Invisible Presences and Visible Absences

Jewellery industry and its crisis in Valenza, Italy

Bibliographic Data

ID2181365
AuthorsM F Fontefrancesco (0000-0003-3247-6110, Russian State Agrarian Correspondence University, corresponding author)
Year2015
Volume8
Issue5
Pages597-612
Publication date2015-09-03
Peer ReviewedYes
Open AccessNo
TypeARTICLE
VenueJournal of Cultural Economy (JOURNAL)
Journal identifiersISSN: 1753-0350 • E-ISSN: 1753-0369
PublisherInforma UK Limited (PUBLISHER • GB)
DOI10.1080/17530350.2014.974656
OpenAlexW2345446151
LanguageEN
Citations received1
References cited35

Since 2008, Valenza, one of the World's largest jewellery production centres, has experienced a period of profound economic uncertainty. In four years, about a third of the jobs and workshops of the city were lost. The paper investigates the practices and the form of knowledge Valenza people used to speak and understand the crisis. While economic data were marginally known by the population, the crisis emerged in the words of Valenzani as a visual experience of the city landscape. ‘Invisible presence’ and ‘visible absence’ emerged as the fundamental keywords used by the community to describe the industry, its normality and change. The paper investigates these concepts, indicating the analysis of the sensorial experience and its rhetoric expression as a rich ground for an alternative, human understanding of economy. In so doing, it aims at aim at providing an example of a possible different way of writing economy that does not starts from econometric data, but from the very perception of the social life and space as experienced by its actors

Economics · Economy · Normality · Perception · Population · Rhetoric · Sociology · Cultural Industries and Urban Development · Diverse academic and cultural studies · Italian Literature and Culture · Psychology · Social Psychology

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