In one of his most recent works, the renowned Italian anthropologist Vito Teti argues that the social value of nostalgia has been underrated and misunderstood. “It’s not about imagining a return to the past,” he writes at the beginning of Nostalgia: Anthropology of a Feeling in the Present. “We can never turn around and go back. It’s about regarding the past with pietas [dutiful respect] for that which was and wasn’t, and also with consideration, perhaps via possible utopias, for the unrealised potential of men and women who once existed.”
Prof Teti has explored such ideas in relation to his home region of Calabria, where a long history of migration has created towns which could be thought of as prototype “left-behind” communities. His insights have now been deployed in research by a group of University College London academics, focused on the north-east of England. In Social Infrastructure and Left Behind Places, which will be published next month, a persuasive case is made for “productive nostalgia” in places that have not been treated kindly by the 21st century.
