Democratic Resistance at Europe's “Holy Mile”

This ethnographically grounded chapter focuses on how restructuring and bringing to public fruition long-neglected catacombs in Naples helps rethread social relationships in a diverse neighborhood, and political relationships with the rest of the city and the country. Within the ambivalent context of a peripheralized neighborhood, of an eccentric city, and of a residually stigmatized and increasingly touristy southern Italy, grassroots engagement—in this case initiated by a Catholic parish—challenges marginalization and unequal membership in the polity. At the same time, the chapter needs to raise an ever-relevant question: whether this resurfacing Neapolitan underground substantiates the promise of a democratized participation in the common and public good, or whether it shores up the neoliberal, methodical peripheralization of ideas and practices of egalitarian interdependence. The chapter argues for the continued need to deploy relational analytical (and political) perspectives, as we seek to understand life in common and participate in its democratic organization.