Salvatore Giusto is a Ph.D. in Socio-Cultural Anthropology (University of Toronto, 2019) currently working as a Marie Curie Postdoctoral Fellow at the UvA’s Department of European Studies. His ethnographic research work reflects a sustained interest in how state-regulated and organized-crime-sponsored modalities of cultural production operate within European contexts historically connoted by systemic conditions of capitalist and crypto-colonial exploitation such as the southern regions of the Italian peninsula, as well as the pivotal role that such forms of social (mass-)mediation play within current subaltern politics on a transnational scale.
Salvatore’s current research project, which is ironically entitled Scar-Facebook, explores how legal and illicit processes of digital networking cooperate in the ongoing entrenchment of far-right populist politics within the context of contemporary Naples, Southern Italy. It does so by providing ethnographic and net-nographic explorations of the online dynamics of networking and patronage that co-involve so-called "neomelodic" artist and digital operators, digitally active far-right activists and/or professional politicians, and their Neapolitan lower-class publics.
Put asides his post-doctoral activities of research, Salvatore is currently organizing and teaching Ph.D.-level experiential workshops on issues of ethnographic research methods and academic publishing.
Salvatore is the author of several research articles in the humanities and the social sciences, which have been published in various top-tier journals including Visual Anthropology, PoLAR: Political and Legal Anthropology Review, Global Crime, Journal of Modern Italian Studies, and History and Anthropology. His scholarly activities are complemented by his work as a literary author (2000, Ritzomena: cose che danzano), documentary film-maker (2014, Good Time for a Change), digital magazine editor (2021, www.deephinterland.it), as well as his burning passion for “old school” horror movies, horse riding, and home-made Sicilian cuisine.
Selected Publications
Giusto Salvatore & Blais-McPherson Morganne, 2022, Dalla Vostra Parte: Populist Irony, Illiberal Ventriloquism, and the Rise of the “Non Buono” Refugee in Contemporary Italy, Journal of Modern Italian Studies, DOI: 10.1080/1354571X.2022.2065773
Giusto Salvatore, 2022, La “Grande Trasformazione”? Pandemia, governamentalità e stato sociale nell’Italia dei lockdown sanitari [Eng: The ‘Great Reset’? Pandemic, Governmentality, and Social-Democracy in Locked-Down Italy], Antropologia Medica, 22 (52): 248-256, open access at: https://www.amantropologiamedica.unipg.it/index.php/am/article/view/607/542
Giusto Salvatore, 2021, Trashopolis: The Digital Recycling of “Trash Television” in Neoliberal Italy, Collection Hors-Série, Vol. 7, Montreal: Editions@Anthro, open access at: http://hdl.handle.net/1866/24966.
Giusto Salvatore, 2020, Through the Looking-Glass: Televised Politics in Contemporary Populist Italy, PoLar: Political and Legal Anthropology Review, 43 (1): 87-102.
Giusto Salvatore, 2019, "One of Us": The Neomelodic Music Industry as a Camorra-mediated Space of Subaltern Publicity in Contemporary Naples, Global Crime, Vol. 20 (1): 134-155.
Giusto Salvatore, 2018, La Terra dei Fuochi: Cultural Labeling, Ecological Crimes, and Social (re)Action in Mediacratic Italy, International Journal of Semiotics and Visual Rhetoric, Vol. 2 (1): 15-28.
Giusto Salvatore & Russo Carlo, 2017, Note neomelodiche: estetica sociale, economia politica e reti di scambio asimmetrico nello spazio periferico napoletano, Antropologia, Vol. 4 (1): 7-27.
Giusto Salvatore, 2016, Il Mercato neomelodico: estetica commerciale ed economia politica illecita nello spazio sociale napoletano, in: Società, economia e spazio a Napoli. Esplorazioni e riflessioni, ed. by Gabriella Punziano, GSSI Social Sciences, Vol. 28: 207-219, L'aquila (Italy): Gran Sasso Science Institute Press.
Giusto Salvatore, 2011, La Fabbrica dei Sogni. Italian Cinematography, Collective Memory and National Identity, Visual Anthropology, Vol. 24 (4): 287-305.
Selected Ethnographic Documentaries
Giusto Salvatore, Melideo Danilo, and Manuela D'Andrematteo, 2014, Good Time for a Change. A Documentary on Italian Emigration to Canada, Toronto (Canada): produced via online crowdfunding. Available online at: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZOZ2poRBW3o