My first book - The Moral Neoliberal (2012) - explored morality as an indispensible tool for capitalist transformation. Set within the shifting landscape of neoliberal welfare reform in the Lombardy region of Italy, I tracked the phenomenal rise of voluntarism (sometimes called “citizens with a heart”) in the wake of the state’s withdrawal of social service programs. I showed how Socialist volunteers interpreted their unwaged labor as an expression of social solidarity while Catholic volunteers thought of theirs as an expression of charity and love. Such interpretations paved the way for a mass mobilization of an ethical citizenry that was put to work by the state - a moral authoritarianism in service of neoliberalization.

I published several articles in relation to or as an extension of this book (Public Culture, Cultural Anthropology, American Anthropologist, Comparative Studies in Society and History). The Moral Neoliberal received Honorable Mention for the William S. Douglass Prize in Europeanist Anthropology and was reviewed in Anthropos, American Ethnologist, Anthropological Quarterly, Journal of Modern Italian Studies, Journal of the Royal Anthropological Institute, PoLar (Political and Legal Anthropology Review), Social Anthropology, Choice Online Reviews, Cambio (Uni Firenze) and in Boston Review under “Editor’s Picks.”