Tra l’alto e il basso: Covid-19 e gli usi politici dell’incertezza

The present article reflects on the management of the pandemic crisis that hit Italy in the early months of 2020. Different administrative, social and political plans are entangled in the discussion and analyzed in their intertwinement. The main hypothesis discussed in the article is that the local level within which social events take place are not really specific. Rather they appear to be the outcome of an adaptive process that contains broader elements. Above all, the local level is the one within which the “real life” develops, together with its perceptions and beliefs. This is even more true in a framework – as the Italian one over the pandemic crisis – that has been characterized by a plurality of normative set-ups. An organization that produced different scenarios within the same crisis, and that reflected the specific interests of different actors active in the territories. The surrealistic case of the city of Messina (Sicily) and its peculiar Mayor, is the particular case and “stage” analyzed by the author in order to expose the biases of the Italian way to the pandemics.