Over the course of the 20th century, the rapid transformation of Italy from an impoverished, predominantly agricultural nation to one of the strongest economies in the world forged a fascinating and contradictory society where gender relations were a particular mix of modernity and tradition.In this accessible and innovative study, Perry Willson provides a nuanced and insightful analysis of the impact of social, political, economic and cultural developments on Italian women's lives...

The idea of the “mamma italiana” is one of the most widespread and recognizable stereotypes in perceptions of Italian national character both within and beyond Italy. This figure makes frequent appearances in jokes and other forms of popular culture, but it has also been seen as shaping the lived experience of modern-day Italians of both sexes, as well as influencing perceptions of Italy in the wider world. This interdisciplinary collection examines the invented tradition of m...

Peasant women were the largest female occupational group in Italy between the wars. They led lives characterised by great poverty and heavy workloads, but Fascist propaganda extolled them as the mothers of the nation and the guardians of the rural worlds, the most praiseworthy of Italian women.This study is the first published history of the Massaie Rurali, the Fascist Party's section for peasant women, which, with three million members by 1943, became one of the largest of...

Peasant women were the largest female occupational group in Italy between the wars. They led lives characterised by great poverty and heavy workloads, but Fascist propaganda extolled them as the mothers of the nation and the guardians of the rural worlds, the most praiseworthy of Italian women.This study is the first published history of the Massaie Rurali, the Fascist Party's section for peasant women, which, with three million members by 1943, became one of the largest of...

Storming Heaven is the only book which looks at Italian workerist theory and practice, from its origins in the anti-Stalinist left of the 1950s to its heyday twenty years later. It focuses on the theme of workerism, or 'operaismo', which includes the refusal of work, class self-organisation, mass illegality and the extension of revolutionary agency, of of which are still practiced today by workers across the world.Emphasising the dynamic nature of class struggle as the distinguishi...

This is the first in-depth study of the feminist movement that swept Italy during the "long 1970s" (1968-1983), and one of the first to use a combination of oral history interviews and newly-released archive sources to analyze the origins, themes, practices and impacts of "second-wave" feminism. While detailing the local and national contexts in which the movement operated, it sees this movement as transnationally connected.Emerging in a society that was both characterized by tradi...

This book deals with the popular reception of early Italian television during the years of the socalled long “economic boom” (1954-1969). To do so, the author focuses on the Catholic and Communist audiences’ perception of the first TV programs. The investigation into these two main groups’ reception will be conducted through the analysis of all the TV references published in the readers’ columns of the two most popular rotocalchi of those years: the Catholic magazine Famiglia Cristiana and...

Piero Sraffa's work has had a lasting impact on economic theory and yet we know surprisingly little about the man behind it. This is the first intellectual biography of Sraffa and it details his working relationship with thinkers as diverse as Gramsci, Keynes, Wittgenstein as well as discussing the genesis of his major works.

“What the future fortunes of [Gramsci’s] writings will be, we cannot know. However, his permanence is already sufficiently sure, and justifies the historical study of his international reception. The present collection of studies is an indispensable foundation for this.” —Eric Hobsbawm, from the prefaceAntonio Gramsci is a giant of Marxian thought and one of the world’s greatest cultural critics. Antonio A. Santucci is perhaps the world’s preeminent Gramsci scholar. Monthly Review P...

**Washington Post bestsellerLos Angeles Times bestsellerA vivid and surprising portrait of the Italian people from an admired foreign correspondent**How did a nation that spawned the Renaissance also produce the Mafia? And why does Italian have twelve words for coat hanger but none for hangover?John Hooper’s entertaining and perceptive new book is the ideal companion for anyone seeking to understand contemporary Italy and the unique characte...

In this Very Short Introduction, Peter Hainsworth and David Robey consider Italian literature from the Middle Ages to the present day, looking at themes and issues which have recurred throughout its history and continue to be of importance today.Examining themes such as regional identities, political disunity, and the role of the national language, they also cover a wide range of authors and works, including Dante, Petrarch, Manzoni, Montale, and Calvino. They explore some of the distincti...

Morality is often imagined to be at odds with capitalism and its focus on the bottom line, but in The Moral Neoliberal morality is shown as the opposite: an indispensible tool for capitalist transformation. Set within the shifting landscape of neoliberal welfare reform in the Lombardy region of Italy, Andrea Muehlebach tracks the phenomenal rise of voluntarism in the wake of the state’s withdrawal of social service programs. Using anthropological tools, she shows how socialist vol...