Paper short abstract:

Turner’s approach, processual and indeterminacy inclined, may well interpret a social reality constantly fluid and conflict permeated.We looked at a northeastern Italian town as an example of a social history in becoming, which could be unveiled by specific methodological tools borrowed by Victor Turner

Paper long abstract:

Assuming Turner's social drama as a possible applicable model for exploring a range of questions which may cast new light on profound transformations investing our contemporary urban scenarios, we looked at a northeastern Italian town as an exploratory example of a social history in becoming, which could be unveiled by specific "methodological tools". Such tools, all borrowed by Victor Turner, included the concepts of crisis and process, political field and arenas, narratives and performance, redress and reflexivity and last, but not least the audience. All these tools, revisited and reinterpreted, concurred to uncover the sense of what was happening in our town. The arrival of newcomers wishful of recognition in the public space was undoubtedly a phase of a diffused long term crisis for the host society, interspersed by more identifiable time-specific crisis; migrant-fostered turmoil was looked through the lens of narrative events, charged with both reflexivity and creativity, which constituted our privileged ethnographic material. Turner's approach, processual and indeterminacy inclined, may well interpret a social reality constantly fluid and conflict permeated