Search

Agropastoral practices that historically reduced the flammability of Mediterranean landscapes are poorly understood due to state prohibitions and lack of scientific interest. Oral histories, analysis of agronomical writings, transect walks, and ethnographic study of fire managers and community members in the Monte Pisano of Italy, find legacies of traditional agropastoral practices in present-day landscapes. Forest leaf litter raking, largely carried out by women, combined with fire wood cutting and burning to greatly reduce fire risk. Historic stigmatization of traditional burning and ignoring gendered peasant labor have reduced contemporary scientists' and fire managers' understandings of ecological processes and of options for reducing fire risk. Fire managers in the Mediterranean, and in areas around the world affected by rural depopulation, would benefit from a better understanding of traditional agropastoral and fire management practices. Litter raking has been understudied outside Central Europe, is often gendered, and may have important ecological consequences around the world. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

On the market for quality wine, quality is generally defined by the liquid's connection to a time, space, and person(s) of origin. This connection is achieved through material-discursive versions of terroir. While the consequences of this aesthetic regime have been well-studied, little attention has been given to the artefact through which the connection is enacted: the bottle. This paper, based on fieldwork with small-scale wine producers in Italy, asks what difference it makes for these artisanal producers to bottle their wine themselves. The analysis hones in on the bottle as a container embedded within an infrastructure of containment, and emphasises how the bottle as infrastructure re-orders the space–time of circulation. The result has implications for container-mediated processes of production-exchange-consumption everywhere. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article analyses a contemporary form of illegal labour mediation, known in Italian as caporalato, which persists in industrialized agricultural production in southern Italy despite a decade of unrelenting legal and policy reforms. Focusing on the regions of Puglia and Basilicata during the so-called Mediterranean 'refugee crisis' (2011-2018), this article addresses the question of how practices of caporalato remain a central infrastructure of globalized agri-food production, while segregating migrant workers in rural society. Adopting an infrastructural lens, we propose two main arguments. First, we highlight the need to shift analytical concerns from 'criminal' labour gangmasters and their protection business to a broader analysis of their role in the reproduction of precarious migrant labour. Second, we highlight how caporalato infrastructures contribute to adversely incorporating migrant 'seasonal' workers into local agricultural labour markets in a context of increasingly globalized retail agriculture and changing state policies. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Patchiness in rural development remains a salient feature of many developed and developing countries that have struggled historically to overcome enormous national disparities in economic structure and well-being. This paper examines how one major, explicit rural policy ostensibly aimed at rural advancement—land reform—can impact uneven development in the countryside. It does so in Italy, where a major land reform redistributed large landholdings to individual peasant families after World War II. Based on original fine-grained data on land redistribution and a geographical regression discontinuity analysis that takes advantage of Italy's zonal land reform approach, I find that greater land reform fueled comparative underdevelopment and precarity locally over the long term. Several related mechanisms delayed development in land reform zones: a slower transition out of agriculture, lower labor mobility, and an aging demographic. These are generalizable mechanisms that could operate in other cases of land reform beyond Italy. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Copyright of L'Ospite Ingrato is the property of Quodlibet S.r.l. and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites or posted to a listserv without the copyright holder's express written permission. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use. This abstract may be abridged. No warranty is given about the accuracy of the copy. Users should refer to the original published version of the material for the full abstract. (Copyright applies to all Abstracts.)

In this article the concept of work comes into tension with some agroecological experiences that populate the Genuino Clandestino network. Three vectors of analysis are developed through an investigation of peasant practices: the unstable borders between productive and reproductive labour in favour of a "practicability of life"; the decentralisation of human exceptionalism in favour of the experimentation of agronomic practices that recognise the active role of multiple more-than-human entities; the commons as a community of practices in which social transformation is inseparable from material regeneration. Through the analysis of the agroecological practices developed by the commoners of Mondeggi Bene Comune, in this article the author situates the challenge of ecological transition within the work and the practices of care that characterise the back to the land movement in Italy. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Beans have been regarded primarily as a staple food for peasants, an affordable protein source for the mass, and a symbol of rustic simplicity by writers of all ages. Among legumes, the common bean (Phaseolus vulgaris L.) probably plays the leading role in typifying these attributes. This species has also shown a remarkable ability to spread around the globe and to replace similar local species in virtually all the cuisines of the world, being nowadays embodied in the gastronomy of several countries. Attitudes toward beans are changing recently, and this legume is no longer considered as only the meat of the poor. This review aims to present a critical overview of the history and role in the gastronomy of common bean and other main cultivated legumes in Italy. After presenting the origin of common bean and its name, and the impact of its introduction to Europe, this contribution discusses the gastronomic history of beans in Italy and the role that socio-cultural differences have played in shaping the use of beans, the conservation of landraces, and food diversity. Finally, perspectives are discussed considering the recent trends in gastronomy and food tourism. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Copyright of Ars & Humanitas is the property of Ars & Humanitas and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites or posted to a listserv without the copyright holder's express written permission. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use. This abstract may be abridged. No warranty is given about the accuracy of the copy. Users should refer to the original published version of the material for the full abstract. (Copyright applies to all Abstracts.)

The enemy image creation in the textbook “The Brief Course of History of the USSR” written by A. Schestakov was considered in the article. Moreover, historiography of the issue was analyzed. It relates to the Soviet time as well as to modernity. Despite the insufficient attention to the issue from the foreign specialists, the works, directly concerned the issue, were presented. The main changes of that system of school education led to its unification and requirements’ establishment to a lesson of history in general and a necessity of a textbook’s design in particular. A role of A. Schestakov, who was one of the first who designed an “ideal” textbook of history for the Soviet authorities, was revealed. His career growth and work under the Marxist-Leninist ideology that facilitated to reach the settled goal were presented. The process of negative connotations’ modification, regarding the forces against which the Bolsheviks had struggled, was followed. For instance, considering the period of ancient history, the author criticized the rich. A negative image was deepened when religion was involved in the middle Ages. Priests and monks weren’t accepted only as “alien”, but much more negatively as “hostile” compared to the rich. The special negative coloring was applied to the rich peasants; the term “kurkul” was used for their description. The closer A. Schestakov was in his historical narration to the 20th century, the brighter was enemy image creation of the internal and external enemies. The first one was the embodiment of all forces against which the Bolsheviks had been struggling. The definition a “counter-revolutionary” was used to mark such “enemies”. The second category was presented as “The Entente Powers” and “the Fascists” who seized power in Germany and Italy. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Copyright of Textual is the property of Universidad Autonoma Chapingo and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites or posted to a listserv without the copyright holder's express written permission. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use. This abstract may be abridged. No warranty is given about the accuracy of the copy. Users should refer to the original published version of the material for the full abstract. (Copyright applies to all Abstracts.)

Though obscured by agricultural modernization efforts in the 1950s, peasant and peasant-like farm realities persist. Since the 1990s, Italy, like the rest of Europe, witnessed a wave of re-peasantization—a conceptual framework introduced by rural sociologist Jan Douwe van der Ploeg to mark the emergence of a mode of agriculture that is distinctively more peasant-like. Using a qualitative, field-based two-case design, this study explored this phenomenon in two new entrant farms in Campania and Sicily, in Italy. Each farm's practices and pursued objectives, as well as its social networks were analyzed. Findings revealed that the two farms adopt strategies grounded in the material and immaterial resources of their territories, thus minimizing their dependence on external inputs and expertise. Built social networks support the diversification of their activities, of their market circuits and of their knowledge sources. This study contributes to the documentation of new peasant realities in Italy, while highlighting the importance of contextual specificities for understanding new farming models and farmer identities. • New farmers gain autonomy through the diversification of farming activities, and of market- and knowledge-based networks. • New farming realities are complex and difficult to qualify according to the peasant-entrepreneurial dichotomy. • The two case studies invite reflections on contemporary rural realities and farmer identities in Italy and Europe. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Contadini—peasant farmers—are central figures of belonging in a Northern Italian winegrowing community. The skills and languages in which contadini are fluent and who is recognized as one of them organize the values attached to various roles in this world. I show how the immigrant vineyard workers who maintain local landscapes engage with this identity, producing new selves through the labor of caring for vines. Earning the title of contadino allows some immigrants to cross social boundaries usually policed by strict ethnic lines in Italy, generating recognition and benefits unavailable from the state. At the same time, Italian employers' relation to the land changes as they hand off ways of knowing and doing to categorical outsiders. 'Traditional' labor and products are what pull these two groups into a collaborative encounter, but rather than simply keeping the past in practice, immigrants and Italians also generate new forms of personhood and value. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

On the occasion of the hundredth anniversary, this paper analyses the political, existential and cultural reasons for the rise of the mining revolt in the southeastern part of Istria named The Republic of Labin, during March and April 1921. Characterized by the occupation of mines and wider territory, the organization of life, defence and production “for themselves and their account” during 36/37 days, and finally the conflict between the Italian authorities and the miners, it was organized after similar processes took place throughout Italy. This period (1919-1920), also known as biennio rosso, the red biennium, throughout the Apennine Peninsula would be intensified in September 1920 by the occupation of industrial plants in light and heavy industry. Despite the similarities and connections between the events on the peninsulas, it is the miners of the Labin region – in the wake of advanced revolutionary ideas about “proletarian republics”, “workers’ self-governments” and “mining councils” – who would insist on several significant dynamics and characteristics during the uprising: non-nationality, cooperation with peasantry and ultimately an armed conflict with the authorities. Also, the paper builds upon an anthropological thesis on the specifics of mining communities that made a significant difference in the articulation of these events in relation to the wider working class. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Islam has a long history in Southern France and Italy and has contributed greatly to the formation of European civilization. This has been forgotten mainly by European and French people and Muslims in general. Driven by the Spirit of jihad and the spread of Islam, the Muslim soldiers have made France and Italy’s regions into an orderly administrative region that was previously filled up with injustice. A comparison of Arabic and Western literature, especially French and Spanish and Arabic literature, was conducted to complete this discussion. Arabic literature does not indicate in detail that Muslims have been in France for a long time based on physical evidence obtained in modern times. By conducting a literature study and a comparative historical, descriptive approach, it was found that Muslims suffered a crushing defeat in the battle with Charles Martel in Tours, October 10, 732. However, Muslims were still in Gaul, Bordeaux, and Anjou (Italy), and it took place for 250 years. This shows that Muslims could adapt to the local population. Coupled with research carried out by archaeologists, gynaecologists, and sociologists with Muslim graves’ presence in the Gaul region joined by local residents, Barbarians, and Arabs indicated that the procedure for burial was performed according to Islam. The funerals were carried out in the 7th or 9th century A.D. The history of Muslims in France and Italy is not easily forgotten; these experts’ research has perpetuated Muslims’ narrative in France and Italy. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Abstract This article examines the emergence of a new generation of innovative young farmers in Italy who are making a success of running farms (often very small) while contravening the basic tenets of the modernization script. We argue that the success of these farmers as entrepreneurs is due to their creativity, innovation, and ability to collaborate (often with agents from outside the agricultural sphere), together with their responsiveness to new societal demands and expectations regarding agriculture and food. These farmers, often with non-agrarian degrees, stand out in that they refuse to join the rural exodus, but instead want to make their mark on rural life by creating and developing land-based rural enterprises. Doing so requires tenacity, stubbornness and a belief in their own capacities and abilities. They form part of the vanguard of the 'new peasantry' because in many ways their business models conform to the strategies of peasants all over the world. Highlights • A new generation of young farmers is emerging in rural Italian areas. • The innovation that characterized this new generation of farmers is a multidimensional, multi-level and multi-actor process. • We can therefore refer to them as a "new peasant's generation" as described by van der Ploeg (2018, forthcoming). • ICT play a key role in the success of these new peasant's generation. u • The actual policy instrument for generational renewal in agriculture are not targeted. New policy instruments, are needed. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Copyright of Italica Wratislaviensia is the property of Wydawnictwo Adam Marszalek and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites or posted to a listserv without the copyright holder's express written permission. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use. This abstract may be abridged. No warranty is given about the accuracy of the copy. Users should refer to the original published version of the material for the full abstract. (Copyright applies to all Abstracts.)

On the 27th March 1511, the Italian region of Friuli was hit by a devastating earthquake, which provoked dispersed damage, widespread destruction and several hundreds of victims. The seismic activity involved all major urban centers, although the area in which the event had a major impact seems to be the one surrounding the alpine and piedmont belt. Because of its extraordinary intensity, the 1511 earthquake deeply shook people's consciousness to the extent that it was considered an exceptional event and the most frightening and severe disaster that the Friulian population had ever experienced. However, the peculiarity of this earthquake resides beyond the material damages that it provoked and has to be traced back to the relationship that several people of the time established with the blood-filled peasants' revolt. The rebellion burst out one month earlier on the Carnival day of Fat Thursday and it led to the death of tens of Friulian nobles. Numerous authors of the time gave an account of the revolt within narratives and chronicles in which they left considerable space for the description of the following earthquake, interpreted by the contemporaries as a divine punishment for the matters that occurred. This chronicle-based corpus of sources, together with public documentation produced by the most important municipal administrations, has been thoroughly examined in an unprecedented and systematic way, in order to understand the actual size and impact of the event, the exact duration of the earthquake, as well as the number and intensity of the aftershocks. This is particularly crucial in order to provide an overall view of the immediate consequences upon the entire region, including a reasonable estimation of the number of casualties. The aim of this study is not only to portray an exhaustive picture of the impact that the mournful event had upon Friulian society, but also to investigate in depth how a catastrophe of this dimension has been experienced, faced and dealt with by the major communities of the region, examined one by one, according to the availability of sources. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The literature on cooperatives often conceptualizes cooperativism as an organized effort to embrace community participation. Through the analysis of agrarian cooperatives in Sicily that were formally established to counter the Mafia and by ethnographically exploring the notion of community for cooperativism, this article aims to problematize this idea of cooperatives as 'community economics'. It proposes an anthropological approach that critically analyzes divisions of labor and the internal factions' divergent concepts of 'community'. In Sicily, workers in 'anti-Mafia' co-ops recognize a sense of community and 'way of life' in Mafia-influenced mobilizations outside the cooperative environment, contrary to the co-op administrators' legalistic views of community. The article illuminates how the fact that often co-op members draw on different ideas of community can lead to contradictions and tensions, especially as there are different social realities underlying those ideas. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article begins with an analysis of small-firm economies in Italy and China and then compares and contrasts the migrations of Italian peasants and Wenzhou Chinese to Prato, a historic center of textile production in northern Italy. The purpose of our analysis is not to argue that, despite many differences, the rural to urban migration of Italian peasants and the international migration of Wenzhou Chinese are fundamentally the same. Instead, through an analysis of similarities and differences into the organizational nature of these two migrations, we can better understand the crucial historical differences between the two cases, differences that give us insight into the more complex questions about the place of Italian and Chinese family firms in the global economy of the twenty-first century. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Debate on the antimafia movement has placed the phenomenon mainly in the urban civil society tradition of new Italian social movements. While acknowledging the resonance of antimafia mobilization in this context, this article explores a different tradition, wherein struggles against the mafia in Sicily are analysed alongside, and in constant interconnection with, the development of the agrarian cooperative movement of the island. Focusing on the Alto Belice area of western Sicily, the article argues that antimafia politics evolved from an association with agricultural workers' cooperativism in an anti-middleman direction after the 1950s land reform. Moreover, it assesses ethnographically how this tradition has influenced actors in the contemporary, largely successful, movement of antimafia cooperatives that cultivate land confiscated from the mafia by the Italian state. It examines how these actors link to this genealogy, associating their contemporary activity, in largely imaginary ways, to this history of struggles, and claiming inheritance over it. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

The article discusses an early-20th-century Italian parliamentary investigation into the conditions of Southern Italian and Sicilian peasants, or the Faina inquiry, with focus given to the work of agricultural economists. More specifically, the author explains how these economists communicated with various levels of Italian society, such as the peasantry and government officials, and gained trust through expertise, along with the process of information exchange within official inquiries and farm classification.

The art of photography was a powerful force in shaping an image of Italian national identity. Itself a product of industry, photography possessed an inherent affinity with progress and innovation that advocates for the country's modernization embraced. Because of its reproducibility, the medium also served an effective pedagogical function. It provided visitors to exhibitions, as well as users of books and magazine, with unifying images around which to construct a new consciousness. During the first fifty years of Italian unification with Rome as capital (1871–1921), a key focus of this standardizing imagery was ‘primitive’ Italy – the undeveloped countryside and its peasant inhabitants whose ‘simple’ and ‘genuine’ way of life embodied both the origins of Italy's distinct culture and the atavistic tendencies that challenged, or were aggravated by, its modern growth. Close analysis of such photographs reveals both the fundamental role primitivism played in the ideological formation of Italy and also the contribution of photography to debates that accompanied the integration of rural Italy into the national society, economy and culture, and the modern world. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

The article focuses on the roles of Greek, Latin/Romance and Arabic in the onomastics of Northeastern Sicily between the 11th and 13th centuries. The first part deals with landless peasants from four villages at the turn of the 11th and 12th centuries. I argue that the role played by Arabic in the nomenclature of these communities was more important than has previously been suggested and the role of Romance speakers may have been minimal. The important role of Arabic is interpreted as a consequence of a situation of linguistic dominance and borrowing of word-forms. In the second part, I analyze the onomastics of the free population of northeastern Sicily attested in charters during the 12th and 13th centuries. I argue that the 13th century was the crucial period when Greek lost its initially high prestige. This is visible in both first names and second name elements. In first names, Greek speakers started to accommodate their nomenclature to their surroundings, dominated by Romance languages and the church of Rome, which meant that both language shift and religious conversion played a role. The second name elements in Greek were seldom transferred to the name stock of the Romance-speaking population. I argue that the role of the city of Messina, in which monolingual Romance communities were evidently formed, was important in this process. When such a community was formed in Messina, the Greek language was marginalized fairly rapidly even in northeastern Sicily, where it had had an important position. However, some surnames with a Greek or Arabic etymology survived in the local name stock until the present. I explain this by referring to the role of the de-semanticization of such name elements. This consists both of the semantic bleaching of the original significance of the names and of the neutralization of their linguistic connotations. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article examines the phenomenological aspects of landscape and analyzes how these aspects can be applied to the social struggles of peasants in Tuscany, Italy between 1944 and 1960. It discusses how Communist ideas related to mobilization and social structures influenced the peasants' fight for respectability and provides comments from the memoirs of several Tuscan sharecroppers including Marcello Cioppi and Franco Guarducci on the economic conditions and agricultural systems of Italy during this period. Social activism by Italian peasants, public displays of Communist symbolism in flags, and an exploration of human interaction with their natural environment are additional topics that are discussed.

For several decades the socio-economic and political organization of rural communities in the northern Mediterranean has been a central topic of ethnographic and modern historical research. Although the concept of (rural) class has generally been avoided, a scholarly picture has often been maintained of a sharp social stratification in local contexts. In this framework the notions of peasantry and patronage have frequently been applied. This article argues that on occasion rural communities in southern Europe showed a rather flexible social stratification and high amounts of social mobility in particular among shepherd groups. The case study is of the agro-pastoral community of Fonni in the central mountains of Sardinia (Italy), which has been characterized predominantly by a pastoral economy based on sheep and goat herding during the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article focuses on poet Pier Paolo Pasolini, who found satisfaction and love in the political struggles of peasants. It says that Pasolini's encounter with the 1948 peasant rebellions allowed him to recognize a political form of love. It mentions that Pasolini managed to construct in social and subjective terms outside the norms of homophobic society, which is animated by anticapitalist social practices. It adds that Pasolini studied the dialect of Friuli in Northeastern Italy.

This article considers the development of two features of central Italian society in the post-Roman period (approximately the mid-fifth to the mid-ninth centuries) that have been thought to have affected significantly the condition of life of the peasantry there: rural settlement and the taxation system. It argues that we should be wary of attempting to reconstruct the settlement landscape from the surviving documents: too often, references to agrarian structures are misconstrued as references to settlements. The shape of the latter is rarely visible in the textual evidence, but can be appreciated far more certainly from archaeological surveys and excavations, which present a picture of the evolution of the human landscape that is far more varied than a simple transition ‘from villa to village’. Documentary sources are more helpful in tracing the fate of the Roman taxation system. They point to structural continuities in the way that the peasantry was exploited that did not significantly vary between neighbouring political territories, and that reveal how the powerful continued to affect both the location and the condition of peasant life. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Emigration, Colonialism and the Southern Question come together in the history of Leopoldo Franchetti's 1891 plan to provide land for Italian peasants in Eritrea. His plan was a political masterstroke in theory, yet despite burgeoning Italian emigration to other parts of the world and rural restlessness at home, virtually no peasants sought land in Eritrea and the plan failed within five years. Two enduring currents contributed the most to this outcome: the deeplyrooted perception of the Italian South as 'African', with its consequences for peasant-state relations; and competition from emigrant destinations which already possessed social networks to encourage new arrivals. Both the plan's design and its failure illustrate how these currents spurred and shaped, but also ultimately frustrated, Italy's early colonial ambitions. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Discusses the peasant's role as an exemplar of an economic way of life and as a social figure that has relevance to social trends in Italy. Ethnographic encounters that provide the basis for explorations into the trauma and meaning of historical experiences expressed as low fertility rates among women; Analysis of pertinent topics and relevant issues; Implications for ethnology.

Applying the categorisation made by Walter Benjamin as regards popular storytelling - stories told by sailors, and stories told by peasants, the former being internationally oriented and the latter locally based - this paper reconsiders the history of Italian police drama as in transition from foreign' or international to `domestic' or national/local storytelling. This transition follows three phases: the adaptation of foreign classics in the first two decades of the Italian television; the emergence of the domestic voice in the 1970s and 1980s, when locally based police series were produced, although in the context of a television supply widely internationalised by massive slates of foreign imports; and the establishment and popularity of the now hegemonic formula, all'otaliana, from the 1990s onwards. The contemporary police drama is now a fully localised genre, yet this doesn't disguise the footprints of a trans-nationalisation which is still underway, whereby the sailor's and the peasant's voices converge and merge. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In Italy, peasant families traditionally had particular features - such as the hierarchic structure in the organisation of the family nucleus, the large number of its members, poor living conditions and low level of education - which distinguished them from other types of households. The modernisation of Italian society, which profoundly affected agriculture in the 1970s, also brought about a radical transformation in the households in the sector, the majority of which now appear similar to the average Italian family. The production features of the sector show some exceptions to the mean, such as the importance of family nuclei made up of one or two, mainly elderly persons, in marginal areas, and the importance of extended families in the areas once under the sharecropping system, and in small towns and villages. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article talks about the incidence of social protest and labor conflict in Italy from 1915 to 1918. Among the working class, and particularly among those workers subjected to the regime of the Mobilitazione industriale, there was a pause in disputes immediately after entry into the first World War. The demonstrations at the end of 1916 and the start of 1917 developed for specific reasons, such as lack of foodstuffs, and became particularly violent in the south where popular rage followed a traditional ritual, typical of peasant jacqueries, in which the principal targets were the emblems of power. It was in the centers of the metal and mechanical industries, as well as in the textile regions, that the main strikes of 1917 took place.