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This article examines the connections between the defense of a traditional concept of masculinity and the anti-modernist discourse which characterized the fascist regime. This nexus took shape in the campaign against urbanization and its concomitant exaltation of the peasant world, as well as in the critique of intellectuals and the anti-bourgeois campaign. Through a critique of the modern woman, fascism emphasized the hierarchical relationship between the sexes, which found its justification in the supposed immutability of the subaltern feminine role.

Summary In ‘Itinerary’ Patrick McCarthy provides an introduction to the four articles that examine the connections between sport, politics, business and contemporary culture in Italy. Noting that mass participation in sport has been closely related to modernization, McCarthy argues that the forms of contemporary mass sport reflect the particular cultural, political and economic conditions of each European society. In Italy these made soccer and cycling the most popular mass sports by 1945. Patrizia Dogliani’s article ‘Sport and Fascism’ examines the development of mass sport in Italy from the late nineteenth century, showing the critical role played by the Fascist regime, which rapidly expanded public sports facilities while the language of politics and combat permeated the vocabulary of sport in Italy in the 1920s and 1930s. Initially the emphasis was on international competition as a symbol of national virility, but following the success of Germany and the USA in the 1936 Olympics the regime’s search fo...