A school of Italian criminology argued the biological inferiority of Southern Italians.

Evidence

Alfredo Niceforo, born 1876, was a sociologist and criminologist who wrote numerous studies on poverty, crime, etc., notably in Naples where he held a university post. In Italiani del Nord e Italiani del Sud he argued the biological inferiority of Southern Italians. Similar arguments were put forward by Giuseppe Sergi, Enrico Ferri (see note 47 on p. 246 ) and Paolo Orano. — Antonio Gramsci, Selections from the Prison Notebooks, 1925

Categorization

• XREF: Connects to the broader scaffolding of race-thinking and biologized hierarchy that the Islamophobia readings build on — the same intellectual move of justifying regional/national domination through pseudoscientific biology.
• ADDENDUM: Relevant as groundwork for how racialized selfhood and hierarchy-thinking operate, a mechanism later Islamophobia arguments presuppose.