TERRITORIAL STIGMA AS A TOURIST COMMODITY. THE CASE OF SCAMPIA IN NAPLES.

This thesis ethnographically explores the commodification of territorial stigma in Scampia, a highly stigmatized neighborhood in Naples (Southern Italy) that has paradoxically become a tourist destination. By bridging studies on territorial stigmatization and destigmatization (Wacquant, 2007; 2023; Schultz Larsen & Delica, 2021), urban tourism in marginalized areas (Frenzel et al., 2015; Freire-Medeiros, 2013; Gravari-Barbas, 2017; Le Gallou, 2018), and the commodification of stigmatized goods and practices within consumer culture (Sandikci & Ger, 2010; Kosut, 2006; Merkel, 2006; Sassatelli, 2007), the research investigates how Scampia’s territorial stigma is produced, marketed, and consumed within the tourism industry. Through ethnographic fieldwork involving guided tours and interviews with tourists, guides, and residents, this study examines how tour organizers market Scampia’s notoriety while attempting to reshape its narrative, how tourists engage with and consume its stigma, and how residents strategically navigate tourism—at times embracing, resisting, or contesting the commodification of their neighborhood. Findings reveal that tourism in Scampia both reinforces and challenges territorial stigma, generating a complex, dynamic, and conflictual interplay between commercial interests, local agency, and ethical concerns. By examining these processes, this research contributes to sociological debates on territorial stigma and urban tourism in stigmatized peripheries of the Global North, a phenomenon that remains understudied.