising as well as advanced monitoring and
transportation.
While the industrial revolution has site-specific implications, digital revolution -
rooted in a Post-fordism thought - is all about platforms, powered by the cloud
and enabled by mobility, so it is practically impossible to draw the contemporary
Fabbrichetta with tools from the 20th century. Grasping from Castell’s 84space of
flows and space of places, we could argue that there is de facto a dialectical
tension, caught up in the mix of twinned processes of technological change and
urbanization as both urbanism and Amazon become commensurable in life today.
However, such understanding raises a number of questions: What are the socio-
spatial conditions and impacts of these digital infrastructures? Where are data
centers located and why in those specific geographic locations? What are the
socio-material implications and benefits of data centres and how are they
distributed?
The residual confusion of jurisdictional divisions of land, sea, air, and cyber is
itself worth mapping forensically.
According again to Bratton:

“The Cloud is not virtual; it is physical even if it is not always on-the-ground,

even when it is deep underground. There is nothing immaterial about massless
information that demands such energy from the Earth.”85

As such, data centres are massive structures housing thousands of servers for
storing data, advanced mechanical cooling and ventilation equipment, batteries
and diesel generators for backup power and redundancy. Depending on the
location and owner, a highly securitized shell of fencing and walls limit access
areas, not to mention the “military-like” surveillance system.
Currently, the Neapolitan territory has no data centers yet86. Southern Italy
boasts approximately four data centers and cloud providers, all of which provide
telecommunications and security services. Thus, smart storage systems in the
manufacturing sector need access to foreign servers. My own research has
shown that the majority of cloud servers used in the manufacturing sector belong
to Amazon Web Services, which opened this year in Milan a brand new data
center. Amazon, commonly known as an online store, offers data storage,
database management and caching services - cloud computing - in addition to

84 Manuel, Castells. The Rise of the Network Society, (Cambridge: Blackwell, 1996).
85Benjamin, H. Bratton. The Stack: On Software and Sovereignty, (Cambridge: MIT Press, 2015), pp.
117.
86Data Center Map, https://www.datacentermap.com, (20 June, 2020). See also Regione Campania.
Progetto "green-it", arriva il data center eco-compatibile. http://www.regione.campania.it/it/printable/
progetto-green-it-arriva-il-data-center-eco-compatbile, (20 June, 2020).
 supporting its digital offerings for Amazon Books Amazon Music and Prime
Video.
As such, technical features of data centres, including energy and land
regulations, have shaped locational choices by data centre owners such as
Facebook and Amazon: free air-cooling, low electricity rates, inexpensive land,
and enterprise zones that limit taxation in places like Luxemburg, Netherlands
and Ireland are key decision points. This poses further questions about the
politics of development in places struggling to attract capital for economic
development and jobs creation, leading to a new Quistione Meridionale
(Southern Question). Neapolitan manufacturing “start-ups” known as NES (NET
Electronic SMT) or Sòphia High-Tech as well as agricultural production and
monitoring as Evja are all operating with Amazon Web Services cloud, thus
referring to north European servers - to be more specific, “The Stack” appears to
be owned mostly American and Chinese.
It is also in this context that we can also measure how global Cloud platforms
choose to express their terrestrial presence through the medium of architecture
at the city level, not only by marking the footprint of their data centres, but also
through a close up reading of new megastructural headquarters built to house
human intelligence embedded in particular Cloud corporations. To put it bluntly,
cloud is not really imperceptible neither above all of us.
From the standpoint of manufacturing, and material production in general, the
industrial internet or Industry 4.0 as we put it, promises to improve the
production process, primarily by doing what technology has been doing for some
time now: reducing costs and downtime.
In the Grundrisse, Marx dwells intensively on the issue of technological change
and the underlying technological dynamism of capitalism. What he points out is
that capitalist society, by design, will be strongly invested in innovation, as well as
“heavily invested in the construction of new technological and organisational
possibilities”87. And this is because, from an individual capitalist standpoint, if I
am in competition with other capitalists, I will make a surplus profit only if
technology I use is superior to that of my rivals. Therefore, each individual
capitalist is encouraged to seek a more productive technology than those used
by other companies with which that capitalist is in competition.
Within the territory of the Fabbrichetta, the development of constant capital
towards the Cloud becomes in contradiction with any possibility of resilience
localism as well. Small and medium economies will be always subordinated to
mass customization and to monopolistic platforms. The Lefebvrian planetary
urbanization, boosted by infrastructures of digital Information and Communication
Technologies, addresses general social knowledge as a direct force of
production. Effectively, as we have explored above, in the Neapolitan territory,
circulation of commodities, of capital, as well as the genealogy of contemporary
modes of production, nothing appears to be rooted in the tradition of the country.
However, I argue that it is the tradition of Neapolitan subjectivity that sets the
groundwork for a collectivization of these platforms and therefore of new modes
of production.

87David, Harvey. We Need a Collective Response to the Collective Dilemma of Coronavirus. Jacobin,
24 April 2020 ( accessed: 20 June 2020). https://www.jacobinmag.com/2020/04/david-harvey-
coronavirus-pandemic-capital-economy
Quistione Meridionale

As “technology is embedded within the heart of capitalist society”88, it will

constantly seek to enhance it, because it will always reward the individual, the
company, or the society that is technologically more advanced. The state, nation,
or any sovereign power that possesses the most sophisticated and dynamic
technology “is the one that is going to lead the pack”89. So technological
dynamism is built into the global structures of capitalism. And that’s been the
case since the very beginning.
To Srniceck ”with the industrial internet the big winners will be the platform
owners”90. Under such regimes, platform capitalism works to monopolize power
and wealth into feudal consolidations of extracted value, such that the proportion
between the value realised by Users cooperating with the platform (User platform
value) and those who have credits on infrastructure profits (platform surplus
value) is grossly uneven91.
This socio-spatial unevenness, which some scholars have identified as Cloud
feudalism92, can be understood as a particular distribution of power between the
servers of both central and command platforms over quasi-autonomous, though
relatively powerless, network clients. As such, I argue that our contemporary
digital environment is increasingly taking the shape of a neo-feudal institution,
erected alongside structures of power and freedom in the governance of the
territory. Indeed, by looking at the common conception of feudalism, a relatively
small rentier class (lords) uses a variety of subtle and obvious political and
economic regimes to extract value from the daily life of the producing class
(peasants), who generally have little choice or leverage over this system.
Platform users participate in platforms, often with minimal knowledge of the data
they provide, and this data is then used to generate value solely for platform
owners.
Continuous struggles of workers in logistics centers such as Nola, Amazon,
IKEA, " runners" in all contemporary cities against exploitative work-time of the
apps, as well as migrant workers - braccianti- in southern territories have shown
us a new possible concrete geography of the contemporary factory, its physical
places and its conflicts. When we talk about the Southern Question,
rediscovering the contemporary factory of Southern Italy would mean shedding
light on an omnipresent North-South dualism, which in planetary urbanization
takes on even greater significance. Yet, as we will see with Gramsci, the North-
South dualism arises from relations of subordination between classes, internal to
the territory, thus becoming a city-countryside relationship.

88 Ibidem
89 Ibidem
90Nick,
Srniceck. Platform Capitalism, (Cambridge: Polity Press, 2017), pp. 81. See also World
Economic Forum, 2015: 4.
91Benjamin, H. Bratton. The Stack: On Software and Sovereignty, (Cambridge: MIT Press, 2015), pp.
157.
92Ibidem.
 One cannot really make sense of Quistione Meridionale without first getting a grip
on the particulars of Italian history from at least as far back as the early Middle
Ages. The so-called Quistione Meridionale, was - until today - the
underdevelopment of southern Italy firstly rooted in the structures of rural life.
Since early Middle Ages, Neapolitan baronage built an alliance with foreign
capital (primarily Northern Italy) for the export of raw agricultural commodities.
The sovereign system used to manage agricultural production and rural life in
general is referred to as manorialism. Under manorialism, the lord controls a
certain area of land, but lives in the center of Naples. Peasants reside on this
land, and they are generally politically and economically subjected to the lord and
his collection of various family members and retainers, thus forming a patronage
relationship. Patronage constitutes the relational dynamic on which the mining
institutions of Southern Italy are built. It preserves the elites' power and projects
its constraints within both the political and economic system. It constitutes a
vertical social relationship based on an asymmetric distribution of power between
a patron - the one with the highest status and strategic resources - and a client,
aiming at the implementation of an exchange with instrumental purposes.
Starting from this fact, Neapolitan manorialism, often explored by Gramsci in the
relationship city-countryside, primarily poses the problem of defining an urban
framework that appears historically highly differentiated and, in the aftermath of
1860, destined to uneven developments.
According to Emilio Sereni, in sixteenth and seventeenth century the agents of
decay and disaggregation of the agricultural landscape generally predominated
more clearly over those working toward reorganization93. The development of the
southern agricultural landscape during the Risorgimento and unification
appeared at first to be dominated, not by the spirit of an agricultural revolution,
but instead by those operating in the direction of a large-scale revolution in
landownership. Again Sereni quotes:

Small holdings assigned to agricultural laborers in the southern countryside

became concentrated in the hands of a few galantuomini (nouveaux riches). It
was precisely in this way, besides the usurpation of communal domains, that
the landed patrimony of the new southern landed bourgeoisie grew[…] Even
today, otherwise, in the agricultural landscape of the South, one can find traces
of allotments in ruins of dry walls and rubble, that permit one to reconstruct their
ancient boundaries, although they are now concentrated again in the hands of a
few large landowners.94

After the unification of the South, ex-feudal lands were hugely redistributed by
landed property also through massive liquidation of ecclesiastical lands, which
also went to increase the landed patrimony of the new landowning bourgeoisie.
More than two and a half million hectares of Southern land were involved, which
at the dawn of the new kingdom went largely to increase the bourgeoisie's landed
patrimony. It was particularly this process that gave the striking bourgeois

93Emilio,Sereni, and R. Burr Litchfield. "Origins of the Contemporary Landscape: The Southern
Landscape of the “Mediterranean Garden”." In History of the Italian Agricultural Landscape, pp. 210.
PRINCETON, NEW JERSEY: Princeton University Press, 1997. Accessed June 20, 2020.
doi:10.2307/j.ctt7zvhrn.69.
94Emilio, Sereni, and R. Burr Litchfield. "The Landscapes of the South in the Risorgimento and Italian
Unification." In History of the Italian Agricultural Landscape, pp 321. PRINCETON, NEW JERSEY:
Princeton University Press, 1997. Accessed July 1, 2020. doi:10.2307/j.ctt7zvhrn.88.
 character to land property.
Since the development of the means of communication and the removal of
customs barriers, the post-unitary Italian market is flooded with foreign
manufactured products, thereby competing effectively with the indigenous-
domestic ones. Indeed, given lower prices, these products help to attract semi-
natural economies of a large part of the peninsula's population into the current
mercantile trade - especially in the South, given its propensity towards a
mercantilist economy that has always looked beyond national borders - which is
enormously affected95.
However, although this analysis may seem paradoxical, foreign encroachment
may constitute an agent of primary importance in breaking the old balance of
semi-natural economies and, by stimulating the process of separating agriculture
from industry - a process that is very close to Gramsci and Sereni- it effectively
contributes to the formation of an internal market for large local industry.96
According to Emilio Sereni, capitalist development, by unifying the national
market and enhancing the mercantile character of the Italian economy, turns
what was a simple disparity in the degree of development between North and
South into a clash97. The Mezzogiorno becomes therefore one of those so-called
Nebenländer (dependent territories), described by Marx regarding Ireland in
relation to England, where the industrial capitalist development is abruptly
crushed for the benefit of the dominant country.

As the North-Italian bourgeoisie had both control of the north working class and
the peasants of the south, Gramsci and the Italian communists fought to build a
hegemonic alliance of the subaltern classes to overthrow this system. The south,
Gramsci said, had been downgraded to a northern colony, and the peasants
were keen to support a working class state that would eliminate the banks and
parasitic industry. He quotes from L'Ordine Nuovo, in January 1920:

By introducing workers' control over industry, the proletariat will orient industry
to the production of agricultural machinery for the peasants, clothing and
footwear for the peasants, electrical lighting for the peasants, and will prevent
industry and the banks from exploiting the peasants and subjecting them as
slaves to the strongrooms. By smashing the factory autocracy, by smashing the
oppressive apparatus of the capitalist State and setting up a workers' State that
will subject the capitalists to the law of useful labour, the workers will smash all
the chains that bind the peasant to his poverty and desperation. By setting up a
workers' dictatorship and taking over the industries and banks, the proletariat
will swing the enormous weight of the State bureaucracy behind the peasants in
their struggle against the landowners, against the elements and against poverty.
The proletariat will provide the peasants with credit, set up cooperatives,
guarantee security of person and property against looters and carry out public
works of reclamation and irrigation. It will do all this because an increase in
agricultural production is in its interests; because to win and keep the solidarity
of the peasants is in its interests; because it is in its interests to orient industrial

95 Sereni, Emilio. Capitalismo e Mercato Nazionale in Italia. (Rome: Editori riuniti, 1974), pp. 94.

96 Ibidem.
97 Ibidem, pp. 97.
 production to work which will promote peace and brotherhood between town
and countryside, between North and South.98

What is at stake to Gramsci, are both hegemony and revolutionary strategy.

Hegemony is about political class leadership, expressed through a class alliance
- either bourgeois or proletariat - and its dominance over the other classes. The
concept of Hegemony and domination are first applied in Gramsci's examination
of the history of the Italian state in the dualism North-South. According to
Gramsci and Sereni, the revolutionary strategy for the Mezzogiorno relies on the
separation between industry and agriculture, an increasingly pressing issue,
despite contemporary modes of production "granting" us the possibility to
produce what we want wherever we want it.
As such, looking back to the deepest causes of the southern question, we find
ourselves constantly faced with a fundamental pattern, which is at the basis of all
the phenomena that keep the mercantile development of the Italian economy
within relatively narrow limits: the persistence of feudal traces in the Italian
countryside. As the southern Fabbrichetta is generally dominated by agriculture
or production for agricultural purposes, traces of feudalism are ever more evident
by looking at today’s condition of braccianti. Among the mass of workers in the
countryside, in the place of the sharecropper, the colono parziario, the livellario,
the small renter, and the direct cultivator of the old seigneurial estates, the
dominant figure now became the fixed-wage worker, the bracciante, who was
truly an agricultural proletarian dependent on the new capitalist enterprises. He
was deprived not only of land and subsistence, but also of any means of
exercising an independent role in production, and was thus obliged to sell his
own labor power to the capitalist.In contrast to the situation of the old dependents
of seigneurial estates—who were also without land but employed their own
means of production and labor in little peasant family undertakings, the products
of which (after paying the seigneurial rent) they could then take to market—the
wage workers and braccianti were obliged to work for a capitalist agricultural
enterprise whose products not they but only the capitalist could dispose; their
labor became the only product for the market they still possessed.

The so-called caporalato system consists of outsourcing the recruitment of

temporary workers to intermediaries, in a context of serious workers exploitation.
With the law 199/2016 against labour exploitation, Italy has extended the scope
of the existing provision against caporalato. However, the law appears unable to
uphold the human rights of all farmworkers, in particular undocumented migrants,
who are kept in a condition of invisibility and fear".99

98Gramsci, Antonio. “La Settimana Politica: Operai e Contadini.” L'Ordine Nuovo: Rassegna
Settimanale Di Cultura Socialista. January 3, 1920, Anno 1 n. 32 edition. Trans. Rothermel, Jay.
Gramsci on the Southern Question. Marxist update, February 11, 2011, http://marxistupdate.blogspot.com/
2011/02/southern-question.html.
99“Italy: Food System Exploits Smallholder Farmers and Workers - UN Food Expert.” OHCHR.
Accessed June 8, 2019. https://www.ohchr.org/en/NewsEvents/Pages/DisplayNews.aspx?
NewsID=25514.
The Industrial Union and Fondazione politecnica per il Mezzogiorno: The
Piccinato’s 1939 Urban Plan.

According to Bevilacqua100, we may discover the profound sense in which the

destiny of the South and the attempts made to transform it have been an
essential part of Italian nation-building. The State's efforts to promote the
economic development and social evolution of the South have always taken the
shape of distinct and supplementary laws and institutions exclusively applied to
the South. As such, at the beginning of this century, southern territories - such as
the previously mentioned Naples' industrial waterfront - witnessed industrial
interventions of unprecedented scale. The Cassa per il Mezzogiorno is the very
first evidence of this social phenomenon which produced gigantic changes in the
life and morphology of southern urbanism. Throughout much of Italy's history, it
has been public authority which has encouraged, addressed and protected
economic growth.101 As we experienced in the previous chapters, the birth of the
steel and chemical industries - as the examples of Veneto’s Porto Marghera - is
an exemplary case, as is the effort to encourage the flow of capital into massive
Marshall-like business poles, therefore to redevelop entire territories. Therefore,
the Cassa per il Mezzogiorno and the policy of extraordinary intervention are the
product of this complex and longstanding interweaving of public sovereign power
and economic initiative.102
In this case the focus shifts significantly towards the study of the Consorzi ASI
(Consortia for the development of Industrial Areas) as institutions responsible for
the territorial management of industrial settlements103. In fact, the poles
(especially the chemical, iron and steel ones) have profoundly transformed large
areas of southern territories, redefining the relations industry-city-countryside, as
well as those hills-flatlands-coastlines. Consortia have been the means through
which these processes have been realised. The role of industrialization by poles,
therefore, played a determining role in the formation of territorial hierarchies,
redesigning entire development and production models of the territories involved.
Approximately in the same years, two very important figures emerge for a new
reading of the city: Le Corbusier and Hilberseimer. These two figures will be very
important to contextualize the Neapolitan urban planning interventions of those
years.
Approximately in those years, two prominent figures emerged for a new reading
of the city: Le Corbusier and Ludwig Hilberseimer. These two characters will be
very important to contextualize the Neapolitan urban interventions of those years.
The two architects succeeded to thematize the relationship between capital and
urban form, in other words the city ceases to be form and becomes a production
process, an assembly line in which the core information is not the architectural

100 Bevilacqua, Piero. “New and Old in the Southern Question.” Modern Italy 1, no. 2 (1996): 81–92.
doi:10.1080/13532949608454770.
101 Ibidem
102 Ibidem
103 Salvatore Adorno, “Le Aree Di Sviluppo Industriale Negli Spazi Regionali Del Mezzogiorno in
‘L'Italia e Le Sue Regioni,’” in "L'Italia e le sue Regioni", 2015, http://www.treccani.it/enciclopedia/le-
aree-di-sviluppo-industriale-negli-spazi-regionali-del-mezzogiorno_(L'Italia-e-le-sue-Regioni)/.
 object, rather the economic plan organisation. Even in the firstly mentioned
Charter of Athens drawn up in the context of the Congress of Modern
Architecture (CIAM) in 1933 - de facto written by Le Corbusier -, there is a great
emphasis on the production-life nexus as the main objective of urban planning.
It was on this tradition that Luigi Piccinato, Giuseppe Cenzato, Francesco
Giordani and Girolamo ippolito drew the Naples urban plan on 1939, by impetus
of Industrial Union of Naples and Fondazione Politecnica per il Mezzogiorno.
The general layout of the plan traces some of the most important concepts of
modern urban planning, where the production-life nexus becomes the main
target of urban planning.

First of all, the idea that the historical and compact city should not expand
indefinitely, nor rigidly along the main roads: the principle that emerges is
combined with the so-called "stellar" expansion and the budding of satellite units.
As in the Athens Charter, the project presents a clear division of functions - traffic
(the star-shaped arteries), labour (the new industrial settlements in the east),
housing, leisure (the greenbelt that surrounds the city), etc. - but such separation
was instrumental to a greater and more efficient integration of these moments
towards an urban system in which all aspects of urban life became the same
process of social reproduction.

The Naples designed by Piccinato is based on a logic almost limited to municipal

boundaries. Within this framework, the program turns out to be unsuitable for the
building expansion of post-war boom years, highlighting the great contradiction of
the Italian urban project that is at the basis of the Quistione Meridionale,
therefore, it will never be released.
Italy's industrialization has been made possible by constant state intervention
and direction. Economic innovation was the response to strong hegemonic State
pressure and not as a result of slow and spontaneous evolution. This is a crucial
point, because in contrast to this interpretation, I have highlighted how different
parts of Italy have experienced economic development and innovation without
relying on an intermediary and interventionist state. While this points to a
vulnerable form of industrialization, it also suggests that the South may contain
the seeds of its own development, provided these industrial areas are helped to
emerge to the surface and consolidate. According to Bagnasco “what we witness
is not a generalized practice of laissez-faire, but [...] a complex social
construction of the market”104, rejecting therefore all ideological advocations of a
laissez-faire attitude towards Mezzogiorno. However, he also clarified that “the
kind of political action that is needed for small firm development - in the
Mezzogiorno - is often the opposite of the one which is on offer today, and politics
can constitute an obstacle as well as a resource”105. As such, local government
institutions have played the most important role in promoting and supporting the
development of small businesses, while the central government has contributed
mainly in terms of tax regimes, monetary policies and legislative support.

104Arnaldo, Bagnasco.La costruzione sociale del mercato. Studi sullo sviluppo della piccola impresa in
Italia, (Bologna: Il Mulino, 1988). See also Bull, Anna. “the South, the State and Economic
Development: Remarks on Piero Bevilacqua's ‘old and new in the southern question’.” Modern Italy 2
(1997): 72–76. doi:10.1080/13532949708454779.
105 Ibid, pp. 181
 Urban planning seems to be lacking the necessary tools to read the
contemporary urbanised territory and the complexity of the new division of labor
in southern territories (between global logistics, the Cloud, higher tech and low
tech material production and knowledge). The Quistione Meridionale, as
embedded in the new forms labor struggles, becomes the lens through which we
are able to identify the contemporary geography of production.

A Genealogy

On Naples’ Protoindustry and Capitalist Development

To explore the city of Naples entails an understanding of its governing power

relationships. While architecture addresses the performing of the city by
designing factories, squares, streets or aqueducts, it also expresses the political
consensus of its governing apparatus. As in the previous chapters, the aim is to
explore a genealogy through which it is possible to define a particular
architectural paradigm - or archetype - of spatial governance, involving material
production in the history of Neapolitan territory to the present.
As such, the Naples of the Royall Sites and Court Societies between XVII and
XVIII century can be considered as a process in which control of absolute power
- of the court and its representation - was closely linked to architecture,
productive handicraft and manufacturing holdings106. Starting from the Royal Site
conceived as "factory-city", the urban development is tied to the social division of
labour of the productive activities subordinate to the king - a logic, therefore,
necessary for territorial control. The building of Caserta as the new capital of the
Kingdom was embedded into a scheme of appropriation and territorial expansion
which, in this historic context, also represents a possible measure of the
economic and social growth of the sovereign states. The building of a new capital
was an opportunity to redefine the power of the new dynasty more efficiently. The
biopolitics of the dynasty was designed by a new, more open and geometrical
urbanism where the colonized countrysides and provincial territories were
controlled by a much more precise device: a court, bureaucratic apparatus and
military departments.
Royal Sites architectural construction corresponds to the establishment of a
protocol requiring the presence of a large number of labourers in charge of the
services, management and maintenance of the royal structure/residence. It
corresponds to the constant presence of officials, artists, craftsmen and
manufacturers who, through their daily work, ensure the territorial control and the

106Rossi, Pasquale. “Siti Reali Tra Spagna e Italia All'epoca Della 'Società Di Corte': Architetture,
Luoghi Produttivi, e Centri Minori Nel Territorio.” Essay. In Tra Napoli e Spagna. Città Storica Architetti
e Architetture Tra XVI e XVIII Secolo, edited by Giosi Amirante and M. Gabriella Pezone, 103–20.
Naples, Ita: Grimaldi & C. Editori, 2015.
 proper functioning of the residence as a machine.
Clearly, the territory of the Royal Palace of Caserta with its annexed colony of
San Leucio in the so-called Terra di Lavoro (the northern countrysides of Naples),
represent the embodiment of the Bourbon city's ideal. However, Minor
architectures - the Kingdom seasonal residences as well as of the bourgeoisie
residing in the city - have played an important role in the Neapolitan conurbation
as well.
To name a few, the porcelain factory in Capodimonte; ribbon and passamanerie
manufacturing and the canning and food industry deriving from the tonnare (tuna
fishing nets) in Portici; the cattle and horses livestocks, the fagianerie reali (royal
pheasantries) and the Canetterie (storage and bottling facilities); the Casini for
agricultural and dairy production in Persano, Carditello and Mondragone;
ultimately the early large industrial plants of the shipyards in Castellammare di
Stabia as well as the silk factories of San Leucio.
Royal Sites are therefore to be understood as productive locations and territorial
development centers emerging from a process of internal colonization, which are
then temporarily “granted” to the locals through wage labor.

Capodimonte

A brief literary space must be given to the royal site of Capodimonte. In addition
to the regal Boschetto per la regia caccia, the Royal fagianeria for game breeding
and the horse breeding center there is also the porcelain factory, built in 1743.
In 1743, Charles of Bourbon, king of Naples, established a porcelain
manufacture in the Royal Site of Capodimonte. After a few years devoted to
researches on raw materials and various porcelain paste experiments, the
factory produced high quality porcelain, often in the form of decorative objects,
which served as gifts from the king to Italian and foreign bourgeois, and
commercialized in 1745. The factory mark used all along the manufacture's
activity was a fleur-de-lis painted in underglaze blue, or sometimes impressed
under the bottom of the artefact, mostly in the case of figurines. It is clear from
rare historical sources that during the short life of the manufacture the quest for
raw materials and the experimentations never ceased. Specific handicraft skills
gave rise to different production departments. Working hours could vary from
twelve to fourteen hours a day, with an interruption for lunch varying in the
seasons, from one hour in winter to two in summer. Labourers were lodged on
the upper floor, in fairly large apartments (from one to three rooms) depending on
the size of the family unit.The other rooms were arranged in relation to the needs
of the production cycle: pasta processing room and decantation tanks, milling
machine, drying rooms, furnaces and storage rooms107. The processing phases
were fundamentally three: modelling (in clay or wax), "printing" of plaster forms
and "moulding" which guaranteed consistency and standardisation of the
products.
Production included: figurines ( over two hundred types), pottery, milk jars,
teapots, sugar bowls, various boxes, frames, knobs, vases, etc..108

107Unioni Industriali di Napoli by Alfredo, Buccaro. Gennaro, Matacena. Architettura e Urbanistica

dell’età Borbonica: Le Opere dello Stato, i Luoghi dell’Industria, (Napoli: Electa, 2004), pp. 218.
108 Ibidem.
 In 1759, when he rose to the Spanish throne becoming Charles III of Spain, the
king decided to move the porcelain production to Madrid, completely dismantling
the Neapolitan factory.

Masserie of Terra di Lavoro

In Terra di Lavoro, land cultivation was often related to livestock farming,

especially drought, meat and dairy animals109. As such, zootechnics was
practiced in Caserta since the early 1850s by the explicit will of Charles of
Bourbon, who wanted to improve dairy farming. He commissioned Vanvitelli to
build the Vaccheria Reale (Royal Cowshed), a genuine industry for dairy
production. Production was partly to serve for the court, partly to be sold to the
market, so as to make the structure economically autonomous and productive.
As in most of these spaces, this building was on two levels, housing warehouses
and dairies on the ground floor, while the upper floor was used for labourers
accommodation110. The Vaccheria Reale represents an example of the once-
called masserie in Terra di Lavoro. Masserie (farms) are not just buildings that
host “public” programs. Water distribution systems, land-use regulations or
transport infrastructures are equally capable of constituting a collective
around them. For these reasons, the masseria constitute the principal
agricultural structure of the landscape of the modern countryside: their
function is to be the centre of production and organisation of agricultural
labour carried out in a landed property ruled by a well-defined latifundia.
As in the Palladian Villae, mentioned in the first chapter, the prevailing
architectural feature is the Loggia, whose stairs determine a distinctive landscape
impact. In the 18th century the masserie, while adopting simple and functional
forms, stood out for its refined stylistic features111. The stucco decorations both
inside and outside with pilasters, frames and capitals, were a clear demonstration
of the kingdom's impact over the most remote Neapolitan landscapes. Since
land-grabbing in Terra di Lavoro, rural land now has evolved from a place of
“commoning” to a place of conflicts. In general, masseria represent a new
economic age characterized by the occupation of existing (but also new) spaces
that have been created as a result of massive reclamation works112.
From the XVIII century onwards, the Bourbon agricultural policy expanded
towards new crops. The masseria could therefore be read as a device, whether
as an outpost-Villa for hunting and idleness, or for controlling and surveillance of
economic activities on the territory.

109L.
De Rosa, “La Campania industriale tra Settecento e Ottocento”, in Storia e civiltà della
Campania. L’Ottocento, curated by G. Pugliese Carratelli, Napoli 1995, pp.93.
110 Unioni Industriali di Napoli by Alfredo, Buccaro. Gennaro, Matacena. Architettura e Urbanistica
dell’età Borbonica: Le Opere dello Stato, i Luoghi dell’Industria, (Napoli: Electa, 2004), pp. 126.
111
Alessandro, De Masi. Architettura Rurale tra Villa Literno e Carinola, (Firenze: Alinea Editrice,
2006), pp. 9-36.
112Fondi, Mario, Giacomo Corna. Pellegrini, and Gianni Berengo Gardin. “La Casa Degli Agglomerati
e La Casa Unifamiliare Nel Mezzogiorno.” Essay. In Case Contadine, 132–63. Milano, Italy: Touring
Club Italiano, 1979.
 The San Leucio experiment

As mentioned above, the immense territory of Caserta and Terra di Lavoro within
the Bourbon Kingdom appeared well-stocked with commodities. Notwithstanding
the overthrow of feudalism, the monarchical’s patronage network is extremely
powerful.113The baronial power's resistance, firmly determined to preserve
longstanding privileges and to neutralize efforts to introduce significant
innovations into the Kingdom's administrative systems, was the main stagnating
element of those regions' civil development.
As such, the construction of San Leucio’s complex (late 18th century) is certainly
the result of a long-thought project by Ferdinand IV, whose main concern was to
establish a north-European model of political economy into these hostile
southern territories114.
Strongly inspired by proto-industrial production models, the San Leucio
programme is substantially aimed at the establishment of a working class
community. Although it is founded on work and equality, it is controlled by the
king, as the only owner of the entire district.
The site became part of the Crown property following the purchase of the fief of
Caserta. The area was assigned, between 1774 and 1775, to agricultural and
textile manufacturing firms, becoming a first manufacturing settlement. This initial
activity stimulated Ferdinand IV to try to create a more organic complex which
would certainly benefit the State by introducing a Manufacture of raw and
processed silks of different species.
On these premises, Ferdinandopoli's project emerged as a prototype experiment,
in which the king, keen to enhance the Kingdom's productive potential, traced the
guidelines for the development of the new settlement. Elaborated by Pianelli and
Ferdinando himself, in 1779 the project was commissioned to the architect
Francesco Collecini. The architect was already known for the commissions
received by Vanvitelli in the Caserta Factory. For this reason, he designed a
circular structure around the pre-existing Belvedere, articulated on concentric
and radial streets, with a central square and two annexed, smaller ones. Roads,
avenues, buildings, if considered separately and in their mutual relations, present
a clear and precise symmetrical order. The complex building of the Belvedere
contained the church, the school, the royal residence, the citizens' residence and
warehouses. Adjacent thereto there was the spinning mill, the spinning frames

113Ascione, Imma, and Gian Maria Piccinelli. “Caserta e L’Utopia Di S. Leucio. La Costruzione Dei Siti
Reali Borbonici.” Essay. In Alle Origini Della Minerva Trionfante, edited by Imma Ascione, Gian Maria
Piccinelli and Giuseppe Cirillo, 33. Roma, Italy: Ministero per i beni e le attività culturali: Pubblicazioni
Degli Archivi di Stato, 2012. pp. 34.
114 The Baronial power's resistance, determined to defend long-established privileges and to
neutralize any efforts to introduce significant innovations into the Kingdom's administrative systems,
was the major factor behind the development impasse of those regions. See Diego Lazzarich, and
Gianfranco Borrelli. “I Borbone a San Leucio: Un Esperimento Di Polizia Cristiana.” Essay. In Alle
Origini Della Minerva Trionfante, edited by Imma Ascione and Gian Maria Piccinelli and Giuseppe
Cirillo, 347–64. Roma, Italy: Ministero per i beni e le attività culturali: Pubblicazioni Degli Archivi di
Stato, 2012, pp 361.
 and other factory equipment115.
However, St. Leucio's greatest building emphasis is given by the houses for
settlers, started in 1786. The Royal Colony was populated by 214 individuals to
whom housing and infrastructures were assigned as collective equipment as well
as entrusted with machinery for silk production and manufacturing116. According
to Marx, warehouses, machinery and an efficient organization of production
processes could constitute an experiment on industrial organization. It is
precisely the technological development of machines that give life to a new
division/specialization of labour, therefore the core of a new social system.
Ferdinand was aware that to create his new kingdom it was necessary to develop
a legal apparatus capable of giving form and substance to the model of society
envisaged.
In January 1789, the Royal Stamperia published - drafted and signed by
Ferdinand IV - what may be described as the Statuto Leuciano (Code of San
Leucio). Published under the title: Origine della popolazione di San Leucio - suoi
progressi fino al oggi - Colle Leggi Correpondenti al buon Governo di Essa117,
this constitutional document - consisting of five chapters and twenty-two
paragraphs - also included a sort of preamble followed by laws and completed,
finally, by the Factory's Internal regulations.
Recent historiography has chiefly considered contemporary construction of the S.
Leucio town-factory. The geometrical construction of the colony's interior spaces:
separation of production spaces from public spaces, or from the working-class
dwellings; the prototype of the factory-city already born in the industrialized
European countries; the modernity of the Ferdinand Statute. A strict disciplinary
system for the community: primary education followed by the teaching of the arts
and crafts for silk production; the advanced welfare organization involving the
creation of a Charity Fund, a Fund for orphans, a Fund for the sick, and forms of
rewards for the elderly workers118. In the explanation offered by the Statute, the
special role assigned to the presence and function of the parish priest also
stands out. In fact, the Christian laws of love and charity are valid as basic
principles of common life. It seems quite evident how much effort is made to use
all kinds of means, technical and spiritual, in order to blend disciplinary and
pastoral power. In other words, to converge the support of those disciplined
subjects, all obedient to the sovereign, with every form of prevention and control
that may also come from the instrumental use of religion.
A particular attention was given to the model of self-government within the
colony. As such, some scholars recalled Fourier, who with his collectivist

115Ascione, Imma, and Gian Maria Piccinelli. “Caserta e L’Utopia Di S. Leucio. La Costruzione Dei Siti
Reali Borbonici.” Essay. In Alle Origini Della Minerva Trionfante, edited by Imma Ascione, Gian Maria
Piccinelli and Giuseppe Cirillo, 33. Roma, Italy: Ministero per i beni e le attività culturali: Pubblicazioni
Degli Archivi di Stato, 2012.
116
Martello, Ludovico. “L’Enigma Della Reale Colonia Di San Leucio.” Archivio Storico Del Sannio
XVI, no. 1-2 (December 2011), pp. 28.
117Ferdinand IV King of Two Sicilies, Origine della popolazione di S. Leucio e suoi progressi fino al
giorno d'oggi colle leggi corrispondenti al buon governo di essa, (Naples: Stamperia Reale, 1789).
118Ascione, Imma, and Gian Maria Piccinelli. “Caserta e L’Utopia Di S. Leucio. La Costruzione Dei Siti
Reali Borbonici.” Essay. In Alle Origini Della Minerva Trionfante, edited by Imma Ascione, Gian Maria
Piccinelli and Giuseppe Cirillo. Roma, Italy: Ministero per i beni e le attività culturali: Pubblicazioni
Degli Archivi di Stato, 2012. pp. 22.
 dimension of the Leucian community, acts as a cultural support for utopian
socialism themes119. Others scholars have instead referred to Thomas Moore,
describing San Leucio as a utopian society, in which the collective and egalitarian
dimension was spatially isolated into the wilderness120. However, I argue that
San Leucio was not an abstract model, but a precise political project. The
Leucian phase falls within a particular moment in the transformation of the
modern state, the so-called "Police State". The term, which originates from the
Aristotelian political theory, is inspired by the categories of good governance, by
the Prince's virtuous practices aimed at building an effective command/
obedience relationship with his subjects. During the 18th century, the same term
experienced a far-reaching process of semantic transference. The new social
discipline has now entered into the politics of the States: surveillance, both
economic and social control to make the subjects docile and obedient. Thus, a
new health, agricultural and social legislation takes shape. Above all, there is
concern regarding the masses of lumpenproletariat infesting the city of Naples,
which must be isolated and re-educated121. As such, the Albergo dei Poveri
(Bourbon Hospice for the Poor) by Ferdinando Fuga, can be seen as a process
of subjectification within which architecture plays a fundamental role in
rehabilitating and promoting environments beneficial to the city' productive
forces.

Ferdinand IV was aware of how technological development of machinery was

about to revolutionize North European territories in terms of capital accumulation
and territorial government.
In San Leucio, from the first spinning machines and frames, until the construction
of a large textile mill, production started from the silkworm. The yarn produced by
the worm can be as long as hundreds of meters, and becomes rigid because of
the sericin. The reeling was the phase when, after having unraveled the thread
from the cocoon, softened it by soaking in warm water and pulled it up to form
coils, giving start to silk production. With the phase of weaving, the fabric was
then realized using hand looms. The fabric produced underwent a series of
finishing operations such as moire, that is the compression under large cylinders,
which was followed by the dressing, the shearing and bending. However, the
most advanced technological achievements of Leucian silk manufacturing - with
the introduction of the Jacquard spinning machine -, pushed the King to produce
a large number of commodities to export throughout Europe and to facilitate the
effectiveness of the Leucian Statute. The Kingdom understood how technological
development in manufacturing mobilized new forms of knowledge in certain
ways. In Capodimonte’s porcelain production, as well as the domestic one in the
masserie, the laborer generally had control of the means of production — the

119Alexandre, Dumas. Storia dei Borbone di Napoli, (Napoli: Ed. Marotta & Marotta, 2002). Stefano,
Stefani. Una colonia socialista nel regno dei Borboni, (Rome: SPE, 1907). Agostino, Gori. Gli Albori
del Socialismo (1755-1848), (Firenze: F. Lumachi, 1909).
120Harold,Acton. I Borboni di Napoli, (Firenze: Giunti Editore, 1997). R, Trousson. Viaggio in nessun
luogo. Storia letteraria del pensiero utopico, (Ravenna: Longo, 1992). Agostino. Bagnato, San Leucio.
Una colonia borbonica tra utopia e assolutismo, (Roma: Agra Editore, 1998).
121Ascione, Imma, and Gian Maria Piccinelli. “Caserta e L’Utopia Di S. Leucio. La Costruzione Dei Siti
Reali Borbonici.” Essay. In Alle Origini Della Minerva Trionfante, edited by Imma Ascione, Gian Maria
Piccinelli and Giuseppe Cirillo. Roma, Italy: Ministero per i beni e le attività culturali: Pubblicazioni
Degli Archivi di Stato, 2012. pp. 32.
 necessary tools — and became skilled in the utilization of these tools. The skilled
laborer became what Gramsci would call Intellectual122 of a certain kind of
knowledge and certain kind of understanding of a specific commodity’s
production. According to Harvey, laborers’ traditional skills “are rendered
redundant, because technology and science take over. Technology and science
and new forms of knowledge are incorporated into the machine, and the art
disappears”123. In a Marx Grundrisse’s passage, technology and knowledge are
embedded in the machine: they’re no longer a laborer’s intellectual property.
Therefore the laborer is pushed to become a machine’s appendage, “a mere
machine-minder”124. Or, in other terms Marx used: “The hand-mill gives you the
society with the feudal lord; the steam-mill, society with the industrial
capitalist”125.
As such, the effectiveness of the Statuto Leuciano, was commensurable to the
new division of labor generated by the new productive relationships between
labourers and the machines. For these reasons I argue that San Leucio, rather
than a socialist, utopian or communitarian project is rather a biopolitical one,
interweaved in the imaginary and the praxis of power and territorial government.

On Paolo Soleri Ideal Factory

As we have seen for the Royal Site of Capodimonte, clay as raw material plays a
crucial role for the Neapolitan territory. We could identify the territory of Amalfi
coast - as well as Salerno and Fratte - as the “clay Fabbrichetta”, forming such
Neapolitan conurbations that are traditionally involved in the extraction,
production and export of clay as raw material.
After World War II, Small ceramics factories were built along the shoreline of the
river Bonea, whose flow was used as a source of energy for the pottery-making
process. Generally, the urban fabric of these factories was a vertical plot-kiln with
two or three superimposed rooms, surrounded by tapered terrace for drying the
terracotta126.

Among these factories, the most profitable one was owned by Vincenzo
Solimene, who firstly understood the post-war infrastructural network of
production by selling its ceramics globally. As such, to increase production, the
family decided to plant a new factory in the outskirts of Vietri sul Mare, on the
main road leading to Salerno. In 1951, Solimene commissioned the project to the

122 Gramsci, Antonio. “The Intellectuals.” The Prison Notebooks, XXIX, XIII, no. IV (2017).
123Harvey, David. “We Need a Collective Response to the Collective Dilemma of Coronavirus.”
Jacobin , 2020. https://www.jacobinmag.com/2020/04/david-harvey-coronavirus-pandemic-capital-
economy.
124 Ibidem.
125Marx, Karl, and Friedrich Engels. The Poverty of Philosophy. (Whitefish, MT: Literary Licensing,
2020).
126Cardellicchio,Luciano. "Building Organic Architecture in Italy: The History of the Construction of the
Solimene Ceramics Factory by Paolo Soleri in Vietri Sul Mare (1952-1956)." Construction History 32,
no. 1 (2017): 83-104. Accessed September 3, 2019. doi:10.2307/26489040..
 young Paolo Soleri, who was working for him as a wage labourer to learn
craftsmanship.
The factory is characterised by a facade composed of circular coloured ceramic
vase bottoms which, serving as cavities, ensure good insulating qualities.
Regardless of the fact that such claddings have never been seen before in Italy,
Soleri brings soft and high-tech materials together in 1951, twenty-five years
before Richard Rogers, Renzo Piano and Norman Foster and forty years before
poor materials experimentations and eco-architecture.
Then there is the magnificent spatial intuition that takes up the idea from the
Guggenheim ramp: a factory that produces its ceramics at the top and brings the
products at the bottom.
Mindful of both the place and the entire process of ceramic production, which in
the ancient tradition of wood-burning ovens developed vertically from top to
bottom, Paolo Soleri uses an ogival, articulated plant. Here, all communications
occur by means of stairs, ropeways and external paths on various terraced
levels, typical of the “clay Fabbrichetta”. On the ground floor facing the road is
the shop, where the semi-finished product is decorated and, after cooking,
displayed and sold. The factory, in short, rather than being concentrated in one
place, runs in multiple places at the same time.
Above a one-storey podium, a three-storey residential building was constructed
to allocate the family of the client: Giovanna, Cinzia, Ersilia and Giancarlo.
Although the business has expanded, the majority of Solimene’s hand-crafted
ceramics are still manufactured in the production hall designed by Soleri.
The “domestic” modus operandi, where the family lives upstairs and workshops
on the lower ones, turns the factory into a hybrid system of artisan-manufacturing
production, typical of the Fabbrichetta. In the factory of Solimene, co-operation,
which is based on the division of labor, assumes a unique form. Soleri designed
the circular inclined ramp to house different stages of production, rising by
assemblage of labourers, through whose hands a given ceramic commodity must
pass on its way “down” to completion. While this seem typical of a what Marx
would call “assembling manufacture in one workshop”127, in which the craftsman
is confined in one groove - therefore losing the ability and habits of “carrying the
old trade in all its ramifications”128.

Academic literature on Paolo Soleri focuses mainly on the 1960s earth casting
experiments, when the architect moved to the USA, initially to work at the Frank
Lloyd Wright’s Taliesin school and then to establish the famous community of
Arcosanti. However, I argue that the concept of Soleri’s “organic architecture” is
at best addressed by the construction of the ceramics factory of Solimene.
The ideal city experimented in Arcosanti, has to run autonomously, therefore
every citizen is “organic” in conceiving the city.

127 Karl, Marx. Capital Vol 1, (London: Penguin Books, New Left Review, 1976), pp. 455
128 Ibidem
Fare Casa e Puteca: On Naples’ Domesticity

The aim of this chapter note is to look at some of the general and theoretical
questions arising from Naples’ Fabbrichetta, i.e. the conditions of the domestic
industry or home-workers as well as their new spatial relationships.
Historically and analytically, pre-capitalist forms of domestic industry differ from
the modern ones in the modes of production - although the remaining traces of
feudalism in the Neapolitan territory make this difference blurred. Since the pre-
capitalist form is intimately linked to agriculture, the domestic industry is often an
extension of agricultural activities, involving the processing of agricultural use-
values for local consumption. Its very existence presupposes the emergence of
an urban handicraft sector and an independent peasant farming sector129.
Allegedly, the old form of domestic industry presupposes the home-worker as
independent insofar as the necessary material production and distribution is self-
organized - by consumption or by sale in the local market, or to specific
customers.130 However, I argue that history of Naples’s domesticity never relied
upon the localness. We have previously explored the fondaco as an architectural
example of domestic space embedded in a system in which circulation of
commodities and capital exceeded the geographical limits of Naples, towards
other mediterranean countries131.
As such, understanding the specificity of domestic industry within contemporary
capitalism means tackling the linking relations of the individual home-worker to
the economic system as a whole. Thus, the domestic labourer becomes a
component of a complex economic system which - far from being external or
marginal to modern capitalist industry - is de facto embedded in it.
We have also explored in the first chapter, how this system - the Fabbrichetta -
has been characterized by the decentralisation of production, a new division of
labor i.e. new forms of co-operations. It incorporates productive units, which vary
in dimension, in technical levels, in their internal and external relations, and
which range from modern technologically developed factories to medium-sized
ones, to artisan workshops, finally to individual home workers.
The Neapolitan expression, Fare Casa e Puteca, i.e. living and working in the
same small space, is often visualized as the last link of a larger to ever-smaller
geographical production-assembly chain.
However, southern capitalist decentralization of production to domestic units -
specifically the Neapolitan Fabbrichetta - appears to be different from the
northern one.
In the first chapter I have indicated how historically the amount of technological
sophistication decreases from larger to smaller units, whereas the level of labour

129Goddard, Victoria. “Domestic Industry in Naples.” Critique of Anthropology 3, no. 9-10 (1978): 139–
50. doi:10.1177/0308275x7800300907.
130 Ibidem
131 It is worth mentioning that funduqs and fondacos have Islamic origins. Western colonizers must
have observed and learned their multiple functions as residences for merchants and spaces for
production, storage, sale, and taxation of commercial goods. Constable, O. (2004). The fondaco in
Mediterranean Europe. In Housing the Stranger in the Mediterranean World: Lodging, Trade, and
Travel in Late Antiquity and the Middle Ages (pp. 306-354). Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
doi:10.1017/CBO9780511496264.010
 input increases. Likewise, wage standards, working conditions, union activity and
workforce political awareness decrease as one goes from larger to smaller units.

Within this perspective, Neapolitan working class’ conditions suffer from extreme
unemployment, underemployment (part-time jobs, precarious jobs, ’self-
appointed’ jobs, illegal activity, etc), low wages, except few industrial branches
(particularly the semi-publicly-owned metal and mechanical industry), a low level
of political and trade union organisation132.
Notwithstanding that Naples is the most industrialised city in Southern Italy, “its
industrial structure betrays a development which is partial and warped, based as
it is on the availability of cheap labour and low capital investments”133. Generally,
domestic Industries encountered in this case study were shoe-making, glove
industry, trousers making as well as domestic mechanical tools. However, Naples
domestic work is known to include such productions as low-to-high tech figurines,
ceramic-plastic commodities and high-tech electronic equipment.
To understand Naples’ domestic modes of production, our investigation must
therefore begin with the analysis of a commodity: the Nativity scene figures.

Since production, especially for a mercantile city like Naples, prioritizes

circulation of commodities, the Neapolitan figurine is to be understood as a
process, existing in patterns, networks, organisations, configurations, or webs.
Therefore, the focus of this investigation crystallizes in the form of a commodity,
whereby the Neapolitan figurine is able to reveal the relational nature of the
actors involved in the mode of production.

San Gregorio Armeno can be considered a case of localised agglomeration of

small and micro enterprises. Firms’ proximity generates a network of positive
externalities able to sustain an endogenous process of local development.
Following Bagnasco's theory on “Third Italy”134, we could identify S. Gregorio
Armeno as figurines’ district, which is the expression of a very long Neapolitan
handicraft tradition dating back to the 14th century. The analysis of the supply
focuses on the production of Nativity scene figures (The Holy Crib), and, more
specifically, on the way the production is spatially and geographically organized.
Since the 19th century San Gregorio Armeno Street has been the cultural - and
therefore touristic - symbol of Neapolitan Nativity scene art. It is situated in the
historical centre of Naples, is three hundred metres long and hosts approximately
70 laboratories/shops of Nativity scene figures.
Within a district’s perspective, it is a network of micro-small enterprises where
each unit is generally family-run and somehow capable of managing the entire
chain of production, from the development of the concept to the sale of the
product. Generally, handcrafting technique runs with little technology and very
simple machinery, but craftsmans have considerable aesthetic and intellectual
skills - typical of the Fabbrichetta as an intellectual productive system. As in the
districts with low technological assets (glass, ceramics, etc.) San Gregorio
Armeno stands out for the high level of horizontal integration of its firms. As such,

132Goddard, Victoria. “Domestic Industry in Naples.” Critique of Anthropology 3, no. 9-10 (1978): 139–
50. doi:10.1177/0308275x7800300907.
133 Ibidem, pp. 143.
134 Op. cit.
 all production processes are very similar to those of the other producers. It
appears that the integration among nearby producers does not include mutual
inputs in the production process. However, integration plays a crucial role within
the immaterial processes of production, concerning the dissemination of
information, the marketing of the product, the institutional relations and the
search for an increasingly stronger and shared reputation.
Generally, production varies from high-to-low quality and it depends on the
replicability as well as the raw material value of the commodity. One of San
Gregorio Armeno’s firms I personally interviewed135, runs with two manufacturing
processes.

In the first process, the figurine is completely handcrafted, which means that it
could be personalized based on consumers’ will, therefore the commodity has a
unique use value. Its value is high due to the labour time required to produce it,
that is approximately two weeks. In the laboratory - which generally runs in the
first floor, while at the ground floor there is the shop -, our craftsman employs four
people - one from Sri Lanka, a Bulgarian, a nephew and a Italian one - to
manufacture it, where each one owns a specific part of the process. However, it
appears that some stages of production are outsourced, pursuant to
Fabbrichetta's modus operandi, but are seamlessly scattered throughout the
neapolitan territory.
Besides the supply of clay as raw material by the already mentioned Fabbrichetta
of Salerno and Fratte, parts of the figurine’s bodies are handcrafted from different
domestic workers, coming from outside Naples. “Peppino” is an eighty years old
retired artisan who, to roll out his salary, builds wicker baskets for shepherds'
figurines. “Pina” is a housewife from Torre del Greco, which produces figurine
bodies with iron wire, tow and hemp - there are other specific processes involved
and outsourced, such as the production of the figurine’s eyes etc. Our craftsman
buys these pieces as commodities, he assembles and refines them to finish his
work, using tools such as sgorbie (sticks to shape the clay in detail). Then he
uses brushes to smooth the forms and an electric oven to cook them. After this
process he is ready to paint the figurine and sell it.
However, instead of painting and to satisfy a potential larger demand of
production, the craftsman “mass-produces” the hand-made model using plaster
stamps - that is the second process. It appears that there is a commensurability
with the production process above, but pursuant to the factory one, which
focuses on standardization and replicability of the commodity.

Comparable to the districts with low technological inputs (glass, ceramics, etc.),
San Gregorio Armeno is known for the horizontal level of integration/competition
of its enterprises. Each producer’s mode of production is similar to the others.
The integration between them excludes material inputs into the production
process, but concerns the dissemination of information, product marketing,
institutional relations and the pursuit for an ever-increasing shared reputation.
As for the domestic realities of San Gregorio Armeno, the simple act of hand-
making betrays the much-loved ideology among "distrectualists" about local
production and wealth distribution generated by the Fabbrichetta. Globalization
has never been a real threat by these realities - especially the Naples ones,-

135 Marco Ferrigno, interview by author, Naples, August 22, 2019.

 relying upon the mediterranean environment eversince -, rather they have always
profited from it.

In 1992, the Ferrigno family-run figurine’s business escaped the sales crisis of
the neighborhood-district by disrupting the old production-and-selling methods.
They understood that sacred pastoral figurines weren’t enough for their small
market, so they decided to re-produce public media figures such as politicians,
actors and musicians. The first figurine of Antonio Di Pietro (a well-known leading
public prosecutor of the famous Mani Pulite trial) registered more than ten
thousand sales in a month, while today they produce famous italian trap rappers
figurines such as Sfera Ebbasta or Ghali. Entrepreneur’s knowledge and
awareness of the outside world represent the post-fordist economic value that
the Fabbrichetta has generated so far. This means - again - that even the
geography of the craftsman’s Fabbrichetta exceeds its domestic boundaries,
becoming a deterritorialized space. Therefore, to question the scale and space of
its agency, one could refer to what Latour would call Actor Network Theory136, by
firstly saying that San Gregorio Armeno - as a productive district - is a relational
entity.
Actor Network Theory recognises human and non-human actors in explaining
socio-economic and political issues and exploring everyday phenomena in their
networks, relations and associations137. Social divisions such as local–global,
agency–structure, and materiality–sociality become problematic because these
categories are intrinsically linked. Within a ANT perspective, the global and the
local are mutually constitutive. Within production, things do not act by
themselves, in a self-contained manner. Instead, the capacity for agency is a
relational feature emerging through interactions, enormously facilitated by the
role of technology, which accelerates the bonds between material and social
modes of production.

On Technological acceleration

Based on personal fieldwork interviews, there is evidence of technological

development in craft making. Whilst maintaining traditional hand making
processes, some firms are introducing 3d printing to compete with plastic
Overseas-imported figurines and to cheapen commodities. Family-run
businesses in S.G. Armeno sometimes employs - off-the-books - its offspring to
expand their field of production, thus increasing competitiveness among nearby
micro-firms. But what it really means to introduce a 3d printer into the craft-
making modes of production? How is the process of living-working-with
technology affected? And finally, what is the geospatial trajectory we can draw
from the production process?

The so-called additive manufacturing (3D printing), has been one of the most
significant developments for manufacturing in the past decade. Traditional
manufacturing/hand making sector activities often entail some sort of cutting,
forming, bending, or transforming of materials and components, which are then
assembled. These functions can be carried out in a single place - as in our case

136Bruno, Latour. Reassembling the social: an introduction to actor-network-theory, (Oxford: Oxford

University Press, 2005).
137 Ibidem.
 of San Gregorio Armeno - or, as we will shortly examine, in the production of
technologically advanced products, occurring along increasingly sophisticated
supply chains. Although domestic 3D printing is rather limited compared to
industrial 3D printers, the growth potential is enormous. It already offers a
versatile approach to making complex shaped objects without requiring skills or
capital investment from the user.138 Similarly to the mid-nineteenth century’s
Fabbrichetta, the craftsman-entrepreneur can now employ his family to produce
home sacred-figurines. However, technology, science and knowledge are now
incorporated into the domestic machine (the 3D printer).
While remaining a capitalist means of production - i.e. its aim is to cheapen the
commodity and to lower wages -, the 3D printer, just like any technological
device, becomes an interface between the labourer and the world. In turn, these
considerations introduce the possibility for a spatial reorganization of some forms
of manufacturing and affiliated industrial activity.

To explore the geography of 3D printing production it is necessary to dissect the

device into three parts: Hardware, services and software.
To begin with manufacture of 3D printer hardwares, U.S. and Europe are
projected to remain the largest 3D printing markets revenue in the world139,
where the latter has manufacturers coming mostly from Germany, Belgium and
Holland. Some studies have shown that for innovation to take place, certain
environmental conditions have to be met140. Based upon this, it can be expected
that for example the global development and spread of 3D printing is led by
technology-oriented nations. Perhaps the same and only nations with private
data centers we explored before. The fact remains, that components are, and will
increasingly be, technologically advanced pieces of machinery, and as they will
need to be manufactured somewhere, space will still matter. However, there may
be a drift off from low-end production sites for replacement components post
servicing, as 3D printers are increasingly able to print their parts on site141.
Therefore, there is a clear impetus to focus on service-oriented manufacturing
compared to 3D printing capabilities. Numerous researches142 view services to

138 Johan Söderberg (2019) The cloud factory: Making things and making a living with desktop 3D
printing, Culture and Organization, 25:1, 65-81, DOI: 10.1080/14759551.2016.1203313.
139 Gress, Douglas R., and Ronald V. Kalafsky. “Geographies of Production in 3D: Theoretical and
Research Implications Stemming from Additive Manufacturing.” Geoforum 60 (2015): 43–52.
doi:10.1016/j.geoforum.2015.01.003.
140A.L.Porter, N.C. Newman, X.-Y. Jin, D.M. Johnson, and J.D. Roessner. High Tech Indicators,
Technology-based competitiveness based on 33 countries, 2007 report. Report to the Science
Indicators Unit, Division of Science Resources Statistics, National Science Foundation under
Contract # NSFDACS07P1121. Atlanta, GA: Georgia Institute of Technology, Technology
Policy and Assessment Center, January 22, 2008.
141 Gress, Douglas R., and Ronald V. Kalafsky. “Geographies of Production in 3D: Theoretical and
Research Implications Stemming from Additive Manufacturing.” Geoforum 60 (2015): pp, 45.
doi:10.1016/j.geoforum.2015.01.003.
142Bryson,J., Daniels, P., 2010. Service worlds: the ‘services duality’ and the rise of the ‘manuservice’
economy. In: Maglio, P., Kieliszewski, C., Spohrer, J. (Ed.), Handbook of Service Science, Service
Science: Research and Innovations in the Service Economy, New York: Springer, pp. 79–104. See
also Rusten, G., Bryson, J., 2010. Placing and spacing services: towards a balanced economic
geography of firms, clusters, social networks, contracts and the geographies of enterprise. Tijdschrift
voor Economische en Social Geografie, 101 (3), 248–261.
 be intimately linked to production throughout all stages of production, from design
and innovation to recycling and waste management. Just like the Autonomia
Movement - and Post-fordism in general -, envisioned the factory as a Social
system, this is seen as a path towards an economic geography more sensitive to
the roles of services, the planetary scale of companies, clustering and networks.
Dicken argues:

“Service functions are assuming a more pivotal role in the production process.
At one level, this is a reflection of a continuing escalation in the complexity of
the division of labor...At another, profitability increasingly depends not just on
the manufacturing part of the production process, but on the knowledge aspects
and service functions within which products are embedded: R&D, design, brand
creation, advertising, finance packages, service package or upgrade packages
are now the sources of profitability.”143

To put it bluntly, an individual, while accessing the global 3D printer market -

investing in raw-printing materials, accessories and components - can “print what
he wants and where he wants”. This bolsters the theory that underdeveloped
regions of the earth can now economically emancipate themselves, creating new
productive horizons. Starting from the domestic maker-space, some on the
revolutionary left, raised the idea that 3D printers will undermine the capitalist
relation of value - the relation Money-Commodity-ΔMoney appears disrupted if
anyone can domestically print anything in open source -, unleashing forms of
socialism, communism or a post-capitalist society144. Some of these non-radical
thinkers also see, within the limits of capitalism, a change towards a more
equitable system of shared production, particularly for those of the 'global
South'145. However, I argue that 3D printers will not overcome the multiplicity of
relationships that bind society to the capitalist model and potentially will not
create a new order in society. The input of high-tech in domestic maker-spaces of
San Gregorio Armeno, can be seen as an attempt to build economies partially
outside of capitalism - similar to numerous theories within an Italian district’s
discourse. To Paul Mason and many accelerationists, the agency is to address
this new technology as a creative force to which capitalism will inevitably
collapse146. While 3D printers may make some spaces unprofitable, they would
not be secluded due to the need for resources and space to operate through a
network of actors that now are intimately connected.
Based upon our Material/Immaterial paradigm, the means of production is not
the only point of manufacture, it also encompasses the gathering of resources,
logistics, and intellectual properties. Our craftsman often already control the
means of production for the figurines as well as possess knowledge of materials,

Peter, Dicken. Global Shift: Mapping the Changing Contours of the World Economy, (New York:
143

Guilford Press, 2011), pp.58.

144Guy Rundle, All Power to the Makerspaces: 3-D printing in its current form could be a return to
“small is beautiful” drudgery, but it has the potential to do much more, Jacobin, Issue 17, https://
www.jacobinmag.com/2015/04/3d-printing-industrial-revolution-rundle/ (Accessed 30/05/2019).
145Thomas Birtchnell and William Hoyle. 3D Printing for Development in the Global South The 3D4D
Challenge (Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan 2014), p. 52.
146Paul Mason, The end of capitalism has begun, The Guardian, 17/7/2015. http://
www.theguardian.com/books/2015/jul/17/postcapitalism-end-of-capitalism-begun (Accessed
30/05/2019).
 machine capabilities, and assembly. However, since they do not control the entire
process, this does not detach them from a capitalist relation with CAD softwares,
open-private web sources, data, logistics etc, therefore information from product
development about what actually needs to be made may become blurred.
This leads to the third main area of interest regarding 3D printers’ softwares,
interfacing the craftsman with the machine. Softwares stores data from multiple
users in the Cloud. As a computationally intensive interface, the designed figurine
is not only a picture of the network. It also represents a tool through which a user
of this image-interface can effectively change back on that network. In other
words, the craftsman can upload a 3D model of a self-designed figurine while
downloading (often buying if the software is not open source but private) another
one, perhaps designed and uploaded in Sao Paulo. According to Bratton:

“The conditioning of exchange that any interface provides could be variously

promiscuous or prophylactic, physical or virtual, accelerating or decelerating,
signifying or asignifying, symmetrical or asymmetrical, territorializing or
deterritorializing.”147

The amount of data stored in data centers and gathered by companies (often the
same which produce 3D printers) produce value only insofar as multiple users ( a
potential group of craftsmen) interface with each other.
As mentioned before, technological development in domestic production,
enlightens an ever-relational network of actors (human and non-human) which
appears to be at a planetary scale. Rachel Armstrong148 investigated 3-D printing
by questioning the supply chain that provides it with materials as well as how it
interacts with other entities in its present functional context.
Furthermore, the Interview I have personally conducted in San Gregorio Armeno
on technological development, proves that 3D printing does not challenge
capitalist production’s apparatus. Actually, it increases production and surplus-
labour similarly to the way in which new 18th century machinery did. At least in
Naples, while it is revolutionizing the way in which handcrafting production occurs
- such as transforming the actors involved in the supply chain network as well as
the architecture of productive spaces -, there is no evidence of a potential
decrease of labour time socially necessary to produce commodities of various
kinds.

Human-machine interactions are not always co-opted into a system of profit

generation. We could argue that while our craftsman interacts with the 3D
Printing software by uploading/downloading a model, it offers its data for free in a
hundred different ways. This would mean that our craftsman becomes de facto a
user-creating data. Therefore, Is it right to call our craftsman a labourer?
Marx points out that labour is an activity that generates surplus value within a
production process oriented towards exchange149.
According to Snirceck, If 3D printing is seen within a capitalist framework, “then it

147Benjamin, H. Bratton. The Stack: On Software and Sovereignty, (Cambridge: MIT Press, 2015),
pp. 819.
148 Armstrong, R. (2014). 3D printing will destroy the world unless it tackles the issue of materiality.
The Architectural Review, January 31, 2014. http:// www.architectural-review.com/home/products/3d-
printing-will-destroy-the-world/8658346.article
149 Karl, Marx. Capital Vol 1, (London: Penguin Books, New Left Review, 1976).
 will be pressured by all the standard capitalist imperatives: to rationalise the
production processes, to lower costs, to increase productivity, and so on”150- This
is the potential of technology that Marco Ferrigno was also pointing out in the
interview, as a craftsman but primarily as entrepreneur151.
Rather than exploiting free labour, advertising and 3D printing platforms
appropriate data as a raw material. The activities of the craftsman as a user, if
they are recorded and transformed into data, “become a raw material that can be
refined and used in a variety of ways by platforms”152.
One could argue that raw material of data is therefore a concept that hinges on
the idea of the metropolis as a flexible and infinitely extendible territorial
organism, whose task is to reproduce and organise living labour.
The Fabbrichetta of San Gregorio Armeno is therefore unimaginable without the
transforming process of the city and the territory into a social machine. However,
it remains impossible to draw its geographical boundaries - as for the city of
Naples -, as new technological machinery accelerates its relational bonds with
other different productive entities. In other words the Neapolitan Fabbrichetta
transcends the ideological dualism local/global.

150 Nick, Srniceck. Platform Capitalism, (Cambridge: Polity Press, 2017), pp. 70.
151 Marco Ferrigno, interview by author, Naples, August 22, 2019.
152 Nick, Srniceck. Platform Capitalism, (Cambridge: Polity Press, 2017), pp. 71.