E se la Patria chiama: storia dell’obiezione di coscienza al servizio militare nell’Italia repubblicana (1945-1972).

The thesis goes through the origin and development of the conscientious objection to Nation Service in the Italian Republic, from the Second postwar period until its acknowledgement by the Law 772 of 1972. The study aims to follow the instance’s progress inside the pacifist and anti-military movements, the institutions and the public opinion and to investigate its contribution both to the redefinition of the concept of "defense of the fatherland", and the expansion of the sphere of civil rights. The advanced hypothesis considers the conscientious objection certainly as a niche instance, within civil society, being yet very permeable to both the social and cultural transformations that involved the country, and to the resistances of a State which was fearing every request of reform. Over the concerned years the conscientious objection sees changes not only in the way in which it expressed itself as a claim, but also in the meaning attributed to it, the social physiognomy of the objector and of the movements that claimed its recognition, the debates in the institutions, the repressive responses of monitoring bodies.